Open Adoption Support » foster care

How do we explain our family configuration?

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:44:46 +0000

We finalized the adoption of our daughter in September after 2 years of fostering her. We also have a foster son that has been with us for a little over a year. The children are 3 months apart in age and look nothing a like so we get a lot of questions. We’ve always answered them honestly, but as the children get older (they’re 2 1/2 now) I worry about how to phrase it so that they both know they are loved and part of our family. Any suggestions?

Our daughter’s birth mom just died. Where do we go from here?

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 02:43:12 +0000

We are in the process of a foster to adopt placement. The Birth Mom made the decision to allow us to adopt our daughter. She had successfully completed her case plan and by all rights had the choice to reunify, but chose to let her daughter stay with us – the only family she has known since she was 4-weeks-old. We were granted PC on May 18th and the process for adoption has started in earnest.

In the midst of our excitement, tragedy has struck. Birth Mom was killed a week ago in an accident. We were anticipating a very open adoption and had almost daily contact w/ her up until the day she died.

At 2 our daughter is too young to understand the enormity of EVERYTHING, the noble and selfless decision her mother made in allowing her to stay w/ us and the waste and tragedy of her death.

We feel very blessed that we will be able to give our daughter a very positive picture of her birth mom, but I don’t want to over do it because birthmom did make mistakes – she had 4 other children she lost custody of before she had our daughter. How do we create a healthy balance especially when she’s older? Any suggestions? Thank you

How do I make our visits work in Foster to Adopt?

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:05:12 +0000

We are in the final stages of a Foster to Adopt placement adoption of our 6.5 year old son. It has been a long and drawn out court process for this little guy and he has had multiple moves. His first mother, unfortunately for her, was born affected with FAS. This has been the cause of her losing her two children and being unable to accept and understand both the process and the end result. During our last court proceeding regarding access for the Birth mother, M, the judge has decided that 2 yearly visits are adequate for her to have access to our boy. I wish that it hadn’t been court ordered, not because we wouldn’t have tried for an open relationship with her anyways, but because the dates are pretty well set in stone so that we cannot be flexible in accommodating the visits. Anyways, I digress… In all honestly, I am very aprehensive and fearful for this first visit. I don’t want to mess it up, I don’t want it to become confrontational and I surly don’t want it to be at all negative for our son. How do we set boundaries for M when I am not sure she understands what that means? Our son has transistioned on his own over the last year from calling her Mommy M to just calling her M and I don’t know how that will confuse him if she continues to just carry on and call herself his mom. I don’t know how to deal with what will I imagine to be a huge barrage of gift giving on this visit as well. During all of her last visits with him he would come home with a trunk load of presents. Should I be getting our social worker to request no gifts, limited gifts? I don’t know. I guess what I am mostly asking is anecdotes or ideas on how to make this first visit go smoothly and as painlessly as possible when she thinks that we ‘stole’ him. Which of course is not the case, we were just the last family placed with him before he was finally released from foster care placement to an adoptive placement opportunity. Is there anything I should be doing or giving her that might help? I thought maybe making her a photo album of the last 6 months (that’s how long its been since she has seen him). Sorry that this is such a long post. Maybe I am really just over thinking things….

Call for Proposals: International Conference on Adoption & Culture

Dawn — Thu, 12 May 2011 20:11:05 +0000

The 4th International Conference on Adoption and Culture

Mapping Adoption: Histories, Geographies, Literatures, Politics
March 22 – 25, 2012
The Claremont Colleges, Claremont, California

Call for Proposals

For our 2012 conference, we are expanding our concerns to include not only adoption in its many historical and cultural variations but also parallel institutions such as foster care, orphanages, and technologically-assisted reproduction, as well as various forms of forced relinquishment or family separation.. We seek proposals that explore the cultural meanings and/or political locations of any of these practices, and we encourage analyses of relationships among them. We will include academic work from a wide range of scholarly disciplines and areas—literature, film and popular culture and performance studies, cultural studies, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, law, women’s and gender studies, etc.— as well as artistic presentations of film, creative writing, graphic art, music, or productions in other media. We also encourage interdisciplinary panels, presentations, and productions.

