The first time around it was a little harder to decide. I started out hoping to adopt from Guatemala,
but that was about the time they stopped doing international adoptions. I then considered Russia and Kazakhstan (a
country located between Russia and China).
Russia was just too expensive and required too many trips so I settled
on Kazakhstan. The available children
were young and the adoption process required daily visits with the child in the
orphanage for two weeks before you could proceed with the adoption. I liked this requirement because it would
give the child time to become comfortable with the parent(s) before they were
taken away from everything familiar to them.
Unfortunately, just before I finished all of the necessary paperwork,
Kazakhstan also stopped doing adoptions while they made some changes to their
process. When they reopened several
months later, they no longer allowed singles to adopt.
About that same time, China was again starting to allow
singles to adopt. I had never considered
China before because it just wasn’t an option for me. So I did some research and found the process
to be pretty straightforward. The
“catch” was that singles were only allowed to adopt “special focus”
children. These were the children with
more severe needs or children who were older and/or had been waiting longer for
families. I started to talk to agencies
and was able to view some of the children that were available. This gave me a good idea of what some of the
more common needs were for these children.
I decided there were some needs I could handle so I started the process
and it turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever done.
I also get asked why I didn’t adopt from the US. There are several reasons, but in the end, it
just wasn’t the right choice for me.
Yes, there are kids in the US that need homes too, but my child(ren)
happened to be in China.
"An
invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet regardless of
time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle but will never
break.” - Chinese Proverb
No comments:
Post a Comment