Many teenagers were adopted as infants and might be the only adopted child in the family. Therefore, they wouldn’t have a clue what their parents went through so many years ago to adopt. Danea explains it quite well. “From the time your parents decided to adopt you, their lives have been scrutinized, analyzed, and picked apart by total strangers. Their destiny, and yours, was at the mercy of these strangers who searched for flaws in their personalities, abilities, intellect, and potential parenting skills.” That is pretty much what our adoptive family has gone through... more

You can click on the links below for parts one and two of my keynote address that I delivered at an adoption celebration luncheon last week. My apologies that I am posting it in bits and pieces. Perhaps at some point i will post it in its entirety. We'll see

Part I

Part II

Part III:

So, I am not going to give you a rah-rah speech about your decision... more

This is part two of a keynote address I gave at an adoption celebration hosted by the county in which I live, Prince George's County Maryland. Please click here for part one. Continuing on:

Just like giving birth to a child, with adoption every experience is different. There is no one size fits all adoption experience. Some of us adopt after already having had a child placed in our homes as a foster child. Some of us learn about our children for... more

On Friday I was the Keynote Speaker for a ceremony celebrating adoptive families that were formed in Prince George's County Maryland this past year. It was a lovely affair held in a beautiful banquet hall with a delicious buffet lunch with adult and children's menus. Families were greeted by chamber music provided by the talented members of a local public school for the arts, Thomas J. Pullen. County and State officials were presents to bring greetings and congratulations from their respective high offices. A clown and other entertainment were set up in an adjacent room to occupy the... more

Today, my best friend, Jackie, mentioned another good friend of hers, who had been able to locate her first mother and father just a little while back. I suggested that she tell her friend about the blogs at www.adoptionblogs.com. Jackie knows that I write for the Adoptive Parenting and the Older Parent Blog and, sometimes, she reads just to see what I'm posting about. Today she shared with me that when she first started following my posts she used to scan through all the other blogs nearly every morning. Then she told me something that... more

All right I'm going to give this list thing a try. Every time someone posts a list thingy I am always intrigued and I read every last part of it. It doesn't matter if it's 10 things or a 100 things, I read all of it and find the entire post interesting. I wasn't sure what I wanted to list about (as opposed to post about), so I am just taking a stab in the dark at some things I like about being an adoptive parent. This started out to be 25 things I like about adoption. Then as I was writing it became 10 things that I like about adoption. Finally, it has turned... more

Warning. Today's post is unabashedly biased. There will be absolutely no objectivity and no effort will be made to present a balanced picture of adoption. The only qualifier I am willing to concede to is that I am talking about loving adoptions, not the ones that go horribly awry resulting in children being subjected to abuse, neglect, and all other like manner of child abuse. Loving adoptions, are a good thing.

When a child is rescued from a family of abuse and neglect and given a second shot at a life filled with love and hope; that, is a good thing.

When... more

Well, I said I would post some thoughts on how we have managed, thus far, to have a successful adoption. So, I thought I would start with the basics. I am convinced that our complete and total honesty with our social worker about what kind of a child we wanted set the stage for our successful adoption.

When our social worker asked us what kind of child we were looking for we were very specific. I told her I wanted a physically healthy, attractive, bright little girl between the ages of 2 and 4. I was not averse to a child who had been substance exposed in utero, because I knew the recent research was unequivocal that with the exception of alcohol, many drug exposed children, when... more

In my previous post I mentioned the comment left by a reader who said

"When you've heard about one adoption story, you've heard about one adoption."

I'm curious. I wonder how different people define a "successful" adoption story.

Does a successful adoption mean different things to different people? Or, is there some template that we have in our heads by which we measure success as an adoptive family? Is the standard for success as an adoptive family any different from the standard by which we measure success as a family with biological children? It seems that I'm always posing questions to which I have very few answers. But, I always give it... more