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One of my adult daughters is looking into adoption for herself and her husband.
This daughter is adopted. She came to us at 15 years old.
She is at the very beginning stages of looking into adoption, with no real knowledge at all about the processes. I know that she would love to adopt an infant or very young child/toddler.
“What do I do first?”, she asked.
HELP!!
What does she do first?
What did YOU do first?
What would YOU tell her?
I can tell her what *I* did first and certainly will. However, I never even tried to adopt a child. I only intended to foster. Life and God changed the rest for us. Twenty-three and more times. So, the only way I know to look into it is to tell her how her Dad and I got into foster care. That seems awfully limiting to share with someone who is surely looking for more than that.
I admit to being unsettled about this. I have twenty three adopted kids. I’ve had 25+ foster children. Surely, I might seem a likely choice if someone were curious about adoption and had questions about the processes. I suppose I might even have thought that of myself. And here, someone came and asked and I’m not sure of any good answers. Not only did “someone” come, but my very own daughter came to ask.
Just now, I’m realizing that she must have known I wouldn’t know what to tell her. She has been WITH me for most of this adopting, foster care life (she only missed the first year of fostering, but those children were still here when she came, so she didn’t miss much). She knows most of what we went through and how things worked for us. What she needs is the information that I also don’t know.
What do you suggest I tell her about what she should do first?
She has made a huge first step by knowing what age of child she wants to adopt. The next is to sit down with DH and talk about what issues they are and are not willing to tackle. They need to do this before the issue is about a specific child. Few things are harder than one half of the couple wanting the child no matter what and the other feeling the child is not one they are prepared to parent.
Then they need to research, research, research. This will do two things for them. First off it will give them information of what types of adoption they will qualify for. Different countries have different rules. The second thing this will do is help lead them to their adoption path. If you talk to most adoptive parents they will tell stories of just “knowing” when they right agency, country etc crossed their path. It sounds corny but for a lot of us it just hit us ” this is where our baby is”
If they are leaning towards domestic adoption they want to start exploring the laws in their state. This will help them know what to expect during their journey. There is also a chance something will fall into their laps once they make it known they want to adopt. It is amazing how many calls we got once we told people we were planning to adopt. None worked out, but it was nice to know how to start navigating these situations.
I bought a book on adoption; actually, I bought several, and I also read tons of information on the internet.
One of the first steps is to pick an agency but, before you do, it is best to do your research and think about the things that are important to you, such as, domestic vs international adoption (age of parents can be a factor here). The “how to adopt” type of adoption books are great for walking you through the steps and helping you think through the various decisions that must be made.