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GUEST BLOG: Introducing An Older Adopted Child to the Joy of Reading: Thank You Harry Potter!

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Mon, 01/18/2010 - 10:22
  • Adoptive parenting
  • Dee Thompson
  • Intercountry adoption
  • Older child adoption
  • Older Parents
  • reading and your grades school student
  • Russia

Dee Thompson adopted her daughter from Russia in 2004 when Dee was 41 and Alesia was 13. In 2007 she adopted 10 year old Michael from Kazakhstan. Dee is a paralegal and writer and lives in Atlanta. In 2007 she published a children's book called “Jack's New Family,” to help her son adjust to life in an adoptive family. She writes about her journey as a parent on her blog, The Crab Chronicles as well as movie reviews on Scribblerchick's Movie Dish.

 

When I adopted my son Michael from Kazakhstan in 2007, I knew he was a smart kid. His teachers at the orphanage praised him, and I bought a book in Russian for his sister, about a 5th grade level book, and he read it aloud perfectly, in Russian – and he was in 2nd grade! (He was 10 years old, and behind in school there due to his birthmom not sending him to school.)

When he came home, of course, learning English meant that it took a lot of time and intense tutoring to get him up to reading on grade level. Fortunately my mother, a retired teacher, lives with us and tutored Michael intensively. He was so successful, under her care, that he was able to skip 4th grade.

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International Adoption Scam Survivor Will Adopt Again

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Mon, 01/04/2010 - 15:28
  • Adoption Ethics
  • adoptionharmony
  • Guestblog
  • Guestblogger
  • International adoption
  • International Adoption Scam
  • Kas
  • Russia

Kas is an international adoption consultant and counselor, mother to son from Russia, adopted at 18 months-now 5. She specifically asked for Caucasian, blue-green eyed, fair, blonde boy as young as possible with only minor & correctable health issues. She met her son at 13 months, and the rest is history. Kas says this is a wonderful way to adopt children! She advocates for Russian adoption daily, indicating that current cost are around $35-$40K, which is similar to some domestic adoptions and use of surrogate mothers. This is her story of being scammed by an International agency, which got her started helping others.

 

I was scammed post-adoption by a very popular intternational agency by being too honest in my post-placement reports. The agency had been sued and a doctor was a key witness against them who happened to be the doctor who treated my son. He was an expert in his field and I didn't know about the lawsuits until after the evaluation with him. I put his name on my final post-placement report as my son's doctor and that was it. The application I had in for adoption #2 was "deleted" with no refund. The agency refused to speak to me except once by their social worker who said that if my son was so bad off that he needed THAT doctor-I must not be able to handle another one and they would not facilitate it. They refuse to speak to me to this day. I'd love to say their name but I haven't yet. I was told they had been sued 10 times and lost every case for the same offense, not ensuring that the overseas paperwork was translated correctly, mainly the medicals of the adopted children. This was the case for me, too, but I didn't sue them.

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Guest Blog: Parenting Fetal Alcohol Children Adopted From Russia

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Sun, 07/26/2009 - 14:21
  • Barb Parker
  • FAS
  • FASD
  • Guest Blog
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  • International adoption
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If the hand print fits

Our Guest Blog Barb Parker traveled 2 times to Russia to adopt from an orphanage in 1995 and 1997. The Agency promised that they knew how to rule out FASD's, but instead they have two with full FAS Diagnosis and one with probable ARND (Alcohol-Related Neuro Defect, also on the Fetal Alcohol spectrum. Early pediatricians also did not know what they were looking at, and at two sent them for testing of various disorders but never called out FAS. Their boys were 14 months and 3 years when adopted from Russia. Now they are 15 and 17 but the oldest in residential treatment. Their daughter was adopted at 8 months from Russia and is now 12 years old.

God's plan had me trained as a teacher of Cognitively Impaired, group home worker, residential school vocational teacher and a Parent Trainer for difficult foster care placements. All this occurred before our 12th anniversary, when we began our family through adoption. I have used every bit of my preparation with my own family. Unfortunately, our foreign adoption experience didn't include full disclosure and 2 years post adoption, we learned our oldest had been horribly traumatized before he spent a year in orphanage. We exhausted our resources and eventually the available community resources as well. He has been in state care and residential for about 7 months. It is still a full time job advocating for him from across the state, plus raising our other 2 and sitting on the MCFARES (Macomb County Fetal Alcohol Resources, Education and Support) Coalition. Our online and local counties parent support group help us care for ourselves so we can continue this 24/7 intensive parenting task of raising 3 children with FASD's.

