Large Adoptive Families Thread

[lilwriter85]

Many of you are familiar with the Child Collectors thread that is now archived. I have been checking up on Jean from Minnesota and her large adoptive family and they are adopting again.

theresnoplacelikehome-family.blogspot.com/

[dairyfreelife]

I saw that and then forgot to mention it here. They are adopting two more...again. I think it's a girl and boy this time. That's 16 adopted children in just a couple years. Slow down.

Christine of Smiles and Trials is also adopting again. I think they are supposed to be going to bring her home in October. That's 18 children for them, though the two oldest are in college now.

Oh, there's probably more, but those are the first two people that came to my mind when I think about child collectors.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Wow, I thought she had only just adopted? How do you get time to bond when as soon as you adopt a bunch of kids, you start the process to adopt another bunch. She did her first in 2008, and since then she nearly has as many as the Duggars have (but all under 15)

[LilMissMetaphor]

I posted in the Adoption topics forum about Christi (porknbeans) whining about not being able to get her sixth "egg roll" (whom she HAD, but threw away). Not sure how much traffic gets to the individual forums though. I miss talking about the child collectors here.

[DGayle]

That's 16 adopted children in just a couple years.

How is this even possible? I don't get it. I know people denied adoption for the most stupid of reasons. Giving birth in the last year, cancer a decade ago, being deaf. How can people be handed a child every other month? How?

[lilwriter85]

How is this even possible? I don't get it. I know people denied adoption for the most stupid of reasons. Giving birth in the last year, cancer a decade ago, being deaf. How can people be handed a child every other month? How?

The adoptions have been over a six year period. There isn't long gaps between their adoptions. But it's too frequent in my opinion. I'm not trying to be an ageist, but I kind of have hope they stop after this upcoming adoption. Jean and her hubby are in their 50s, while they seem to be in good health and have the energy, sometimes enough is enough. Another well known couple with a large adoptive family, John and Jeanette Murphy stopped adopting because of their ages and they felt they had enough.

[chaotic life]

16 children in seven years is flat-out irresponsible both on the part of the adoptive parents and the adoption agencies that placed those children.

For comparison, we've adopted four children in 14 years and I still feel like sometimes it went too quickly!

I would like to adopt one more time, but we have a strict rule that we don't even consider another adoption unless and until children already in the home are settled and thriving. We have children still grieving from their lost brother and I won't consider adopting until they have all the time to work through their grieving that they need. If that means I don't get to pursue that one last adoption, then so be it. The children in the home take priority over theoretical children not in the home. But then, despite having nine no one could ever accuse me of being a child collector.

[Howl]

Many of you are familiar with the Child Collectors thread that is now archived. I have been checking up on Jean from Minnesota and her large adoptive family and they are adopting again.

theresnoplacelikehome-family.blogspot.com/

This family looks to have financial resources out the kazoo. Also, the older bio boys are getting advanced degrees (MAs and one is pursuring a PhD) in fairly hard core areas. Several of the bio girls have gotten married.

They have numerous 7 to 8 year olds -- all Asian (all Chinese?). Not sure what to think, but that is a LOT of kids.

[ViolaSebastian]

This family looks to have financial resources out the kazoo. Also, the older bio boys are getting advanced degrees (MAs and one is pursuring a PhD) in fairly hard core areas. Several of the bio girls have gotten married.

They have numerous 7 to 8 year olds -- all Asian (all Chinese?). Not sure what to think, but that is a LOT of kids.

I was thinking "this family is going to be white and rich." Bonus that their Christians. They basically have a license to adopt every six months, unfortunately.

[DGayle]

16 children in seven years is flat-out irresponsible both on the part of the adoptive parents and the adoption agencies that placed those children.

I agree! I do know several people who've successfully adopted, and unless you're adopting newborns, children are going to have issues, whether they were abused, abandoned, or their parents died. There's going to be grief and fear and reactive attachment disorder is common enough to be seen as normal, even in toddlers. You can't get through these issues in 4 1/2 months on average (if 16 in 6 years is correct). It just doesn't happen that fast.

