On our first stop on the adoption news train we learn learn of the Ohio Couple who Adopts Eight Siblings Separated in Foster Care, adding to the seven children they already had at home!  The judge who usually performed the adoption was both stunned as well as thrilled to see all eight siblings reunited in one forever home. 

Next we take a short ride over to Pennsylvania where longtime foster parents were honored at a Martin Luther King banquet.  The couple, now both in their late seventies and early eighties have fostered more than 200 children during their long run as foster parents.

It has been a while since I have done a site to see, because quite frankly I haven’t stumbled across any wonderful new adoption related sites; that is until the wee hours of this morning, when I happened upon the site, Fosterclub.com. 

Fosterclub.com is a supportive social networking site, for children who are in the foster care system.  There is a section that lists famous foster children, inspiring children in the system not to give up, and proving that despite  what they have been through, they can overcome it in time and achieve whatever it is their little heart's desire to achieve in life.

Speaking of achievements, the website also gives out achievement awards to foster children who have:

•   Raised their grades
•  Made honor roll, or honorable mention
•   Played on a school or community sports team
•   Done something good for their community
•   Performed in a play, had an article or poem they wrote published
•   Reached a goal that they had set for themselves

Once a month, anyone touched by foster care, kinship care, or adoption can attend a free support group meeting in town. The social worker who runs the support group also gives everyone in attendance a certificate indicating completion of two hours of training credit. All of the area foster care agencies accept these training hours towards the required annual training hours. In fact, our private agency goes so far as to encourage all of their foster parents to attend each month. After more than a decade of fostering, I still come away refreshed with renewed optimism from an evening with a support group or training session. I did not hear anything new at training, but I heard something with new ears.

It seems that those who survived less than ideal childhoods go on to make some pretty amazing parents, and some especially spectacular adoptive parents. This is due to their ability to not only sympathize with their adopted child, but to empathize with their adopted child, and understand their pain of abuse and/or neglect on a very personal level. It is only those parents whom have taken the time to dig up, let loose, examine, and heal their own past wounds who will be able to handle parenting an older adopted child.

Adults, that have not taken the time to heal whatever remaining emotional scars they still carry with them from childhood, can and often do appear to be stable, happy, and well functioning people… for the most part. However, without facing, coming to terms with, accepting, and releasing their own long pent up emotional pain, it is only a matter of time before an older adopted child finds a trigger or two and unleashes the emotional floodgates of their adoptive parent(s.)

Traumatized children are expert button pushers, and even the most skilled adult at hiding past pains, will very quickly find themselves overreacting to situations that the child has created. As the child will almost instantly pick up on the adults hot buttons and what makes them tick, and they will then proceed to push every one of them continuously.

A parent who has healed the past trauma and negative energies, will be able to see through the child’s behaviors. Recognize what he or she is doing, and steer right around it, or at the very least know not to get caught up in it 

A parent who is not yet emotionally healed and healthy however, will easily be sucked into the child’s games. Then play them for quite some time before ever realizing exactly what it is they are engaged in.