Related posts

• Home For The Holidays: Foster/Adoption Special (1)
• Adoption PSA (0)
• ‘Jockey’ Adoption Services & Programs (3)
• Treat Dad To Frosty And Help Children In Foster Care (1)
• Thoughts on Transracial Adoption (1)

One of the members at our adoption forums is considering adopting a sibling group of older children. She asked for some advice and I wanted to share her questions, and my answers here for our readers that may have the same questions.

What makes that difference between good and horrible?

With my kids (half bio. siblings), the difference was what age they were removed from their abuser, how many foster homes they were in and how they were treated by their foster families. My kids would make a perfect case study because you can actually document how each of those factors play a role in their lives. J was removed from their abusive home at 9 months, in her four years in foster care was only in two homes (one for 1 year, the other for 3 years) and both of those families loved and nurtured her as if she was their own. J is now an emotionally healthy, loving 11 year old who is smart, compassionate and thoughtful. S was removed from her abuser on her 4th birthday, in her four years in foster care was only in two homes (one for 1 year, the other for 3 years) but the first family that she lived with treated her like an outsider. C was removed from his abuser at 6 and spent his first year in foster care in four foster homes because he was so angry nobody wanted him. He was never given the opportunity to bond with anyone and that permanently damaged him.

What advice could you offer to me as I assess these children & situations?

Read 15 Questions For An Older Child Adoption on the Forever Parents blog. Linny wrote it a while ago and it’s a very helpful tool in assessing a situation.
Read some of the posts in the Older Child category on the Forever Parents blog. Look in the left sidebar for the category listings.
Read Adopting The Hurt Child by Gergory Keck. You can follow the link and buy it through our adoption shop. In my opinion, this is the most honest book about older child adoption out there and is still on my book shelf. The companion book is Parenting The Hurt Child and is a book I refer to often, even after six years.

What can I know now that will help me better understand the children true abilities/challenges/struggles?

Every child is different. C is still struggling with a lot of the same issues that we dealt with the first year. Nothing I do seems to make a difference, and that is so incredibly frustrating. I have come to the realization that I’ve done all I can and the rest is up to him. S healed from so many of her issues and then BAM…out of no where some of them started to crop back up. I know that kids who have been through abuse and trauma revisit a lot of issues later on, but it’s so hard when I’ve already seen the light at the end of her tunnel with her. Are you prepared for the possibility that they may never 100% heal and that you will become the target of their hurt and anger?

What about you? I’d love to hear from some of our readers. How would you answer her questions, based on your own experiences?

Related posts

• Adoption Community Protest Movie “Orphan” (11)
• Wendy’s Raised Over $1 Million for Adoption (2)
• Watch The Adoption Angles Webcast Tonight (0)
• Urge Senate To Reauthorize Adoption Incentive Program (0)
• Treat Dad To Frosty And Help Children In Foster Care (1)

All families change over time. Sometimes a baby is born, or a grown-up gets married. And sometimes a child gets placed in foster care. Children need to know that when this happens, it’s not their fault. When a child gets adopted they need to understand that they can remember and value their birth family and love their new family, too. Straightforward words and full-color illustrations offer hope and support for children facing or experiencing change. This title includes resources (more…)

Related posts

• Adoption Stories (0)
• Adoption Options (0)
• ‘Jockey’ Adoption Services & Programs (3)
• National Adoption Day 2008 (0)
• Keeping In Touch With Former Foster Parents (0)

Related posts

• Home For The Holidays: Foster/Adoption Special (1)
• ‘Jockey’ Adoption Services & Programs (3)
• The Reluctant Spouse (0)
• Support Adoption And Send A Free E-card For Fathers Day (2)
• National Adoption Day 2008 (0)

This Father’s Day Weekend (June 20-21), Wendy’s is helping consumers treat Dad and help foster children at the same time. Wendy’s third annual Father’s Day Frosty Weekend provides an easy and tasty way to support the cause of foster care adoption and help the more than 129,000 children in the U.S. who are waiting for the love of forever families.