I would like to adopt one more time, but we have a strict rule that we don't even consider another adoption unless and until children already in the home are settled and thriving. We have children still grieving from their lost brother and I won't consider adopting until they have all the time to work through their grieving that they need. If that means I don't get to pursue that one last adoption, then so be it. The children in the home take priority over theoretical children not in the home. But then, despite having nine no one could ever accuse me of being a child collector.

Thank you for being responsible about adopting. This is how it should be. When the kids you have are settled and thriving, then consider more, whether it's years later or never. The kids you have will know they're loved and not just part of a collection.

One of my good friends adopted a toddler from China a decade ago, their younger daughter. It took a long time. They got her and spent years working with a child who spent the first 2 years of her life with so little food that she didn't even notice when she hd a plate. She was used to fighting for what other people had i their mouths because she was used to empty plates. Their younger daughter is now 14, and they tried adopting again. Their older daughter has diabetes and was diagnosed a few years ago. That was used to deny my friends another adoption. What if it's hereditary and the parents get diabetes and die and then can't take care of another child? So an orphan in China gets to live fighting for food in other people's mouths because that's better than the long shot my friends both get diabetes because their biological daughter has it, and both die.

I don't understand, can't understand, how some people get kids faster than should be allowed, while good people who are excellent parents are turned away. Religion can't be a part of it. These friends are church-going Christians.

[Cheetah]

I was thinking "this family is going to be white and rich." Bonus that their Christians. They basically have a license to adopt every six months, unfortunately.

The kids are all from China and a lot (most?) of them have a minor medical special need that makes them less adoptable. I think a couple are Hep B positive, that sort of thing. I'm torn with this family... she seems to be doing a great job with them, they seem to have enough money to afford a mega-family, and the older kids have done well and seem to be supportive of the adoptions. They are Catholic btw, not Fundie protestant. That said, I keep thinking, "okay, surely you must be done now... there are just so many of them" and then she goes and announces yet another kid coming home soon. At some point you are going to tip the barrel and just create more chaos than you need and than is good for the kids already there.

[DGayle]

"Our process is going much slower than usual

; - ("

Boo hoo.

August 2007-Anna

December 2008-Sarah

July 2010-Ellie (sister of Emma)

July 2010-Emma (sister of Ellie)

April 2011-Sam

April 2011-Ava

December 2011-Luke

December 2011-Abby

February 2013-Madeline

February 2013-Melissa

February 2013-Mia

December 2013-Joey (brother of Ben)

December 2013-Ben (brother of Joey)

I noticed that some of these kids were older than toddlers when adopted, some of them as old as 10, and all of them have American names. Does anyone else feel disgusted that they were stripped of their original names in an effort to make them good white Christian kids?

2013 was a busy year. A whopping 5 kids, and only a couple of them siblings. What hack of an agency gave them 3 unrelated kids in a single trip? "This time God blessed us with 3 lovely daughters from China." That sounds like surprise that they got to bring home so many kids. About 10, 6, and 5, when adopted, and no individual time to help with adjustment, and just 11 months later, a couple more kids.

And they're adding more, and even call it "Gathering."

These poor kids. They're just a collection.

[Howl]

Re: theresnoplacelikehome-family.blogspot.com/

It just occurred to me about a minute after reading DGayle's post about having to fight for food that perhaps being placed with this family is a lot like continuing to be in an orphanage, but a really really nice orphanage.

[chaotic life]

Changing a child's name is a huge, huge pet peeve of mine. The only child whose name we changed was Micah, and that was specifically because when parental rights were terminated bio-mom stood up in court and declared she didn't care where they tried to take him, she would hunt him down and bring him back. GAL requested we change his legal name for his protection. We still intended to call him by the same name he had always had except when he learned his legal name was changed, he flat-out refused to use any name by the one we gave him. His birthname was his middle name, and we would have called him by that name if he would have allowed us to do so.

