A little update on the domestic adoption front

I got letter a couple of weeks ago from someone in the child welfare system saying I had not applied to adopt in the state but they knew of no reason why I could not adopt. Unfortunately for them I kept a copy of the original application to adopt that I filed with them.


The “cc” list gets longer every time they send me a letter these days. That is not helping them tell the truth yet but I remain hopeful. I have been working with a representative from the governor’s advocacy office but I do not hold out much hope for her efforts. She is nice but had no clue where the actual file has kept and keeps getting stone-walled by her own people. Apparently the state workers made a lot of the paper in my file go missing including the home study. Good thing that I know of people outside the state who have a copy of the home study done for my state simply because I inquired about their kids in other states. Otherwise that home study would be a shredded document unrecoverable. Apparently y original petition to adopt was gone too.

About the same time, a family member of my last placement sent me a picture of the toddler who has cried so much her face was raw in several places. That is not the child I knew first as a baby and then later as a toddler. She had been a happy, easy to parent child. Apparently she is not today.

It is all so sad really. I sometimes do not know what to think. At some fundamental level I cannot believe that all the state workers I dealt with are such awful people. When I cannot sleep at night, I take out the stack of business cards I got from the various people during the two plus years I dealt with them and I marvel at the level of duplicity by so many different people.

I learned somewhere long ago that people tend to judge others from their own perspective. I certainly do. Since I tend to tell the truth and be straightforward about things I generally expect others are too. Especially in the serious business of adoption. Lives are at stake. I expected that when I was being honest and forthright with the state people they were doing the same with me. That was not true.

I look back on so many interactions and see them differently now. Some things I realize now make me kind of ill. In other instances my sense of what was wrong was on target and I feel better because I knew I was right about “x” “y” or “z.”

When I first visited my son Alex in his remote orphanage, on that second day in 2008, I was silently confronted by a line of boys against a wall desperately pleading with me with only their eyes. I will never forget those children. Those boys burned a hole in my heart that will
never heal – I still weep for them in my dreams. If I could stand it, I could still sit down
and draw their faces from memory. It is as if I saw them just yesterday, the image of their pain and despair is still so fresh in my mind.

The mark left on my soul by those boys is now accompanied by the pain I am experiencing for the children previously placed in my home but now lost in the system. My foster-to-adopt placements left my home in the most troubling of ways and I now worry for them.

I trusted that the people charged with their well-being would not cause further damage to these babies and toddlers I so carefully healed and nurtured. I was wrong to trust.

I find myself in the oddest sort of a grieving situation. I know the kids are not in the best of places and there is really nothing I can do t help them other than file the administrative
complaints. So far the people giving me help from attorneys are confirming that the violations of law and civil rights are very clear.

I think about the first foster-to-adopt toddler who was placed with me when he was 18-months old. He and his three-year-old brother were my beginning in the state system.

He came to me with his legs covered in staph infection (the case worker told me they were spider bites) because the kids had been left in a van for a few days and had been discovered in filth. I remember that kid being so needing of my love that he insisted on wrapping himself around my leg in the spring when I was transplanting my rose bushes from the side yard into the back planter. I had to simply dig holes with him clinging.

I remember him coming back from overnight visits with his mom, dehydrated, starving and bruised. I remember the case worker explaining it away. I remember their fear the day they left my home for good. I remember the oldest boy telling me that his mom would sell their clothing for a $1 a piece so could I please hold something back for them which I did.

Last year about this time, I called my state certifier and she was laughing because the boys were back in her office starving, dirty and without any clothing. She asked me if I could hear them in the background. I asked if I could be a resource for them. There was no response. I then
left subsequent messages with her and the case worker for the boys asking to please be able to be there for those boys. No response.

I find myself often unable to sleep now. The law is clear about the ultimate legal rights in my situation but it becomes exceedingly fuzzy in its protection of children in the system. I talk about the ones I know but I wonder about all the others. How much more damage is being done.
A lot I think.

So I wait for the governor’s office and the federal fact finders to do their thing. And I feel
like I have let my kids down. I have of course because I cannot figure out how to help them. I am lost in the ickiness of the state that destroys their childhood.

Someone talking to me once was disparaging about how Russia handles their children who need a home. I never thought much about that opinion because I knew my son lives because of all the people that cared for him in Russia before I was even a possible mama for him. Even the ministry department offered me all his baby pictures in the file so that he could have everything possible. I knew the Russians cared so much for the children abandoned that I adopted again simply because I knew the best was done in the circumstances.

Having spent some time in both systems now, I would say the children in Russia are treated better than kids in the state foster care system.

A boy and his dog

Life is a balance.

Finally, finally, finally – Alex was ready for a dog and we saw the perfect dog. We named him Boomer of course because, as Alex noted, he goes “boom boom” through the house. This puppy is five months old and has some of the biggest paws I have ever seen. Dude is going to be one huge dog. :)

Alex is over the moon – he got a dog who can play fetch. He could not be happier. There is nothing more moving than a boy and his dog. They keep trying to sneak into bedtime together. As is necessary with most Labs, Boomer has to be put away at night for his own good. The other day he chewed through an extension cord and yelped when he got a shock. That has not stopped him from finding a loose molding, tearing it loose and chewing beyond all recognition. I wonder if there is insurance to cover the puppyhood of a lab/border collie mix. Probably not. I fear for the piano. I fear for all my books. I fear for the front door. No way is that dog getting in my newly bought car - I have heard stories about entire interiors being eaten by such puppies.

I have told the kids to put their toys on higher ground or Boomer will eat them. Daria refused to listen and has lost two fairy barbies to this cutie.

Alex is much wiser and guards his intendo plug with an almost religious zeal. He also made sure all his stuff is out of puppy teeth range. Alex loves this dog and never complains about clean-up, feeding or walking. The unconditional love between these two brings tears to my eyes. This is what I wanted for my son when I brought him home – to know love, joy and a sense of belonging. We are there and it is a good thing.

I was posting on the blog of a single adoptive mom I find so inspiring and I realized I keep forgetting to talk about all we have learned as a family. In her blog she was talking about, among other things, having a child that still rages. Those are not her exact words but it is close enough. We are a happy family but Alex still goes there. As I typed and worked through the issue while posting on her blog, I wondered if that is where the pathways of the brains always lead the kids back to when they are under duress to what I call the "before time."

I wondered if all that behavior simply a testing when they are scared. Those were not the words I used as I typed my thoughts out to the world but that is what whispers in the back of my mind. Alex and I spent most of Sunday at the emergency room in the children’s hospital because of still unresolved pain issues in his mouth due to cleft anomalies – I think. The doctors have a variety of other possible positions. I am lucky though – the specialists are watching and we will see.

Just recently Alex told me that he did “all those things” because he was so scared. His unsolicited words not mine. Maybe that is why he still does that really difficult stuff sometimes still. Maybe I just don’t see all the things that scare him – I only pay attention to drama that affects me. I feel the buttons being punched and the quality of life ebbing away – I forget what he has told me in the quiet moments – he does that stuff when he is really, really, really scared.

It takes a special courage to love and parent a traumatized child.

I remain convinced it is worth it. As I have said, my son has hardened my position about adoption. I cannot image him left alone in the before time.