116 of 365...Informational Meeting

Geek Boy and I attended an informational meeting this evening about fostering, fostering to adopt, and adoption through the state. We found out some very valuable information and have made some decisions on what journey we would like to make.

At this point our calling is to do an adoption through the foster care. This means that we will most likely adopt an older child. We would like the maximum age to be 8 years old. Due to state and federal laws, a child has to be in foster care 12 months before they are eligible for adoption. Now there are loopholes in the system like if the parent relinqueshes (sp?) all rights to the child before the 12 months are up. The state's goal is to keep the child with the family so foster care and adoption are the absolute last resort.

My heart just hurts thinking I could foster a small child for 12 months and then have to give him/her back to the family. Perhaps when we are older and don't want to add a permanent member to our family, we can consider fostering but for now it's just not something I can emotionally handle. Geek Boy summed it up perfectly when he said, "I want a child to add to our family who I can call my own and he can have my last name."

We also realize that adopting an older child means there's a lot of baggage. This child has been in the system for a long time and has probably been bounced around from one family member to the next so there is a lot of emotional and probably physical abuse that has taken place. So the more training we can get, the better we can become as adoptive parents. It also made me realize Geek Boy and I will have to train the Drama Queens (I was calling them Little Divas, but they are really Drama Queens) on how to handle a child with "baggage". They have no idea what it's like to go without the basic necessaties. So it is a learning process that the whole family must take on.

My heart wants to rush this process through but my head is telling me to take it slow and to embrace all of the resources out there that our agency can give us. Based on the numbers we saw this evening, there is not a shortage of kids needing to be adopted. There is a boy out there waiting to join our family so we just have to be patient.

But of course if that baby just happened to fall into my lap, we certainly wouldn't turn him away...LOL

I have friend who works for CPS and my hat goes off to her and the whole CPS system. We got just a small glimpse of what they see every day and I can't even imagine what that is like. It takes a pretty special and strong person to see all of that abuse and neglect day in and day out.