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Archive for December, 2007

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbyer

Posted in Adoption, Family, International Adoption, Older Parent Adoption, Seychelles, tagged on December 6, 2007| 9 Comments »

If you’ve followed my story where any of the various bits of it have been presented for perusal, you know that the first toe I dipped into the adoption pool was shaped like foster care and has a name that begins with T.

Through dire circumstance, T came to our house and stayed for a couple of years. Although the bonds that built between me, Mark and T did not start out all buttered with love and oozing schmaltz, we did get around to that pretty darned quickly.

Mark held out the longest, with “This is going to end in tears!” as the mantra he chanted until he threw in the crying towel and fell as deeply in love as I had. Of course, he was right … he actually is fairly frequently, but don’t tell him I said that.

Just after T’s fourth birthday — a fab occasion celebrated during a trip to the States that found me under one roof with daughter, granddaughter, brother, SIL, niece and nephew AND T, my youngest — things changed. A week after we returned to Seychelles, T’s mother returned from her galavanting and wanted him back.

With what every foster parent will understand at the root of my being, we stepped back and she stepped forward. They weren’t far, however, so we had some contact and kept up to date on how he was doing. Living nothing like the life style we hoped for him, he was at least healthy enough and reasonably supervised.

Shortly after, however, his mother took T for what was supposed to be a two week trip to her home country. I knew she wasn’t coming back, and she knew that I knew. The only one who didn’t know, or pretended not to know, was T’s father, a 70-year-old with many 20-something girlfriends who had no problem letting one slip away for “a few weeks”.

The scene at the airport was drama and trauma and nothing I ever want to live through again. T clung to me like kudzu to an oak, screaming his head off. I cried, His mother tugged. His father wore a bemused expression. The goodbye was horrible.

Amazingly, it turned out that T’s teacher at the school he began attending shortly after the relocation to this far distant Asian land happened to be a friend of mine … a woman who had taught in the International School here and was now teaching in one there, the right one in the right town out of all the places in Asia. Imagine how thrilled I was to learn that I could still follow his progress and send him letters and photos and such!

I was less than thrilled when I learned that his mother was pregnant, however, but not at all surprised when she and T ended up back here shortly after she delivered. T had a baby brother, but baby brother had been left in Asia never to be seen again. Her relationship hadn’t worked out and she didn’t want the child, so left it with the father … “didn’t want” being her own explanation, although hers was a bit more callous. T’s dad had money, and she was in need of that again.

Although concerned in the grand sense, I was so happy to have T back … not with us, of course, but within sight and some access.

By this time, Sam had joined our family, and then Cj. It took T a while to get the hang of how our family hung, but he figured it out without finding any slight to his own importance. Both kids were a bit young for play buddies; after all, what self-respecting 7-year-old boy wants to spend a lot of time with a three-year-old? He was kind and gentle, however, and Sam absolutely worshipped the ground T trod.

It’s time to say goodbye again, however, as his mother has once again decided to leave the country. His father is dead now, and a “new dad” has plans that don’t include a lifetime in Seychelles. Mom is already gone, and T has been left to finish out the school year with someone who doesn’t understand our relationship or how important it is to all of us to have time for a proper farewell. I will try to track him down before he goes, and will stop by the school if that ends up being the only way to kiss and hug this boy and tell him that we will always love him.

I don’t expect to see him again, but there is no telling what’s around any corner.

I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to say goodbye to this kid, and every time rips my heart out. I’d do it again anytime, though, if it means another hello first.

The boys 2006
My boys … well, two out of three

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No power at all

Posted in Adoption, Adoption News, Island life, Seychelles, tagged , on December 5, 2007| Leave a Comment »

I have so much I need to write about today, but so little time. We’ve had power cut … AGAIN … and this one lasted all bloody day. The impact of this sort of inconvenience is the blog equivalent of a twelve-hour snow storm when the only plow driver is plowed; by the time he sobers up, stuff is piled high as the rafters and it’s going to take days to dig out.

In an attempt at fairness to Marley of Bastard Nation, I need to spend some time on the site to check out her assertion that the group is not anti-adoption, but rather simply proponents of open records. I’m suspecting I’ll find that to be the case, and I may have to admit that jumping on that bandwagon in yesterday’s post could have been a move inspired by her general grumpiness toward children altogether witnessed often on AltAdopt and other places she gleefully casts little ones as the immature life form they can be.