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Opportunities to Help Orphans Stay and Thrive in Their Countries of Origin

Submitted by FosterMommy on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 21:24
  • Anti-adoption
  • Charitable organizations
  • Guatemala
  • Help Orphans Stay in Country of Origin
  • Honduras
  • India
  • Philanthropy
  • Resources
  • Russia

Orphan Outreach is a nonprofit organization with headquarters in Dallas, Texas that is helping orphans stay in their countries of origin. Not just by feeding them food, but also feeding their minds, and helping their families. The organization is setting up schools to educate these children and putting up playgrounds to offer safe places for children to play and dream. Currently Orphan Outreach has children ministries in Guatemala, Honduras, India, and Russia and they need your help. If you strongly believe that children should be kept in their country of origin than consider traveling to one of these countries in the next 12 months and helping.

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Adopting for a cause? Bad idea ...

Submitted by SandraHanksBenoiton on Tue, 05/05/2009 - 04:27
  • Adoption advocacy
  • International adoption
  • News
  • Religion and Adoption
  • Russia

There is no doubt that I am, in the broadest sense, pro-adoption. Advocating for the right of the children of the world to have the option of adoption open to them is the foundation of much of my work, and I do what I can to address issues that challenge these rights.

Anti-adoption forces exist in the world, and those are often easily dealt with as pie-in-the-sky attitudes that neglect reality beg correction.

What is not so easy for me, however, is responding to pro-adoption writings that make me cringe.

No matter how many children would benefit from a family, there are many, many reasons for families not to adopt, and although the reasons for are uncountable, wrong ones exist.

One big red flag against an adoption decision is any version of nobility. Seeking sainthood through bringing a child into a family is just plain wrong, and the idea of it is something successful adoptive parents rail against.

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GUEST BLOG: Three Cultures

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Tue, 04/14/2009 - 13:57
  • Adoptee health
  • Adoptees
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  • Adoptive parent health
  • Adoptive parenting
  • Dee Thompson
  • Guest Blog
  • Guestblogger
  • Intercountry adoption
  • Kazakhstan
  • Older child adoption
  • Older Parents
  • Russia
  • Single parents

Dee Thompson adopted her daughter from Russia in 2004 when Dee was 41 and Alesia was 13. In 2007 she adopted 10 year old Michael from Kazakhstan. Dee is a paralegal and writer and lives in Atlanta. In 2007 she published a children's book called “Jack's New Family,” to help her son adjust to life in an adoptive family. She writes about her journey as a parent on her blog, The Crab Chronicles as well as movie reviews on Scribblerchick's Movie Dish.

Dee has blogged for us in the past and you can read her excellent previous blogs here.

Part II (continued from here)

What I have learned is that you can take the child out of the orphanage, but it’s really difficult to take the orphanage out of the child. I have had to deal with my daughter hoarding food, stealing, lying, sneaking, and cheating. It was so horrifying to me when she had been home just a few months and I saw the sneaky behavior – she was pouring shampoo down the drain and only pretending to shower because she didn’t like to shower. I would catch her in lies large and small and she wouldn’t admit to them. She still hoards food, always keeping bags of candy in her room, despite my requests not to do that. In her world, at any moment, everything can be taken away. Trying to punish her by taking things away doesn’t work. She doesn’t mind living without computer or TV privileges. She has stopped most of the really awful orphanage behaviors like stealing and lying, but she still shows a few orphanage behaviors.

My daughter was an adapter and a survivor, in her orphanage. My daughter talks loudly, all the time. She had to do that to get anyone’s attention in the orphanage. She can’t seem to stop, though. If anyone says she can’t have something, she immediately becomes very angry. She challenges authority and argues about everything. She bullies her little brother on occasion. These are all orphanage behaviors.

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GUEST BLOG: Three Cultures

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Mon, 04/13/2009 - 08:15
  • Adoptee health
  • Adoptees
  • Adoptive family
  • Adoptive parenting
  • Dee Thompson
  • Intercountry adoption
  • Kazakhstan
  • Older child adoption
  • Older Parents
  • Russia
  • Single parents
  • Special needs
  • Teens
  • Traumatized children
  • Tweens

Dee Thompson adopted her daughter from Russia in 2004 when Dee was 41 and Alesia was 13. In 2007 she adopted 10 year old Michael from Kazakhstan. Dee is a paralegal and writer and lives in Atlanta. In 2007 she published a children's book called “Jack's New Family,” to help her son adjust to life in an adoptive family. She writes about her journey as a parent on her blog, The Crab Chronicles as well as movie reviews on Scribblerchick's Movie Dish.

Dee has blogged for us in the past and you can read her excellent previous blogs here.

Part I

I recently wrote an essay for the book Call Me Okaasan (out in May, from Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing), about the challenges of raising children in a multi-cultural home. The essay was a labor of love and was certainly accurate. It addressed things like language, food, and hygiene considerations. However, in re-reading it months after I wrote it, I realized that I didn’t really address the real cultural issues that exist in my home.

