Search Results for: blog a soul searching question what special needs could we handle

My Very Own Secret Thoughts

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I’ve recently reviewed Jana Wolff’s memoir, Secret Thoughts of An Adoptive Mother. I’ve also shared my own impressions and experiences regarding the issues she raises in two of my blogs: here and here . But I promised myself that rather than just react to Wolff’s experiences and feelings and comment on how mine were the same or different, I would take the time to recall and bring into the sunlight other thoughts I did have during the process of deciding when, how, from where and who to adopt—and through the process of actually doing it. Assumptions and feelings just below … Continue reading →

Is It Okay to be Choosy? Part One

Many adoptive parents are partially motivated by a desire to help children. When considering adopting children with special needs, many of us struggle to balance this impulse with the very human dreams we have about raising children and with the reality of what we believe we have the energy, emotional fortitude and resources to handle. Sometimes our motives are questioned by others too. A friend of mine was challenged as to why she did not want to adopt a child with mental handicaps. If your desire is truly to help children, her interrogator said, you’ll adopt the child who needs … Continue reading →

Letting Go of Control

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Meg’s biological sister’s prognosis now looked much more favorable, but there were still unknowns. I now admit that, while giving lip service to the idea “nobody’s perfect”, I still had in my head the longing for an ideal family. I felt drawn to special needs, but only to those I knew about, such as dyslexia, or could control or fix, like a cleft palate. I used to hear mothers of kids with special needs talk about the gifts the child had brought to the family. I heard them say they wouldn’t want any other child but the one they had, … Continue reading →

The One Thing I Said I’d Never Do, Continued

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I stood there rereading the paragraph, feeling as though I’d been punched in the stomach. “Mother stated she drank large amounts of beer until the seventh month and used tobacco throughout.” (For the blog telling the first part of this story, click here.) I called our social worker, who had seen the news only a day or two before I did. I told her I was really concerned and she said she was also. I wondered aloud if the birthmother had been telling the truth when she said she hadn’t drunk during her pregnancy with Meg as well. The social … Continue reading →

The One Thing I Said I’d Never Do

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When we were considering what special needs we might be able to handle in an adopted child, my husband and I had some very interesting discussions. There was one thing about which there was no discussion at all. We would not adopt a child who had been prenatally exposed to alcohol. I had grown up next to a group home for the mentally retarded. The people with Down’s syndrome and many other problems were lovely neighbors. A girl my age with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome gave me the creeps. (To be fair, this was probably because of past abuse and not … Continue reading →

Turning Down a Referral

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I’d somehow always thought I’d adopt a child with a physical special need. My husband and I were open to correctable medical conditions. On the photolistings most agencies maintain, we saw the profile of a little girl with congenital cataracts and a cleft palate. I’d seen her pictures before, then she disappeared from the case studies for a while and I assumed she’d been adopted. When she reappeared after our homestudy was complete, it seemed like a sign. The cleft palate was treatable. She would likely see with coke-bottle thick glasses until she was a teenager when she would have … Continue reading →

A Soul-Searching Question: What Special Needs Could We Handle?

One of the most difficult parts of our adoption process was one of the first. We were presented with two single-spaced pages of special needs and asked to check “yes”, “no” or “maybe” as to whether we would consider the referral of a child with that condition. This caused much soul-searching. We wanted to adopt a child who needed a home as much as we wanted to give him or her one. We didn’t see the sense in joining a waiting list for a healthy newborn. Additionally I had always felt strongly since childhood that I would adopt a child … Continue reading →