I’ll get back to y’all on this over the next couple of days.

There are so many more topics for the day, but I’ll leave you with just this one out of the UK about a couple that just won a case in The European Court of Human Rights.

The British Home Office was taken to court to claim damages when a murder serving time and his wife, met and married while he’s been in jail, were not allowed to do the AI dance … a pas de deux possible from different counties.

They turned to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming a violation of their “right to respect for private and family life” and “right to marry and found a family”, both guaranteed by the Human Rights Convention.

Anyone else thinking this “rights” business can go a bit far?

That’s it for today. Fingers are crossed for tomorrow to be a day of electricity … and I ain’t talking thrills, just a dim bulb or two and enough juice to get fruit bat in charge back to cranking the Internet connection.

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Open records, gay adoption, and “Depakote babies”

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Adoption News, International Adoption, tagged , , , , on December 4, 2007| 2 Comments »

A couple of interesting articles in today’s news take a bit of a different slant on familiar themes, and I’m thinking both will be getting a good look here.

First, this opinion piece out of Des Moines has inspired an unsurprising backlash of comments, all immediately recognizable in intent and history.

Open records for adoptees is the opening volley in the piece, but it’s anti-adoption pure and simple that is the target.

Fair-minded and informative, the piece has the temerity … and that is the first impression when such thoughts are actually written down and published … to take Concerned United Birthparents, Bastard Nation and the American Adoption Congress to task and suggest that much of their raison d’etre has less to do with registries, being opposed to the very thought of mutual consent, but rather nothing less than working to force an end to adoption completely.

Media sensationalism has led many to conclude that all parties in adoption are searching. Yet statistics in states with registries tell the opposite story. A study out of the Annenberg School of Communications found that the media exaggerated by 18 times the number of actual “searchers.”

The anti-adoption forces have enjoyed far greater success on the social/media front due to the unwillingness of reporters to dig beneath the surface and explore the agenda of these search advocacy groups. The one notable exception is Lucinda Franks in her New Yorker article around the time of the “Baby Jessica” case, when she exposed the role of these groups in the case. In addition, stories emphasizing grief, loss and pathology due to so-called identity confusion make far more interesting copy than those of content, secure adoptive families.

Bastard Nation is singled out as an organization the promotes, “the portrayal of adoption as a deceptive, hurtful and even pathological institution,” and the point is made that the “emphasis on adoption as setting in motion a lifetime of grief and loss has had a profound effect on adoptive placement in the United States.”

Call it as you see it, certainly, but a take like this, written together by an adoptee and an adoptive parent, feels like a breath of fresh air. The mainstream media running anything that hasn’t been ground to a miserable pulp by those invested in misery may be taken as a sign that the public eye has not yet been totally blinded or blackened.

From Canada, this story on an upcoming TV documentary takes a look at views on gay parenting in that country, and follows the efforts of a lesbian couple to adopt.

One hurdle in their process led the couple to file a human rights complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission that is still pending, but the government did change its policy on adopting from the US in 2006.

And a couple of important bits from blogland …

Here is some serious information on kids with Fetal Anti-Convulsant Syndrome (FACS), or Fetal Valproate Syndrome (FVS), so called, “Depakote babies”, from a mom who has spent years trying to figure out what her child was suffering from. She has a follow-up here.

And if you’re interested in open records laws, here’s an update from North Carolina on what’s happening there.

And, for what it’s worth, I am not against open records. In fact I’m all for everyone being open about everything and doing away with secrets altogether. With this POV, I wish there was a heck of a lot more honesty involved when it comes to specific issues.

Marley of Bastard Nation makes no secret of the fact that she’s not big on adoption … or children in general, for that matter … and although she’s not someone I’d want to spend a weekend with (and I’m quite sure the feeling would be mutual if she ever gave it any thought), I respect her non-namby-pamby-ness. It’s those who dress their negative stance on adoption as “reform” or “family preservation”, and yes, “open records” wooly rhetoric that shouldn’t be trusted.

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African orphans and Ethica statement

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Adoption News, International Adoption, tagged , , on December 3, 2007| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been working today on an article about the reduced number of international adoptions in the world in 2007, so when this from the BBC popped up, it demanded some attention.