During Father’s Day Weekend, Wendy’s will donate 50¢ from every Frosty product sold to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (DTFA), a national, non-profit public charity dedicated to dramatically increasing the number of adoptions of foster children in North America. Also customers can stop by Wendy’s and donate to the cause by purchasing a Frosty pin-up for $1 each.

“The Wendy’s system is very proud to be involved with this special event that supports the cause that our founder, Dave Thomas, was most passionate about – finding a permanent and loving home for every child in the foster care system,” said Wendy’s President David Karam, who serves on the board of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.

“This is our third year for Father’s Day Frosty Weekend and we’ve set our fundraising goal at $1.7 million! We hope families will find this an enjoyable way to celebrate Father’s Day while making a difference in the lives of foster children.”

After raising more than $1 million in 2007 and over $1.5 million in 2008 during Father’s Day Frosty Weekend, Wendy’s remains committed to supporting the cause of foster care adoption in the U.S.

The money raised during the weekend will support the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption and its signature program: Wendy’s Wonderful Kids (WWK). This program is filling a critical need by funding full-time adoption professionals at local agencies in all 50 states to match parents with waiting foster care children.

The success of WWK is due to the ongoing partnership between the DTFA, the Wendy’s system of 6,600 company and franchise operated restaurants and local adoption partners. The Foundation grants funds to qualified adoption organizations, and holds the agencies accountable for achieving agreed-upon results. The Wendy’s system raises more than $7 million annually to fund the local WWK programs.

“We’re very proud of how far the program has come in such a short time. But even with all that’s been achieved, there are still thousands of children in foster care still waiting to be adopted.” said Rita Soronen, executive director of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.

“We believe Wendy’s Wonderful Kids is the solution, and that the program will become even stronger with the support of Wendy’s customers during Father’s Day Weekend.”

Join Wendy’s in supporting foster care adoption – stop by Wendy’s during Father’s Day Frosty Weekend, June 20-21, for a special treat

The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption
The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is a non-profit 501(c)3 public charity dedicated to dramatically increasing the adoptions of the more than 150,000 children in North America’s foster care systems ready to be adopted. Created by Wendy’s founder Dave Thomas who was adopted as a child, the Foundation leads programs such as Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, which puts adoption recruiters in all 50 states and Canada to find permanent, loving families for children in the foster care system, and Adoption-Friendly Workplace, which encourages employers to offer adoption benefits to their employees. The Foundation also works with adoption advocates and officials to streamline the adoption process and make adoption more affordable for families. As the only Foundation dedicated exclusively to foster care adoption, it is driven by its founder’s simple value: Do what’s best for the child. To learn more about the Foundation’s work, please visit www.DaveThomasFoundationforAdoption.org.

Thank you to the many folks across the nation for buying a frosty and helping children who wait for adoption. Last year’s efforts raised more than $1.5 million!

Related posts

• Support Adoption And Send A Free E-card For Fathers Day (2)
• National Adoption Day 2008 (0)
• ‘Jockey’ Adoption Services & Programs (3)
• Treat Dad To Frosty And Help Children In Foster Care (1)
• Missouri Adoption Heart Gallery (1)

It’s no secret around here that I am a big supporter of the work The Dave Thomas Foundation For Adoption does. Now you can help and it won’t cost you a thing.

Create and send a free fathers days e-card, or choose a celebrity created one through their site Frosty Card and Wendy’s will donate 25 cents to
The Dave Thomas Foundation For Adoption.

Father’s day is this Sunday so stop by their site and send a card today!

Reposted at the Forever Parents Adoption Forums.

Related posts

• Enjoy A Frosty This Weekend And Support Adoption (1)
• National Adoption Day 2008 (0)
• ‘Jockey’ Adoption Services & Programs (3)
• Treat Dad To Frosty And Help Children In Foster Care (1)
• Missouri Adoption Heart Gallery (1)

Tomorrow, June 5th, is my daughter’s 14th birthday, but we won’t be celebrating.

