"Not flesh of my flesh, Nor bone of my bone, But still miraculously my own. Never forget for a single minute,
You didn't grow under my heart - but in it"
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Thursday, November 18, 2010

Special Needs Adoptions

This is going to be a vent post. I hope I dont do these posts often, I just had to get it off my chest.

For months I have been advocating special needs adoptions, actually for almost a year now. I have said that kids out there labeled special needs may have minor problems and we should not chose to just adopt the healthy babies. I still believe that. BUT today I am angry and hurt. Some people chose special needs adoptions because they are the cheaper child, the quicker child. I want my beautiful china doll but dont want to wait 4-10 years so I guess I will take one with special needs but make it be something correctable or minor, maybe hearing loss , missing fingers or sight problems not BLIND heavens no. SERIOUSLY?! What is so bad about having a blind child, a deaf child, a Trisomy child, a child with down syndrome a child with cerebral palsy a child with FAS.

Do you even have a clue what you will be getting into?! You think you bring a child over with hearing loss or missing fingers and they will have nothing else? Are you that naive? You think oh I will get them hearing aides or a cochlear implant and then they will be our perfect chosen child and we would not have had to wait or pay the high costs. That sickens me. You have no idea what that child has gone through. Depending on age they could have gone through years of abuse, definitely neglect, malnutrition. Have you thought this through?! This is why there is a high disruption rate.

What do you think years of not being talked to or loved on can do to a child? What about never having enough food? You don't just starve the body but you starve the brain. I hope that your heart is really in a special needs adoption and not just the price and time.

When they told us about Noah they said they couldnt even guess what his life would be like, worst case a vegetable. We chose to proceed anyways because we felt God's calling. After praying God showed us in many signs that Noah was our son.

My point is you can bring home a child with one thing and one doctors appointments turn into 12 and next thing you know he has a feeding tube and braces on his legs and vomits everyday for months then has horrible reactions to medicine that cause massive diarrhea and diaper rashes that you've only seen in abuse cases. It costs about 4000. a month to care for Noah and I would not change my life for anything. I am not complaining. I couldnt imagine my life without him and am glad I was educated before choosing SN adoption.

I think if you go for the quickest child, the cheapest child a disruption is soon to follow when that "correctable" special need is a little more involved than you thought.

Just my honest opinion. And for the record I will always advocate for people to adopt a child with special needs. AND if you are adopting a child any child for the right reasons then I think you are awesome. I just dont want to see these kids go through anymore than they already have.


be blessed

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, what she said! What frustrates me just as much, are the people who adopt a child who they know is going to have, at a very minimum, a lot of medical issues right when they come home, but might live 60 or 70 miles (or more) away from the medical care the child needs, but complains every time they have to go to those specialists. Seriously? When my daughter was born, we lived 78 miles away from the children's hospital, and it was horrible. We were making at LEAST two trips into the cities per week. And don't forget to check out the special education services your district does/does not have before you bring your child home. Even if you're homeschooling, there is still speech, occupational and physical therapy services that should be made available to your child. I've seen an awful lot of families bring their kids home, THEN decide to check out the school district special ed. dept. That is just sad.

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  2. Yes, we had no idea to look for that but had an amazing social worker who told us all we needed to look into. Lucky for us we are 15mins from on of the top Childrens hospitals in the country and we have some great early childhood intervention programs and our homeschooling program we use offers therapies in home.

    That is a very good point to bring up. Thank you!

    BE blessed

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