Powerful visuals were created when kids orphaned by AIDS in Mozambique were given cameras and asked to photograph their lives. Subject choices are always so interesting when children are given a chance to pick representational bits of their world, and these shots prove that all over again.

As is far too often the case, there is so little possibility of the option of international adoption ever reaching kids in Maputo or any part of Mozambique that hope of such a cicumstance must never trickle down to kids like the ones involved in this project.

According to the US State Department’s site on international adoption, there have been only eight children from Mozambique adopted by Americans in the last five years. This is, no doubt, at least partially due to the residency requirements the country imposes that rule out any family that can’t relocate and become residents for the duration of the adoption process.

That’s one way to make sure the children remain trapped.

For more on the drop in adoption numbers, this story from the Daily Herald of Chicago sums things up, as does this AP story that ads quotes from one of my personal heros, Dr. Elizabeth Bartholet, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Child Advocacy Program (CAP) at Harvard Law School.

And speaking of international adoption, Ethica has released a pdf of their comments on DHS’s regulations for the Hague. It’s well worth a read, and I’ll be most interested in thoughts you might have on their take.

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Adoption news: back in the swing of things

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Adoption News, International Adoption, Older Parent Adoption on December 2, 2007| 3 Comments »

No matter that I’ve just been burnt to a crisp by a faction of the adoption “community”, I can’t stay away. Having not posted any adoption-related news in days, there is so much catching up to do!

Authorities in Toronto are asking for the return of a 5-year-old girl who has been taken from her legal guardian by her birth parents and has disappeared.

Apparently, the child, removed from parental custody in March, has a medical condition that needs attention and there are concerns that the birth parents will not attend to her needs.

Here’s a strange story out of Kentucky from Fox … is that a redundancy? … about foster parents who lost their license after refusing to give up the part of their religious observance that involves the handling of live rattlesnakes.

You know … I don’t have much of a problem with that, actually, but it’s turning into an issue of rights as the couple sues the agency claiming a violation of their constitutional rights.

Go ahead and wrap a few rattlers if you like, I say, but it better appear on your homestudy!

There’s a spate of stories on efforts to get parents to straighten up and fly right. This one may not be available for long, as I can’t get the link generator to give me one that will last a lifetime, but is worth a read while it’s up.

Titled “Teen Parent Maturing Into the Role”, it is about just that … a fifteen-year-old with a year-old baby doing her best to raise her son and herself at the same time. She has goals and ambition and has a hard road ahead.

I did that myself, and I wish her the best.

From Scotland, we have this look at efforts there aimed at helping young parents kick their drug and alcohol problems.

The issue was blamed for the city council receiving a shocking HMIE report into its services aimed at protecting vulnerable youngsters. Inspectors claimed that the council was too slow and disorganised in the way it removed at-risk children from potentially harmful situations.

Councillor Marilyne MacLaren, the city’s children and families leader, said the service was stretched because of the rising number of referrals of children whose parents had drug and alcohol problems.

The plan is to throw £30,000 (almost $62,000) at the problem in one city, in addition to the £396,000 (more than $814,000) annually spent, focusing on issues of homelessness and establishing a “stable home life” that will “make it easier for them to stay away from drugs and alcohol.”

On somewhat the same topic, an opinion piece out of Boston suggests that a ban on spanking being discussed in Massachusetts these days isn’t the way to go because, “parents need help, not bans.”

I’d say the issue is more that children need help, and banning a swat on the butt from a loving parent does nothing to alleviate the beatings and abuse far too many kids suffer daily. In other words, is everyone missing the point on this?

The government of Japan is about to get into the swing of foster care, hoping that allowing foster parents to care for kids in some numbers will shift the focus from institutions to family environments.

Under the new system, one foster family will be able to take care of five or six children who are not able to live with their parents. Unlike in children’s institutions, where many children are taken care of, the system is expected to provide more individual care and a homelike environment for such children.

According to the ministry, there are about 40,000 children who need homes for such reasons as ailing parents, suffering abuse or being orphaned. About 90 percent of such children live in orphanages or baby homes, while 9 percent of them live with foster parents.

The new opposition leader in Australia has come out in favor of removing discrimination in many areas that relate to gay couples in the country, but will not support gay marriage, adoption or access to fertility services.