My other kids retained their birthnames. I've heard the argument that Asian names don't sound right to American tongues but I'm sorry you aren't fooling anyone. The one of my boys who has an Anglican name comes by it totally naturally--his birth mother gave him that name, not me.

[chaotic life]

China actually encourages the placement of more than one, non-related, special needs child. It's my understanding that if you adopt a special needs child from China now, you can choose to add a second special needs child and use the same paperwork.

I wasn't aware that you could do that with more than one special needs child, but it has caused a lot of simultaneous adoptions that I really think are a terrible idea. The only children that should be adopted together are biological siblings *or* children so tightly bonded with an orphanage mate that they aren't aware they are not siblings. Frankly, I'm leary on those as it requires the orphanage to report that bond and I think most orphanages would report one whether it exists or not to increase the revenues that adoption brings into their coffers.

All of these patterns that these families are doing increase the risk of disruptions, increase the risk of attachment disorders, increase the risk that a child gets hurt, increases the chaos and the inability to monitor how children are integrating into the family.

Part of what makes sibling adoptions harder is that the children don't get to be the new kid all by themselves. They don't get to be the center of mom and dad's attention the way single children do who enter a family because they come with siblings. It encourages the sibling bond, which is more important than even most people even imagine, but it discourages full integration into a new family. To add child after child without pausing is, as I said, totally irresponsible.

Its not a race to the finish and she who holds the most hands at the end wins. Its about being the best transition for each individual child. Yes, it costs more money to do them one adoption at a time. However, it's better for the children when you do. It's better for the parents and those already in the house as well.

[hollyj]

How are people allowed to adopt that amount of children? If you did that with animals you are a hoarder.

[artdecades]

nihaoyall.com/ found this linked as a favorite blog on theresnoplacelikehome. Looks like another family (more fundie lite) who has 7 children from China and are adopting an 8th

[GawkingToo]

I've heard the argument that Asian names don't sound right to American tongues but I'm sorry you aren't fooling anyone.

I don't think it's quite that (although I'm sure some have said it), so much as the Asian names are often pronounced so completely differently in English that you're renaming your kid anyways, whether you intend to or not.

My fiancé's Chinese name sounds completely different than the English romanization would suggest. And note that I used the word "romanization" not "transliteration." (In his case the difference is greater because the romanization was using a non-pinyin system and was based on a Cantonese pronunciation, but there would still be a difference anyways.) And no Chinese speaker would be able to look at the English romanization and deduce what the Chinese name was, not even if it was romanized using a pinyin system.

My fiancé took on a new name when he moved to the U.S. as a kid. Ostensibly it was a romanized form of his original name, but it turned out to be a completely different name. He learned to answer to it and it became his own and that's the identity by which he thinks of himself today. But even if it's traceable to his Chinese name--and I'll give you that much--it's completely different.

I get that that probably won't change your mind in particular, but before writing it off completely as a pet peeve, please consider that in the case of a tonal language with a non-phonetic alphabet, there might be reasonable arguments in mind. Is there never any topic about which reasonable people could disagree? Even you had a particular reasoning that led you to change the name of one of your kids, despite painting with a broad brush how much you disapproved of the practice.

[chaotic life]

I have a son with an Asian name. I'm completely aware that how I pronounce his name is different than what it was in his birth country, just as I'm aware that there is a sound within his name that an English based tongue cannot hear nor pronounce. He still retains his name.

No, you aren't going to convince me it's okay to strip a child of their name. Your finance made his own choice to adapt his name. I see no mention that he was stripped of his birth family, his birth country, his birth culture and his name was the only thing he had left that was not only his but his identity and his tie to everything that he lost. In the case of the child whose legal name we changed, we still retained his original name, we simply reversed the order for safety, for a child who was beaten black and blue in his first home. My other children are free to change their names at any point if THEY want it. One of my children has a long name, one which we had to call the lawyer the week before we finalized his adoption and have the name changed because HE asked to take part of his father's name as his own. If any of my children wanted a full name change, I would pay the fee which is typically quite low in most states. What they don't face is having their names stripped from their identity at the point they entered the US. There are no adoption experts that recommend such a practice, and no adult adoptee I have ever spoken with who supports the practice. I do have a teen who can clearly articulate why it was so important that he kept his name, as it was the ONLY thing no one had ever been able to take away from in all the years that he floated and fought to survive before he showed up at my doorstep.