Proposals may address adoption or related practices or their representation in any way, but we especially encourage work addressing race, class, gender, nationality, and/or sexuality and sexual orientation, and/or investigations of topics such as state and institutional power, (in)fertility, markets and market practices, and incarceration.

Is our adoption too open?

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 19:47:20 +0000

My husband and I adopted a sibling group of 4 children from foster care about 3 years ago. We have contact with b-mom as well as some extended family members by phone and a visit about once a year. (Visits were more frequent in the beginning, but we had to move to the other side of the country 2 years ago due to dh’s job.)

Extended family member contact is on a regular basis, but b-mom is sporadic. She will call on a weekly for a few months, and then we don’t hear anything for a few months. It is almost impossible to reach her since she moves every 2-3 months and constantly changing phone numbers. She does have a facebook page, does not check it regularly, but this has been the easiest way to give her pics of the kids.

During times of contact, my 2 oldest children, ages 7 & 8 start acting out. So far we have been able to handle this, but the acting out is escalating, and with the most recent burst of contact my 8yo engaged in a behavior that could have been life-threatening or caused grave bodily injury. We were able to stop the behavior as soon as we realized what was going on, but are worried about what will happen as she gets older. (She is in counseling.)

But b-mom recently found out that I grounded my 8yo and reacted very badly. She told my 8yo that I was being unreasonable by punishing her. I took the phone from 8yo, and said to b-mom (very calmly) that this is the type of parenting issue that she can not be involved in if this relationship is going to work. And then she hung up on me. (We’ve had similar issues in the past where she disagrees with a decision we’ve made and tells the children that she thinks we are wrong or unfair. I have tried to set up clear boundaries with her, but she has continued to cross those boundaries whenever she doesn’t agree with us.)

She then posted on facebook (where I am her “friend” and can see her status updates) that she made a mistake allowing her kids to be adopted, that their a-mom is a lying, fake, emotionless bitch that is screwing up her kids, and that she will always be their mother and a stupid piece of paper can’t change that. I then hid all of her status updates from my newsfeed and changed my privacy settings so that she can’t see my status updates anymore. (I could have deleted and blocked her, but it’s hard to send pics to her any other way.) I hear about other open adoptions and I’m envious because ours is so hard on me, the kids, and probably b-mom too. I can get along with just about anyone, but am having a really hard time with her.

I’m thinking about not allowing phone calls anymore, or at least for the foreseeable future, and asking that she only contact the kids by writing letters. But I know that if I do this, she will probably just disappear because except when she’s been in jail, she’s never sent the kids letters even when she’s promised them she would.

I have put up with more from b-mom than I ever have from anyone else in my life. I do not allow people that treat me like this to stay in my life. I want to do what is best for the children, but I’m not sure what that is anymore.

Fighting for sibling connections in foster care?

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:38:22 +0000

I have had B living with me for over a year now. She has three siblings still in Massachusetts ages 2-6 living in foster care, we (my sisters & I) have been trying to get them since last April. Now in three weeks they are going to be moved to a 4th home, but this one is pre-adoptive & they do not want to have any contact from the original family. This means that B will not be allowed to contact them until they are 18. I am not family to any of these children but I am raising B. I am not in a position to hire a lawyer & don’t know that it would help. I am at a loss as to what to do from here & would like any advice or if anyone has any connections. It breaks my heart to think that B is going to lose them.

Conference addresses siblings in foster care

Dawn — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:10:26 +0000

The North American Council on Adoptable Children will be in Columbus, OH this August and there will be at least one session of special interest to those of us interested in open adoption:

Thursday, August 13 — JJ Hitch, Maurice Webb, Wendy Wiegmann, and Lisa Wilson: “Brothers and Sisters in Foster Care: An Unbreakable Bond”

During this panel presentation, JJ Hitch, Maurice Webb, and Lisa Wilson will discuss their experiences with siblings in foster care. Some stayed together while others were painfully separated. After the panel, Utah Court of Appeals Judge William Thorne will highlight the need for policy and practice reforms to keep brothers and sisters together and connected.

The conference runs from Wednesday, August 12 until Saturday, August 15th and the current schedule can be found here. Early registration has been extended to this Friday, July 17th.