XVI. After the Adoption Order
Celebrating the Adoption
After the previous depressing section, you may be wondering what there is to celebrate. There is your family to celebrate, even in the hard times. We love our children and hope they love us. Our children have given us the gift of parenthood.
Many adoptive families celebrate Adoption Day for each child. It can be the date of placement or when the adoption order was made, or some other special day connected with the adoption. You can make it a big deal or a small private celebration. But it is nice to mark the occasion in some way. Being adopted by you may well be the best thing that ever happened to your child; and adopting her is definitely the best thing that ever happened to you. Your child’s friends will turn green when they find she has two “birthdays” as well as two sets of parents! For younger children it can be a good time to tell the story of the adoption again, each year in a little more detail, and as you go over the story again, your child will learn again how loved and wanted she is.
“Please, Sir, I Want Some More”. Adopting More Children
Oooh yes. More children. Some of us don’t learn from experience and keep going back for more. And why not? As you become more experienced you become a better parent. It’s a shame to waste all that experience. Why not adopt again and give another child (or two or six) the benefits of you as parents? If you have adopted successfully once, many agencies will be very glad to make your acquaintance.
I think that with few exceptions adopted children should have brothers and sisters. Being an only child is hard. Everyone concentrates all their attention, scrutiny, hopes and fears on you. If there are more children that spotlighting is diluted and you grow up more naturally. You have, with some luck, in-house playmates. And you have someone who shares the fact of being adopted; someone you can talk to, maybe in ways you feel you can’t talk to your parents. And especially in a trans-racial or international adoption, I feel the child needs the implicit support or validation of having someone else in the family who shares her ethnicity and origins, something which their parents can’t really share.
You will have to be assessed all over again, every time. This is because things change. You get older as well as wiser, and every time a new person is added to your family the dynamics change. Adoption can be addictive: every time you see an advertisement for a child who needs a new family you think, “I want him”, but you can’t have them all. There may not be a limit on how many children one set of parents can love, but there is a limit on how much time and attention one family has to divide between all their children. Some parents can cope with one or two, others can manage 10 or 12, and assessment can help you avoid taking on too much. After taking a child with relatively few problems you may be ready for a bigger challenge. Some people adopt and go on to foster children, too.
It’s definitely easier on you each time. You’ve been through it all before and know more or less what to expect (although every agency is different, and procedures and laws change). You have the added confidence of knowing you can do it, and knowing you have demonstrated you can do it: you don’t have to prove yourself. And you don’t have the same desperation you did the first time around. You’ve got one child, and more are a bonus. So you can be more relaxed about it. And if you don’t like the way the agency is handling things you may feel more confident about standing up for yourself and the child than you might have been the first time around. If you miss out on a child, although it is still a blow, you may be able to feel happy for the child that she has found a new family, even though it won’t be with you, instead of feeling sorry for yourself. And you will feel easier about turning down a placement that doesn’t seem right for you than you would if you felt you were throwing away your only chance at parenthood.
Money does not have to be a factor. You may be able to afford three children without an allowance, but need help to support more. It may not be a problem. Your value as experienced adopters should be such that agencies will bend over backwards to make it possible for you to adopt the right child.
Isn’t It Greedy to Want More?
Definitely not! By adopting more children you are not depriving others of a child they “should” have had. Remember that adoption is for the child, not the adults. The agency will place the child with the best available family, and whether you have children already or not is a factor they take into account. If the agency thinks a child needs to go to a family with no other children, that’s where she will go. If they think she needs to go where there are already other children, the childless couple wouldn’t get her anyway. As experienced adopters you have extra skills needed by children who would not get the benefit of such experience if they went to childless families.
So step right up, fill in another Form F, and become serial adopters!
Adoption is like biological parenthood, only a lot more so. It isn’t for wimps and it isn’t for perfectionists. It’s for real people with a lot of love and commitment and a big kid-shaped hole in their hearts. If you think you’ve got what it takes, the rewards are tremendous.
Next: Appendix I: Overseas Adoption
© Roger Ridley Fenton