What I see more often is that my children are mainly the products of three cultures which defy national boundaries, namely the culture called Orphanage, the culture called Poverty, and the culture of Alcoholism. Nothing could really have prepared me for the challenges I have faced in trying to deal with those cultures, and in many ways it has been a real struggle. Alesia, adopted at age 13, has been home from Russia almost 4 ½ years, and Michael, age 12, just celebrated his two year anniversary of being adopted, but I still struggle with dealing with their prior cultural biases and fears.

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News from the CDC for IA Families

Submitted by SandraHanksBenoiton on Sun, 03/01/2009 - 16:21
  • Adoptee health
  • Adoptive grandparents
  • Adoptive parent health
  • Ethiopia
  • Guatemala
  • Guatemalan adoption
  • hepatitis A
  • Intercountry adoption
  • International adoption
  • News
  • Russia
  • vaccinations to have before intercountry adoption

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has released a new recommendation on vaccinations for prospective international adoptive families.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has recently voted to recommend hepatitis A vaccinations for those who may come into contact with children (baby sitters, grandparents, nephews, ...) from countries with a high rate of infection. These include Guatemala, China, Russia and Ethiopia.

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Raising Alesia: A Single Mother's Adoption Experience Raising a Daughter from Russia

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Wed, 01/14/2009 - 09:15
  • Adoptees
  • Adoptive family
  • Adoptive parenting
  • Dee Thompson
  • Intercountry adoption
  • Older child adoption
  • Older Parents
  • Russia
  • Single parents
  • Special needs
  • Traumatized children

Dee Thompson adopted her daughter from Russia in 2004 when Dee was 41 and Alesia was 13. In 2007 she adopted 10 year old Michael from Kazakhstan. Dee is a paralegal and writer and lives in Atlanta. In 2007 she published a children's book called Jack's New Family, to help her son adjust to life in an adoptive family. She writes about her journey as a parent on her blog, The Crab Chronicles

Part II: Continued from here.

What I learned eventually was that a lot of kids who are poorly parented as babies or toddlers become Sneaky Kids. If a baby doesn’t get enough milk or a diaper change, she will do what she has to do, to get what she needs. She will hide from the drunk or impaired mom to avoid getting hit or yelled at. She will pick up food from the street and eat it. If there’s no toy available, she will steal it from another child if possible. Sneaky Kids are survivors who have adapted to a very precarious and neglectful environment. Just because they are taken out of that, it doesn’t mean they automatically change. Learning to trust a caretaking adult is difficult for Sneaky Kids.

Part of the Federici evaluation included testing for auditory processing. I learned Alesia has a Central Auditory Processing Disorder, and what that means – basically, her brain has trouble understanding anything verbal. She also had trouble visualizing as she read. My journey to get her the necessary help began. I bought books, looked into computer programs, and finally decided on a personalized tutoring program called Lindamood Bell, which is highly respected [http://www.lindamoodbell.com/].

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Raising Alesia: A Single Mother's Adoption Experience

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Tue, 01/13/2009 - 09:15
  • Adoptees
  • Adoptive parenting
  • Children's Issues
  • Dee Thompson
  • Intercountry adoption
  • Kazakhstan
  • Language Issues
  • Older child adoption
  • Older Parents
  • Resources
  • Russia
  • Single parents
  • Special needs
  • Traumatized children

Our Guest Blogger today is Dee Thompson who adopted her daughter from Russia in 2004 when Dee was 41 and Alesia was 13. In 2007 she adopted 10 year old Michael from Kazakhstan. Dee is a paralegal and writer and lives in Atlanta. In 2007 she published a children's book called "Jack's New Family," to help her son adjust to life in an adoptive family. She writes about her journey as a parent on her blog, The Crab Chronicles.

Part I

When I look back on my transition from single woman to mother, at 41, I am amazed Alesia and I survived the ordeal. Instead of getting a baby or toddler, and growing my expertise along with the child like most people do, I got a 13 year old girl. She had already been abused, neglected, and badly parented for her first 6 years, then ttossed into the Lord of the Flies environment of a Russian orphanage for 6 ½ years. She knew nothing about being part of a normal American family, and I knew almost nothing about being a mom.

I had read, diligently, everything I could find about parenting older adopted kids, but there was very little there. Entire books about adoption would have a couple of pages which all said, in subtext, “older kids are always so screwed up emotionally, you’re in for a real ride.” They stated plainly, “They all lie, steal, hoard, etc. Watch your back.” That, on top of my friends who warned me I was crazy, certainly made me a scared parent at first. Also, I will admit I didn’t want to read much about kids who had been severely abused or neglected. I told myself none of that applied to my daughter; it couldn’t have been that bad or she wouldn’t be such a sweet girl.

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