Print
E-mail
Comment
Rate
Families reflect on blessings of children during National Adoption Month
By Tricia Scruggs: reporter@terrelltribune.com
Shiny magazine covers and paparazzi snapshots of celebrities with children born in other parts of the world sometimes make adoption look glamorous.
Yet for many couples the journey can be anything but and begins and ends much closer to home. Despite ups-and-downs, which are replaced ultimately by laughter and joy, local families often flourish thanks to adoption.
“It was the best experience of my life, seriously,” said Kim Clark, a teacher at Furlough Middle School. “It’s the most awesome, incredible growing experience you can imagine.”
After eight months and with the help of an Arlington-based agency she and her then husband found their little girl, Shelby, who is now 14 and a world champion when it comes to showing horses.
“We liken it to winning a gold medal,” Clark said of Shelby’s sportsmanship successes. “It’s very prestigious.”
She said from the very beginning, before her daughter could even crawl, she was told that she was adopted and was read to from various books, including those written especially for children, about adoption.
“We always told Shelby that ‘some moms and dads have to take what they get, but we picked you,’” Clark recalled.
As a result, she said, her daughter grew up with a healthy sense of self, has established her own identity and never feels ashamed of being adopted.
Though the Clark’s process was smooth, Kim said one of the biggest challenges when adopting can be waiting for a child and for the legal side to run its course.
With private adoptions, birth parents could experience a change of heart. Until a woman relinquishes parental rights, which in Texas cannot be done before a minimum of two days after delivering her baby, she may change her mind about adoption.
It’s for this reason that couples who choose to adopt internationally generally say they do so because there is a “guarantee” that they’ll be parents at the end of the process, since typically parental rights have already been relinquished.
Andrea Damone-Karant, co-founder of Lifetree Adoption Agency, said she has yet to work with a birth mother who has changed her mind. Most, she said, are very comfortable with their choice by the time they deliver and are thankful that they’ve found a family that will best provide for their child.
Still, she said, adoption hasn’t been viewed in such a positive light lately: “It gets such a bad rap and it really shouldn’t. It’s really a cool and beautiful thing.”
Damone-Karant said, in part, the media is to blame for the less-than-favorable view of adoption. She said covering stories about abusive foster caregivers and depicting unscrupulous adoptive parents, such as the reluctant father-to-be in the movie “Juno,” leads birthmothers and would-be parents to fear adoption.
“We are picky,” Damone-Karant said of Lifetree. “We want to make sure couples are financially and emotionally healthy with a happy marriage and that they’re stable because that’s what our birth moms depend on us to do. I’m not going to place a baby into a home that I wouldn’t put my own baby in.”
While countries like Ethiopia have seen a spike in the number of children adopted by families in the U.S., Damone-Karant and others in her field know all too well that there are hundreds of thousands of children born stateside and in need of a strong family environment.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, since 2003, there have been 130,000 children waiting to be adopted through foster care each year and more parents are relinquishing their rights.
In 2004, the parents of 74,000 children gave up their rights. That number rose to 80,000 in 2005 and was 84,000 last year.
Susan Brown and her husband chose foster-to-adopt and because the children in their care could have been removed from the home, the couple’s choice came with greater emotional risk.
“It was tough, but you just can’t guard yourself from it,” Brown said. “You either give your heart or you don’t. They need to know what love is and what a proper family is because they may or may not know. So, we treated them just like they were born to us. If we didn’t give our all, it just would not have been right.”
She said they were even more concerned with how their young son would deal with the separation should his new siblings have to leave since they had already lived together for many months.
The couple was introduced to foster care as a means of adopting a child, a far less costly approach than private or international adoption, which ranges between $20,000 and $40,000.
The first step was to determine whether or not the children were eligible to be adopted as some are in foster care until they are able to return home or other family members become their legal guardian.
When the Browns learned that both their youngsters could be adopted, they were thrilled.
“And we were still very excited once the adoption took place, but also relieved that [the wait for the court’s decision] was over and we could be a family,” Susan said.
They were also glad to slow the stream of visitors, including Child Protective Service workers, adoption agency staff and early childhood intervention specialists.
One of the Browns’ children was adopted in May and the other in September. After it was ‘official’ the family celebrated in a big way.
They headed to the Disney Store and each child picked out a special stuffed animal.
“We just went out and enjoyed the day as a family,” Susan said. “We made it a big family day.”
Even if you are not adopted and don’t have children who are, Clark says it’s important to become educated on the subject.
“People need to know how to talk to people who are adopted,” she said.
There are many ways to learn, but one of the most effective ways Clark says is by reading books or articles online about adoption.
Some would say Barb Torp-Pedersen and her husband have experienced the joy of parenting in every way.
After the birth of their first daughter, Mary Elise, they adopted, 4-month-old Grace from Korea, followed by Kendall, who was 2-years-old and born in Thailand, and then 4-month-old Breanne who was born in the United States
Torp-Pedersen said initially they opted for international adoption because they learned there was a real need in Korea. When they decided to adopt again that urgency was seen in Thailand. Finally, their daughter Breanne completed the family after the couple was blessed with the opportunity to welcome home another little girl.
“The uncertainty and the waiting was the hardest part,” Torp-Pedersen said. “Breanne’s was a much more emotional waiting period.”
Now, their children are 19, 15, 13 and 10 and the family is one of unity and diversity, witnessed not only by visitors to their house but also by members of their church where they’ve found great support and love for their multi-racial family.