“Every Australian, as far as taxation, social security and those things, should be treated equally.”

But he rejected going further, declaring marriage as only between a man and a woman.

“It is the foundation of our society. I do not support gay marriage. I do not support gay adoption. I do not support gay IVF,” he said.

In other words, equal, but not that equal.

A young boy in China spent some time collecting bottles to cash in and donated the money to kids in AIDS villages in Henan.

Good for him, but with no good deed getting by without spin, he was awarded a national award on CCTV (China’s English language television news channel … the terrible propaganda machine we get here every day now.). Not big on subtle in that part of the world.

On the older parent front, this from the Sunday Times in London, a look at what can be the hell of fertility treatments past the age of 40, and the reality of how it works, or doesn’t.

I am put out by the way childless women of my age (41) have started talking breezily about IVF as though it were a procedure not dissimilar to Botox. IVF involves artificially inducing the menopause and then reversing it. It’s hardcore. You don’t just go and have it done in your lunch hour and then forget about it, and from what I observe it puts incredible stress on relationships (and sex lives).

The point seems to be to have your kids earlier. That works, but so does adopting them, even after your eggs have withered.

If you’re worried about getting along with your kids when you’re really old, a new study from Purdue University has found that relationships between parents and kids improve with aging.

“Some children reported pestering their parents more about health issues and being unsure if parents were ignoring them,” Fingerman said. “While we expected that children might feel demanded upon or stressed by their parents’ health declines, most of the participants focused on positive changes, such as trying harder to spend time together or talking more or feeling closer and appreciated.”

That’s good to know.

And finally, those with pre-birth matching might want to try to encourage an expectant mother to eat her greens, and not just for good health. New studies are showing that children born to broccoli-eating women tend to like broccoli, and that counts across the vegetable board.

You can also get a propensity toward veggies going by eating them yourself, then doing the adoptive breastfeeding thing.

If these tactics aren’t possible, you may just have to adjust to the fact that promoting the consuming of the green and leafy will forever be a mission. That’s been my fate, as Sam does not consider the possibility that anything green … other than lime Jell-O and Lifesavers … is food. I think it’s a safe bet that his birth mother didn’t come across many brussels sprouts during her pregnancy, and he does show no aversion at all at the idea of eating fried spiders.

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Rocking the vote boat, big time

Posted in American thoughts, Elections USA, The USA from the outside in on December 1, 2007| 2 Comments »

I’ve been pounding away on the adoption advocacy front for a very long time, but still raw from the recent flaying I’ve decided to commence a brand new campaign for the betterment of humanity for the time being … today, anyway.

Having left the US in 1993, I’ve missed a lot, and I am nowhere near up to speed on aspects of Americana ranging from breakfast cereals to presidential candidates. The pack, both Democrat and Republican, is a confusion of Who dat?, and You gotta be kiddin’!, but the process does put me to pondering all things democratic and the processes that are said to add up to democracy.

I well recall researching a paper on the Electoral College about 35 years ago and coming away from the project convinced that it had seen its day. Lo and behold, however, it lives, and continues to drag its rotting corpse all over the election process of the new millennium.

With that mummy apparently propped in place and not easily budged, I would like to propose an idea that would make all the difference in turning democracy into something that would really mean what it is suppose to mean. In one swell foop and with simple implementation, the people … THE PEOPLE (in big letters) … could be guaranteed true representation in every government in the world that now has reasonably free and fair elections.

Ready for it?

Every category on every ballot would have one simple addition:

None of the Above

If “none of the above” wins, it’s back to Square One. Yes, it would be an expensive exercise, but only until those in positions of power take a good look at the sack full of nickels that hit them upside the head and stop jerking us around.

The idea orginally came to me in the ’80s when i found myself in New Orleans covering the gubernatorial election in Louisiana that pitted a convicted criminal against the head of the Ku Klux Klan.

Imagine never again having to mark your ballot for a lesser of evils. Think of the process of choosing candidates that would have to consider a total rejection of all party favorites or “best chance to win” creeps no one really wants to see in office. Consider the power that would come with a vote that said in no uncertain terms, “We are tired of this nonsense, and we’re not going to take it any longer!”

And that is my thought for the day. Feel free to discuss this and get back to me with your assessments.

I think it’s a fab idea, and one we should make happen.

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