Nicole … its meaning is "people of victory" - Think Baby Names

The baby name Nicole is of Greek origin and is the feminine form of the baby name Nicholas. The baby name can also be spelled Nichole.

The baby name Nicole first appeared on the charts in 1942 at #947. After 1955, the baby name skyrocketed up the charts, moving from #901 to the Top 100 in only 14 years. The baby name Nicole was a Top 10 name from 1979 through 1988 and just dropped out of the Top 100 in 2008, where it ranked at #106. See Popular Baby Names.

If you are an older adoptive parent there is a good chance that by the time your adopted child is a tween or teen, she will become sensitive about the fact that you are older than most of the other parents. Younger children often pay no attention to how their parent looks in comparison with other children’s parents, but that changes when they begin maturing themselves and closely examining every aspect of their life – their parents being one aspect of their lives that they will scrutinize.

I honestly believe that most tweens and teens think their parents are “old” and “outdated” and definitely out of the loop. I thought my parents were old when I was a teen and they were in their forties.

So how do we deal with this embarrassment or do we need to deal with it at all? Maybe we just need to ride through this stage in their development like we do every other stage?

A reader found Adoption Under One Roof seeking the answer to the question of whether “being a hoarder” is child abuse. First, let’s define what hoarding is. Hoarding is a subset of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) in which the person manages his or her anxiety by “hoarding” particular objects. For example, I have shared before that I used to hoard pens. I had to have five pens plus a spare in my purse at all times. If I dropped below this magic number, I would suffer from a panic attack. (I now recognize that this tied into my fear of being “silenced” as an abused child.)

I think we can all agree that the number of pens I choose to carry around in my purse is hardly going to create an abusive environment for my adopted child. So, hoarding, in and of itself, is not going to qualify as child abuse, and a judge is certainly not going to remove a child from a loving home just because a parent is a hoarder.

Dear Adoption Maharishi,

My husband and I have completed our home study to adopt an infant. The next step is to write a “Dear Birth Mom” letter. Should we mention infertility in the Dear Birth Mom letter?

~ Hoping to Adopt

A reader found Adoption Under One Roof seeking the answer to the question of whether you can love a baby conceived by rape. The short answer is absolutely yes. A baby is not responsible for his or her conception, and the moment of trauma that resulted in the baby’s conception does not define who that baby will become. I cannot tell by the inquiry whether the question was posed by a woman in crisis pregnancy or a hopeful adoptive parent, so I will address the question from both angles.

Crisis Pregnancy

If you are a woman in crisis pregnancy after a rape, I am so sorry for all that you have suffered. I, too, have been raped (although I did not conceive a baby), so I understand some of the trauma that you are suffering through. I strongly encourage you to enter into therapy to help you work through the many emotional aftereffects of rape.

The fact that the baby you are carrying was conceived by rape is understandably distressing (to say the least). Try to remember that the baby is also yours, and the baby did not ask to be conceived. The baby had no control over its origins, and he or she should not have to suffer for the terrible crime committed by the birth father.