Pronouncing my children's names oddly is my own shortcoming, that I can explain to my children. Using that to justify changing their names is not okay. Letting them choose their own names is empowering a child. Playing name games while waiting to even pick a child up is not letting a child have empowerment over their name and identity, its making the focus about you and not the child.

[GawkingToo]

Your finance made his own choice to adapt his name. I see no mention that he was stripped of his birth family, his birth country, his birth culture and his name was the only thing he had left that was not only his but his identity and his tie to everything that he lost.

First sentence is incorrect; second sentence is correct. He did not choose to adapt his name. It was changed for him by the romanization process. That said, he did retain all those things listed in the second paragraph.

Look, you talk an awful lot in absolutes, but if he had come to the U.S. without his family, he would have had no way of understanding that the romanized version was intended to be the same name as his Chinese name. Imagine his name had been pronounced like the English word "house" and was suddenly changed and pronounced like the English word "cat." They were that different.

(If it's confusing, keep in mind that romanizations systems are systems--like codes--for rendering Chinese words into roman alphabets. Sometimes, the particular Chinese language /particular word/ particular romanization system used (e.g., pinyin)/ particular European language used (e.g., English) all line up so that the romanization really does work as a transliteration. Sometimes, that's not the case at all.

In any case, even if all I said above about romanization is true, you would probably still be adamant about keeping the romanized forms of your kids names for use as their adoptive names. Because to you, it's about the history and identity that comes with those romanized names, even if they are a little (or a lot) removed from their original names.

To other people, the difference might be so great that they might choose to give an English sounding name for the first name and keep the romanized form as the middle name. Is it really such an outrageous practice that you have to broadly denounce it?

My guess is, you will stand by your position. But I hope this clarifies it to at least some readers.

TLDR: Romanization ≠ transliteration. It's not always "house" vs. "huss"; sometimes it's "house" vs. "cat".

EDIT: And when I referenced "history and identity" above, I meant the story, the original Chinese name that the romanized version represented. I didn't mean that it should be assumed that the child's "identity" is the romanized version. In fact, my whole point is the opposite: Sometimes the romanized version is so far from the name the kid identifies with, that you're taking their [identified] name away from them, whether you intend to or not. If you stick with the romanized Chinese in spite of this, then at least their first name relates to the story of their original name. I get it. But let's not pretend that it retains their real names; at least in many cases, that's not how it works.

[chaotic life]

Best practices in older child adoption, including international adoptions, is to allow the child to retain as much of their identity as absolutely possible, especially their name. You are comparing apples to oranges. Your fiance came with his family as an immigrant. That means his home retained his original language, his original food choices, his parents, his heritage.

Adoptees lose ALL of that upon international adoption. That's why best practice is to seek an adoptive home within their birth country when possible. An international adoptee goes through a frightening process where everything is done *to* them, where they travel across international borders with strangers, sometimes strangers who are called mom and dad but sometimes with escorts who will hand them off to those who call themselves mom and dad on the other side of the journey. Everything they know and understand is taken from them in that process. They lose their language, their sense of smell, their food palate, and absolutely everything imaginable, and none of that travels with them. The only thing such a child holds onto is their name. When you take that away from them, you strip them to nothing.