Let me explain….

When we adopted her, she was eight years old (We also adopted her two siblings at the same time). For the first couple of years, the week leading up to her birthday was always a time of turmoil for us. Moodiness, nastiness and sadness would fill her up and hurt anyone in her path, usually us, her family. Some years it was all I could go to even talk to her during that week….one year I threw her cake into the garbage out of total frustration and another year I cancelled her party a few days before.

Two years ago, a few weeks before her 12th birthday, I was going through some of the adoption paperwork, looking for something unrelated to her birthday, and I came across the court papers from when they were originally removed from their biological home. The date jumped out at me; June 3rd.

They were removed two days before her 4th birthday. As a matter of fact, her first full day in foster care, was on her 4th birthday.

It made sense now.

I shared my findings with my daughter and we had a long discussion about it. Although she doesn’t remember that week, we talked about how she must have felt….being almost 4 years old and excited about her birthday, only to be removed from her home, separated from her siblings (they were separated for their first year in foster care) and living with strangers. We gave a voice to the little four year old inside her and talked about powerless and angry she must have felt.

We also talked about how to proceed from there. Finding out “why” is one thing, but we had to find a way to stop the cycle.

I came up with an idea of celebrating her birthday on a different day. My thoughts were that even if she was moody the week of her birthday, it wouldn’t interfere with any plans that we had. She liked that idea and we started thinking about dates. She said she wanted to share the day with someone that she loved (yes, she’s a sweetheart) and she chose me. I was honored, but my birthday was in January and had passed five months before. Then she chose my husband, but his birthday had just passed two weeks earlier.

Then she lit up and said “How about Mom Mom?!”. She excitedly ran next door to ask my mother if she would mind sharing her birthday, which is eleven days after hers. Of course, my mother loved the idea and we set about our plans for a double birthday.

On June 16th, we had a cake that said “Happy Birthday To The Two Geminis” and both of our birthday girls opened their gifts. They talked about how they would celebrate “their birthday” next year.

Here’s a picture from that day.

My mother gave my daughter the greatest gift one could give.

A new start. A new day, full of love and happiness…not bad memories and sadness.

The following year was bittersweet for us. We celebrated my daughters birthday on her new day but we were also were aware that my mother was not here with us (although my husband told me she was here – we just couldn’t see her)

Now it’s time for another birthday.

As time goes on, the sad memories are subsiding and happy memories are taking their place. The week leading up to her birthday this year wasn’t that bad because the pressure has been taken off of her. So tomorrow, I will give her a kiss and say happy birthday to my beautiful 14 year old daughter, but that’s where it will end. There will not be a cake, or gifts or decorations. Those things will wait until the 16th….a day that is full of love and special memories. We’ll also remember my mom, who passed on her own birthday to her granddaughter and gave her the best birthday gift ever.

Related posts

• ‘Jockey’ Adoption Services & Programs (3)
• The Traumatized Adoptee (2)
• Support Adoption And Send A Free E-card For Fathers Day (2)
• National Adoption Month-2008 (0)
• National Adoption Day 2008 (0)

Update: Debbie, one of our adoption forum members shared a sample letter. I posted it at the bottom.

Update #2: A list of email addresses has been added at the bottom of this post.

One of our adoption forum members brought this to our attention (thanks Debbie!) and I am passing it along to anyone who may be interested. I’m also adding my personal thoughts, which I shared on our adoption forum, at the end of this post.

There is a horror slasher film being released July 24 (Orphan) about a family who adopts an older girl who “is not what she appears to be. Warnings about her go unheeded until it is too late…for everyone”. The film is being promoted now (http://orphan-movie.warnerbros.com) and the adoption message being sent is extremely negative. There is actually a line in the trailer that says “it must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own”.
Without having seen the movie or read the script, it is hard to know if the entire movie is sending a ghastly adoption message, but the trailer certainly leads us to believe it is. This feeds the notion that older adoptees are very troubled and you should beware…. that’s not an image any of us want the general public to have of our kids. It plays into people’s deepest fears.

