How Will You Find Me?

I am often asked by adoptive parents, "How do I tell my child he/she is adopted?".  My answer is, you don't make an event of it.  From an early age, you talk to your child about how your family was born.  If your child is from China, you talk about your excitement of going there and finding her.  If your child was placed into your arms by a birth mother, you talk about how she came to the decision and how she picked you and that it was a loving, thoughtful choice.  Each child will have a different adoption story.  How do you start?  I think the earlier the better, so you start by reading a bedtime story.  For that reason, I wrote a book specifically for this purpose.  How Will You Find Me? is a book designed for young children.  Through the magic of animal families, a child can learn that there's more than one way to build a family.  At the end, it asks the question, "How DID you find me?"  Each family can then share their adoption story with their child in a natural progression of the book.  In this way, a child can learn early on how they came into their family and what a joy their parents felt when they came home.  Years later, when someone asks them, "How did you find out you were adopted?", they can answer, "I always knew".

www.howwillyoufindme.com

Adoption, Abortion, and Elections

It's been a long time since I've blogged!  I guess I got out of the habit of writing something every week and perhaps had exhausted my range of topics.  The topic I am going to discuss today is going to be controversial, but I think it bears some thought, especially as to how it relates to adoption.  I hate politics, although I'm glued to the national conventions as if they were train wrecks...oh, they are!  Are we better off than we were four years ago?  I haven't met anyone who thinks so.  How has the past four years affected adoption?  President Obama is pro-abortion.  The number of abortions is way up.  That is one part of the equation.  Then there is the economy.  Women who previously would have tried to parent and then eventually decided on adoption as a better option are figuring out very early in the pregnancy that they won't be able to parent due to financial constraints.  It's so early that they can justify making a decision for abortion and they are, thus, aborting (in record numbers). Fewer babies, lower birth rate, higher abortions...well that all equates to less babies for adoption.

I know there are many women who don't want their abortion "rights" taken away.  Mitt Romney is pro-life and so is Paul Ryan.  That doesn't mean they will even be able to change the law, as congress has a say.  Just because they get elected doesn't mean that abortions will cease to exist in this country.  I'm not sure that will ever happen.  But it would be nice to limit them and it would be beneficial to women to understand better what is happening when a baby is aborted.  Planned Parenthood would call it "products of conception" or "pregnancy tissue".  They don't call it "pregnancy tissue" when it pops out screaming and wiggling.  "Products of conception" ARE babies.

I am not condemning women who choose abortion.  I think only God can do that.  However, I praise women who have the courage to deliver a baby that wasn't planned and place it in the arms of another woman who may have fertility issues.  That is a gift few people can give -- the gift of life.  I think that's a much more healthy (physically, emotionally, and medically) way to handle an unplanned pregnancy.  Just because a baby is a surprise doesn't mean the child isn't a blessing.  Please consider all this when you vote in this November's Presidential election.  There are hundreds of thousands of souls counting on you.

"Planned" Parenthood

I am always stunned by the notion that abortion is safe and that women are better for having the "right" to do it.  Abortion is detrimental to women in so many ways.  If a woman physically survives the abortion of her baby, she then has to live with the emotional scars it leaves.  Whether a woman is affected immediately or later on, when she has children and realizes that one of them has died at her hands, she suffers emotional trauma.  While a few men experience the trauma of losing a child, they don't ever have the guilt that comes from knowing they have actually done it themselves.  I've counseled women in the past who have stated that they can never forgive themselves after years of anxiety about going through with an abortion.  That is a heavy price to pay.

The Journal Lancet recently published a study on abortion and shared the following facts; Abortion rates are lower in Western Europe, where 12 of every 1,000 pregnancies are aborted, in contrast to the United States, where 19 of every 1,000 pregnancies are aborted.  Globally, the rate is 28 out of every 1,000 babies die of abortion.  Nearly 50,000 women a year die from complications of abortion.  That seems like an outrageous number until you realize that nearly 45 MILLION babies are aborted annually.  The fact is, there are no safe abortions.  Abortion risks the life of the mother and takes the life of a child.  Planned Parenthood talks about the "products of conception" or "pregnancy tissue", rather than using the term "baby" or "life", when in fact, there is a life in there.  There is a beating heart.  And recently, children as early as 24 weeks have survived with minor complications, when they could legally be aborted at that stage.  In my opinion, that is just disgusting.  I'm all about birth control and planned pregnancies.  But when that goes awry, a life is created and should be nurtured.  There is no shame in not being able to parent at any given time.  Turn a negative situation into a positive gift.  Give life, then give the gift of a lifetime to someone who really wants a family and has the ability to parent.

BOOK REVIEW

Adoptive parents want to be able to share their child's adoption story in a way that isn't traumatic or sensationalistic.  Using a book or two to open the conversation and plant the seed so that they can explain their own child's presence in their family and how they got there is one of the ways to do that.  Very young children can grasp the concept when told in simple terms how they became a part of their family.  "Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born" by Jamie Lee Curtis opens the door to discussion about adoption and how it came to be.  It talks about the phone call, the excitement, the plane flight, the hospital, and many firsts.  It provides an opportunity to talk about each of the aspects of that exciting time with the child and to provide the details of his or her specific birth and adoption.  It should be a part of every adopted child's library and can be purchased through Amazon.com on this site.  Along those lines, we will have another story book coming out very soon that deals with the same topic in poem form, with an animal perspective.  I would love to hear if anyone has books that they recommend to help a child adapt to the concept of adoption.  A child should never be able to say "I was told I was adopted when I was (a certain age) ...", citing the precise moment they found out. They should be able to say that they have always known they were adopted for as long as they could remember.