It's not merely my opinion that names should be retained. It's also not merely Asian adoptees who face having their names removed. I stand by my opinion for many reasons but they are not merely because I somehow don't know the difference between Romanizing an Asian alphabet or name. There is not only research but strong voices of adoptees and adoption experts on the practice of retaining a child's name and how vitally important that is to a child who has lost everything it is possible to lose for the sake of an international adoption. I would rather have Romanized my child's name and be able to tell them I did the very best I could to pronounce their name, than to tell them that since I couldn't say their first name it wasn't important to keep and thus I gave them a name of I chose for them so that I could claim them as my own. And yes, I am actually passionate on this subject. I've studied is extensively long before I adopted any of my own children, and I've listened to the voice of adoptees both domestic and international over the years who have affirmed what I read before I started adopting and the importance of a child's name.

[GawkingToo]

I would rather have Romanized my child's name and be able to tell them I did the very best I could to pronounce their name, than to tell them that since I couldn't say their first name it wasn't important to keep

*You* don't romanize your child's name. Long before you entered the picture, there was already a system for romanizing that word.** And depending on which system was used and which language/accent was spoken originally, it may have little to do with the name.

You say you get it, but then you write about "be able to tell them I did the very best I could to pronounce their name." That's like the opposite of what I was trying to say. My whole point was that, by the time you get the paperwork, you might so valiantly be trying to call the child by the wrong name.

Would you at least be open to having a child's name transliterated into roman letters in a way that approximated how s/he was used to hearing it, or are you of the opinion that only the official, received romanization be used?

**EDIT: Speaking about Chinese here. And someone correct me if I'm wrong on that point. And if your child is from Korea or another Asian country, then I honestly have no clue how it's done.

[Diana]

All the kids have a disability maybe that's why they let her adopt so many. Only two of the older girls are biological sisters. All the kids have diferent disabilities, most of them blood diseases: hepatitis, hiv..for that reason they even had to move to a new house on the country because the neighbours were discriminating the kids. The have obviously economic resources, and also seem to do a good job with them, and don't hide that there are hard things, but is like they can't stop, i think they felt some kind of guilt about that orphans in the pictures of that agency (that is one reason i don't agree with that kind of adoption, where the parents see a picture, see the face of an old child with few chances of getting a family, with a disease that can have a treatment in the usa but maybe in china can die.. and decide to adopt that child, it makes it an emotional decision).

[chaotic life]

Actually, I took my child's referral to someone who spoke the language their name was in and had them couch me on how to pronounce it because I was indeed saying it all wrong. I also took their advice on changing the spelling so that Americans would more closely pronounce it correctly. So obviously my concern was in retaining as close to what my child identified with as their name as possible.

When one of my children requested a name change just before we finalized the US adoption, we used exactly the name that child requested.

When a child refused to use any name but one I had added to his birth name, we called him by the name he identified with.

When we had to list a name for our last adoption, we sat down with the teen in question and he decided on his name. He happened to ask me what I would have done if his name were mine to choose, and even as I answered him I still made it clear his name was his identity and his to choose.

If one of my children wanted to change their name, I would support them fully. What I would not do is decide their name for them before they ever even met me and drop the name they knew and identified with just so I could claim them as part of my family. The OP is a blog post in which the family is choosing a new name for the son they haven't even actually met yet. There is no voice given to the child in that. There is no recognition that their name is part of who they are. There is no opportunity for the child to have any input into yet another thing being done *to* them. They are not an active participant in the monumental decision to change their name but a passive recipient. Yes. I have a problem with that practice.

[lilwriter85]

Jean from There's No Place Like Home used to work as a nurse. I don't know what her husband does. They do have financial resources for a family that large. Jean mentioned having two cleaning ladies who go into the home a couple of times a week. She said that the cleaning ladies worked for her mother before. I'm guessing Jean might come from money. Her bio kids are all well educated and have been very accepting of their adoptive siblings.

As I previously mentioned, the only major issue I see is that their adoptions are too frequent. Another thing that has bothered me is that Jean and her husband really haven't made an effort to learn Chinese. As another poster mentioned, they are Catholic. So far I don't get hardcore Catholic vibes from like SuperCatholic Abigail. I seem to remember Jean posting something about being against abortion. But that is a bit common with some Catholics.