There is a growing group pursuing a boycott of the film, sending out emails and posting on online bulletin boards. I urge you to forward this email to others personally involved in adoption, help disseminate the boycott message and write to the producers and distributors expressing your displeasure with the message being sent.
The backers of this movie have deep pockets. It is being released by Dark Castle Entertainment with Warner Bros. set to distribute. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way, which developed the material, is also producing.

Here are my personal thoughts;

I just watched the trailer. Looks like the type of movie I would love…..dark and creepy. That line about it being hard to love an adopted child as much as your own is actually said by the adopted girl herself, who is obviously psychotic.

I have two thoughts about this movie……

If people take this movie as a serious portrayal of what older child adoption could be, it might actually be a good thing. There are seriously damaged older kids being adopted into families that have no idea what their in for and once the papers are signed, these families are on their own. I adopted three older kids and luckily, my two younger ones are fine, but my son is one fucked up kid. I hide my butcher knives and scissors in my bedroom because I don’t trust him. I am seeing a lot of sociopathic behaviors in him as he gets older. Maybe after this movie comes out, the concerns of those of us who have adopted troubled kids will be taken more seriously. I actually had a counselor at the facility my son is at, tell me to examine my parenting as a cause of my son’s behavior. After all this time of going through the system’s red tape trying to get help for him and telling anyone who will listen that something is wrong with him (much like the line from the movie; ‘There’s something wrong with Ester’), this man who never met me wants me to carry some of the blame. Needless to say, I hung up on him, (which I’m sure they’ll write up as me being a ‘hostile parent who has anger issues’) but there’s many more who think like him. If there’s one thing that comes out of this movie, I hope it’s that we (those of us who adopt older troubled kids) adopt these kids with all good intentions and then we get very little support and back up from teachers/therapists/cops/judges, etc.

That girl reminded me a lot of my son Very charming and polite in the beginning, able to keep that facade up when needed. Then something happens that she doesn’t like and rage kicks in. That rage in the toilet stall scene is what we live with when he doesn’t get his way.

Is all older child adoption like this?…of course not. I have two kids that prove it doesn’t. My daughters were adopted at the ages of 5 and 8 and are nothing like this movie.

My other thought is….it’s a horror movie made for entertainment and should be treated as such. If I got all bent out of shape every time someone portrayed “me” in a movie, I would be boycotting Goodfellas and The Soprano’s for how they show Italian-Americans.

I want to also add that the people boycotting have every right to do that and I back them 100%. I’m all for people speaking out when there is something they don’t agree with. Unlike channels like CNN and MSNBC who belittled people like myself who attended the recent tax day tea parties, I believe in the right to protest….even if I do not agree with their message.

My last thought is that this movie is nothing compared to the type of movie I would make about older child adoption. I plan on writing a book about my experience and if this movie is causing controversy and it’s not even real, they can’t handle my truth.

Update: Here is a sample letter to send to Warner Bros.

May {XX}, 2009

Barry M. Meyer
Warner Bros. Movies
4000 Warner Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91522

Dear Mr. Meyer and Producers of the movie Orphan:

“It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own.”

Writing as a parent of an adopted child, I strongly urge you to remove this line from your film, “Orphan” and, especially, from all of your trailers. This line implies that an adopted child is not the parents’ child and, for anyone in an adoptive family, is very hurtful. Additionally, anyone seeing the film- or the trailer containing this line of dialogue- could promulgate such a hurtful expression and spread it like a virus, creating emotional distress for adoptive families everywhere.

In this day and age, when movie trailers are “sanitized” so that they can be shown before any movie, regardless of the MPAA rating, your trailer is likely to be seen and heard by young children and their families. For adoptive families, and especially for young children who joined their families through adoption, this line has the potential to cause serious trauma.