“I can honestly tell you there is no difference in the joy you experience when you’re presented with that baby, no matter how they come to you,” Torp-Pedersen said.
Yet for many couples the journey can be anything but and begins and ends much closer to home. Despite ups-and-downs, which are replaced ultimately by laughter and joy, local families often flourish thanks to adoption.
“It was the best experience of my life, seriously,” said Kim Clark, a teacher at Furlough Middle School. “It’s the most awesome, incredible growing experience you can imagine.”
After eight months and with the help of an Arlington-based agency she and her then husband found their little girl, Shelby, who is now 14 and a world champion when it comes to showing horses.
“We liken it to winning a gold medal,” Clark said of Shelby’s sportsmanship successes. “It’s very prestigious.”
She said from the very beginning, before her daughter could even crawl, she was told that she was adopted and was read to from various books, including those written especially for children, about adoption.
“We always told Shelby that ‘some moms and dads have to take what they get, but we picked you,’” Clark recalled.
As a result, she said, her daughter grew up with a healthy sense of self, has established her own identity and never feels ashamed of being adopted.
Though the Clark’s process was smooth, Kim said one of the biggest challenges when adopting can be waiting for a child and for the legal side to run its course.
With private adoptions, birth parents could experience a change of heart. Until a woman relinquishes parental rights, which in Texas cannot be done before a minimum of two days after delivering her baby, she may change her mind about adoption.
It’s for this reason that couples who choose to adopt internationally generally say they do so because there is a “guarantee” that they’ll be parents at the end of the process, since typically parental rights have already been relinquished.
Andrea Damone-Karant, co-founder of Lifetree Adoption Agency, said she has yet to work with a birth mother who has changed her mind. Most, she said, are very comfortable with their choice by the time they deliver and are thankful that they’ve found a family that will best provide for their child.
Still, she said, adoption hasn’t been viewed in such a positive light lately: “It gets such a bad rap and it really shouldn’t. It’s really a cool and beautiful thing.”
Damone-Karant said, in part, the media is to blame for the less-than-favorable view of adoption. She said covering stories about abusive foster caregivers and depicting unscrupulous adoptive parents, such as the reluctant father-to-be in the movie “Juno,” leads birthmothers and would-be parents to fear adoption.
“We are picky,” Damone-Karant said of Lifetree. “We want to make sure couples are financially and emotionally healthy with a happy marriage and that they’re stable because that’s what our birth moms depend on us to do. I’m not going to place a baby into a home that I wouldn’t put my own baby in.”
While countries like Ethiopia have seen a spike in the number of children adopted by families in the U.S., Damone-Karant and others in her field know all too well that there are hundreds of thousands of children born stateside and in need of a strong family environment.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, since 2003, there have been 130,000 children waiting to be adopted through foster care each year and more parents are relinquishing their rights.
In 2004, the parents of 74,000 children gave up their rights. That number rose to 80,000 in 2005 and was 84,000 last year.
Susan Brown and her husband chose foster-to-adopt and because the children in their care could have been removed from the home, the couple’s choice came with greater emotional risk.
“It was tough, but you just can’t guard yourself from it,” Brown said. “You either give your heart or you don’t. They need to know what love is and what a proper family is because they may or may not know. So, we treated them just like they were born to us. If we didn’t give our all, it just would not have been right.”
She said they were even more concerned with how their young son would deal with the separation should his new siblings have to leave since they had already lived together for many months.
The couple was introduced to foster care as a means of adopting a child, a far less costly approach than private or international adoption, which ranges between $20,000 and $40,000.
The first step was to determine whether or not the children were eligible to be adopted as some are in foster care until they are able to return home or other family members become their legal guardian.
When the Browns learned that both their youngsters could be adopted, they were thrilled.
“And we were still very excited once the adoption took place, but also relieved that [the wait for the court’s decision] was over and we could be a family,” Susan said.
They were also glad to slow the stream of visitors, including Child Protective Service workers, adoption agency staff and early childhood intervention specialists.
One of the Browns’ children was adopted in May and the other in September. After it was ‘official’ the family celebrated in a big way.
They headed to the Disney Store and each child picked out a special stuffed animal.
“We just went out and enjoyed the day as a family,” Susan said. “We made it a big family day.”
Even if you are not adopted and don’t have children who are, Clark says it’s important to become educated on the subject.
“People need to know how to talk to people who are adopted,” she said.
There are many ways to learn, but one of the most effective ways Clark says is by reading books or articles online about adoption.
Some would say Barb Torp-Pedersen and her husband have experienced the joy of parenting in every way.
After the birth of their first daughter, Mary Elise, they adopted, 4-month-old Grace from Korea, followed by Kendall, who was 2-years-old and born in Thailand, and then 4-month-old Breanne who was born in the United States
Torp-Pedersen said initially they opted for international adoption because they learned there was a real need in Korea. When they decided to adopt again that urgency was seen in Thailand. Finally, their daughter Breanne completed the family after the couple was blessed with the opportunity to welcome home another little girl.
“The uncertainty and the waiting was the hardest part,” Torp-Pedersen said. “Breanne’s was a much more emotional waiting period.”
Now, their children are 19, 15, 13 and 10 and the family is one of unity and diversity, witnessed not only by visitors to their house but also by members of their church where they’ve found great support and love for their multi-racial family.
“I can honestly tell you there is no difference in the joy you experience when you’re presented with that baby, no matter how they come to you,” Torp-Pedersen said.
Article Rating
Reader Comments
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of terrelltribune.com.
