Our Adoption Story: The Decision To Adopt

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Our Adoption Story: The Decision to Adopt

 

      For those of you who do not know me, my name is Mindi and I am a contributor for iSaveA2Z.com. My family and I recently made the decision to adopt a child and grow our family. This was a family decision starting with my husband and I and then also involving our two children. We have two kids of our own, but have been interested in adopting for some time now. This is our story of what our experience is like. I will be writing about the happy times, trying times, when we are excited or anxious about things and how this whole process turns out. I invite you to follow our story if you have any interest in adoption or if you are just curious and or interested in how our story pans out. Each time I do an update of how things are going, I will also include information of how you can start this process, if it’s something you have considered, or different ways you can help children in need.

I would say this whole idea started when my son, Zane, started the pre-k program at the elementary school. He was already in a mother’s day out program, the same one my daughter is in now, and they noticed that he may benefit from some extra help at school. He started the pre-k program at the local school so he could get used to the routine there and so he could also begin speech therapy. I’ve never had a problem understanding my son, but others sometimes found it hard to understand what he was saying. So long story short….he started in speech therapy and still continues in the program today. What was surprising to me was that you could only attend the pre-k program at the school if English was not your first language, if you were in a program such as speech therapy or if your family qualified for government assistance. Zane is now in 1st grade and doing extremely well. He excels in all subjects and is very loved by his teachers.

Since I am a stay at home mom, I am very involved at both of my children’s schools. I volunteer any time I can and attend any special functions they may have going on. I have been around all sorts of children since Zane started in pre-k, then went to kindergarten and is now in 1st grade. I have always had a way with kids. I am the oldest of six and children just seem to naturally feel comfortable around me. I started to notice some children coming to school with back packs that were falling apart, clothes that were too small or dirty, children carrying their lunch in their hands because they didn’t have a lunch box and some kids not dressed for the cold weather. Seeing children like this breaks my heart and I feel the need to do anything I can to help. We have donated supplies to the school and to individual teachers, taken toys that we don’t play with any more to a local day care and donated clothing and supplies to local charities. But it just never feels like enough.

For at least the last year and a half to two years, both of my children have been asking for more siblings. I have always been open to having more children in our family but didn’t necessarily want to go through the infant stage again. I love babies just as much as anyone…..but we changed diapers for five years straight and would like to have a break. Plus, our children are 4 and 6 now and are at such a fun age. We don’t have to pack a bunch of stuff to leave the house, everyone is potty trained and we can do a little more activity as a family. So we visited the option of adoption again. This seems like the perfect solution for our family. We could expand our family, really give a child in need a loving and caring family and our children would have another sibling!

So this is where we are…..just starting this process and very excited, anxious and nervous all at one time. My son insists that he needs an older brother. My daughter would also like to have a sister and we aren’t sure where to begin. We started with the internet and have found some helpful sites that I will list below. We have decided to adopt an older child (above the age of 6) because it is harder for older kids to get adopted and are even open to adopting a sibling group. It absolutely breaks my heart to know that sibling groups are broken up sometimes because they can’t be adopted together. We did find out that our first step is to build a family profile, which we did on the Texas Adoption Resource Exchange (TARE) website (since we are in Texas). And then to attend a local information meeting that is held for potential foster and adoptive parents. We will be attending our meeting on January 14 and can’t wait!!

If adoption is something you are interested in or maybe your just curious to see what our journey is like, please check back for updates. I will be writing new parts to our story as they happen.

Helpful Websites:

AdoptUSKids

TARE – Texas Adoption Resource Exchange

Childwelfare.gov – Adoption websites listed by state

Things you may not know about adoption:

1. Did you know that Texas has an official Adoption Day? Well, we do and it is the Saturday before Thanksgiving, each year.
2. Did you know that the average age of a child in foster care is 9 years old?
3. Did you know that families who adopt a child from foster care may qualify for a federal tax credit even though they may not have had adoption expenses?
4. Did you know that the average time that a child waits for a forever home is almost 2 years? And the older a child gets, the longer they may wait.
5. Did you know that there are Adoption Assistance Resources on a state and national level?