So, I will also ask you to look inside your heart and then look, again, at your film and see if there are other scenes that can create a negative stigma for adoptive families and please make changes to eliminate or, at the very least, reduce the damage. If you have any question about what might be considered hurtful, please contact Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute as I know they would be happy to help you.

I understand your film has already been completed and asking you to make wholesale changes at this point, just a couple of months before it is released, is probably unrealistic. That is why I am pleading with you to simply show some sensitivity and limit the damage your film will do to anyone who has an adopted child in their family and at least make these changes to the trailer.

I believe you would prefer not having adoptive families around the world virally warning each other of the damaging depictions contained in your movie and encouraging all their friends and family members not to patronize “Orphan.” No filmmaker would like the headline “Movie Called Harmful to Adoptive Families” associated with their film- least of all Mr. DiCaprio who, until now, has maintained a very positive public image.

Please reply and let me know what you have decided to do with your “Orphan.”

Along with adoptive families around the world, I look forward to hearing of your decision. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
{Name}

email addresses:
Alan Horn, President and Chief Operating Officer
alan.horn@warnerbros.com
Barry Meyer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
barry.meyer@warnerbros.com
Susan Fleishman, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Corporate Communications and Public Affairs
susan.fleishman@warnerbros.com
Jeff Robonov, President, Warner Bros. Pictures Group
jeff.robonov@warnerbros.com
Dan Fellman, President, Domestic Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures
dan.fellman@warnerbros.com

Related posts

• Watch The Adoption Angles Webcast Tonight (0)
• International Adoption Resources (0)
• How To Join Our Adoption Forums (0)
• Families Change: A Book for Children Experiencing Termination of Parental Rights (0)
• Things To Think About Before Adopting A Sibling Group (2)

I’ve previously blogged about the great relationship we have with our children’s former foster parents. Since we finalized our adoption (2003), we’ve made it a point to see them once or twice a year. My kid’s had other foster parents, besides Pat & Bill, but they lived with this particular couple for the last three (of the four) years.

In the beginning I felt it was important for my children to keep contact because they had so many people who came in and out of their lives in a short time and I wanted them to have a sense of familiarity. It ended up that we really enjoy their company, my kids love them and they love my kids…so it’s a win win situation for all of us.

Here’s a picture from 2007 of Shawna with Pat. This picture was taken at our annual Christmas party. We get together every year with Pat & Bill and also my kid’s former foster brother with his parents.

Also from 2007….that’s my son sitting against the wall.

This is Jacqueline and Bill from our 2008 Christmas party.

This was also from 2008 and is my daughters with their former foster brother (who was adopted the year after mine, by a couple in our area) with HIS biological brother, who his parents just recently adopted. Shawna is holding one of Pat & Bill’s current foster children. Isn’t he just adorable?

What about those of you that adopted through foster care? Do you keep in touch with any of your children’s former foster family?

Related posts

• Families Change: A Book for Children Experiencing Termination of Parental Rights (0)
• The Traumatized Adoptee (2)
• It’s That Time Of The Year Again (5)
• Gay Couple Allowed To Adopt In Florida (1)
• ‘Jockey’ Adoption Services & Programs (3)

The Traumatized Adoptee

From their site:

Parents who adopt children from agencies like social services often find themselves wondering what they have gotten themselves into and don’t know where to turn for help. It can feel like navigating a field of barbed wire.

This site aims to provide a virtual support group for this community–foster parents, adoptive parents, older kids who have been fostered or adopted, and professionals who help us take care of our kids.

Clear calm waters are our hope. Raising healthy, well adjusted children is our goal. We know it is worth it.

Related posts

• Keeping In Touch With Former Foster Parents (0)
• Families Change: A Book for Children Experiencing Termination of Parental Rights (0)
• ‘Jockey’ Adoption Services & Programs (3)
• Support Adoption And Send A Free E-card For Fathers Day (2)
• National Adoption Month-2008 (0)