We wanted to adopt from US foster care but... (options, children, birth)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This is what I got when social workers waited it out for the "family to get their act together":
A broken arm when I was thrown across the room.
Burns.
Scars from more beatings that would not have happened.
Locked in a closet for four months. That's where I lived, you know, while social workers waited on the piles of trash to "get it together" to "keep the family together".
I got lucky. I got adopted. My other siblings did not.
Let's see what they won:
In an effort to "keep that family together":
One was molested by the sperm donor.
One was burned, repeatedly, with cigarettes on his face and arms whenever the "poor bio mom who needs to be thought of in times like this" got mad.
This same one took the brunt of everything I used to get before I got adopted out.
Where are they today?
The older siblings have had more fricken marriages and divorces than I can shake a stick at.
One is a fricken alcoholic because he still can't handle it, to this day.
One is a drug addict, and so fricken messed up because he got to be abused his entire childhood.
One is so emotionally scarred from a mother who would do things like this:
Sister comes home from school, shares story how someone told her how pretty her hair was.
Dear old mom SHAVED IT ALL OFF.
Dear old mom called this girl a sl** and a wh*** when the sperm donor molested this girl. Repeatedly.
Dear old mom beat the crap out of this girl emotionally, manipulations, lies, stories she convinced others were real, for her entire childhood.
How about dear old dad? He used to hang dogs from the neighborhood from the roof, to scare us.
He used to tell us to go to a back bedroom to wait for our punishment, and then he would stomp down that hallway as hard as he could, and at the last second, veer off to another room, laughing maniacally. He would do this over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. When he did finally come, it wasn't a talk, it wasn't a scolding, it was a hellacious beating. Tell me that would not petrify the snot out of a 3, 4, 5, 6 year old child. But hey, 'let's try to keep the family together, it's in the best interest of the child'.
I could write for three days straight telling you things that happened, and you still wouldn't have even gotten past the tip of that iceberg....all because social workers thought it "best" to "keep the family together" and waited and waited and waited for the family to "get their act together".
Thanks SO MUCH for that. Thanks a TON. WE ALL REALLY APPRECIATE THAT. /sarc
The children have no voice. The parents aren't doing their jobs, they can't protect themselves, they are CHILDREN. They need someone to protect them, THEM, not the POS parents.
The idiots who ask a potential adopter if she would be able to have lunch with someone who put their child in a body cast are fricken lunatics, certifiably INSANE to EVER think that's a good idea, or remotely acceptable.
Yes, duh, kids are curious. They want to know where they came from, who do they look like. They are constantly reminded when they go to the doctor that they don't KNOW their medical history. There is the issue of knowing you are not from the family who adopted you, no matter how good those parents are. There is confusion: why did this happen to me? Why was I thrown away? Of course those things happen. But if any social worker thinks that those things are worse than having to have lunch with the hag who put the child in a full body cast, (using the example given in OP), they need to turn in their social worker card and find another job, FAR away from children.
Again. I find this almost unbelievable. However as you know, I do believe you.
When I read stories like the above, it makes me think that the kids who experienced what Three Wolves in Snow did -- or even anything close to that -- should file a class action suit. I think I have read that it is not possible (or almost impossible) for any settlements to be awarded when an action is filed against a government agency or worker, but I definitely think an exception should be made when people have suffered so much directly as a result of a government agency, whether federal, local, state, or county.
I am so very sorry for you, TWIS, and for all those who have experienced what you have.
The system is almost identical to what it was back then. It's all about birth parents rights, to hell with the kids.
I agree. It is all about the rights of the birth parent. Prospective adoptive parents must do what they want - or not adopt.
Children are really never removed from these situations. "Real" parents come first.
Ask CHILDREN what constitutes a "real parent". They will tell you. Someone who would never hurt you. And who puts you and your needs above their own. Someone who is able to run a household without garbage and trash, to ensure that the children are clothed and sent to school each day. Someone who enjoys spending time with children - reading them books (you can get those at the public library), baking cup cakes, teaching them to ride a bike, roasting marshmallows on an open fire, or taking a hike through a nature preserve.
All of the above are very inexpensive or free. If you can't do these - or activities that are similar - AND keep your child from harm from others - and refrain from harming him - you do not deserve to parent.
As far as grandparents? I will say what my grandmother always said "apples don't fall too far from the tree". So, the kindely grandparents are the ones who raised the monster who brutalized the kids.
I will not attempt defend parents who harm, abuse, beat, or rape their children. Nor will I for a moment attempt to defend social workers who do not do the job they signed up for and are paid for. I will not defend a system that is broken. None of those things should ever, ever happen.
However, I will defend good social workers who are doing their best within the constraints they have to operate within. I will ask you to consider that we, as a society, pay a lot of lip service to "the kids" but the reality is the kids are dead last when it comes to government spending, programs, and oversight. If kids were put first then there would never be budget cuts to schools, daycare subsidies, or food stamps. If kids were put first every school system would be top notch, regardless of neighborhood. If kids were put first the foster care system would be completely different and kids would be taken away from abusive parents immediately, and those parents would be in jail for decades if not forever.
I am working to fight and change the system. That is all I can do.
You're in social work? Well my experience as a child coming from one of these less than stellar families, shall we call them, trumps social worker experience.
The very LAST THING I needed was a visit from the piles of trash who did what they did, over and over and over and over again because the social workers wanted to keep the family together, after I finally got free of them and got adopted. THAT'S THE LAST FRICKEN THING I NEEDED OR WANTED.
I was old enough to know them. I was four. I knew them, I knew their names, I knew what they did. People try to pretend that kids don't have memories before the age of 4...baloney. I remember very early incidents.
It doesn't matter if "grandma loved her children", when you adopt, especially from situations that are bad, you do NOT subject that child to anyone in that family again. When they are older, they can then seek them out, but do NOT screw them up any more than they are by making them stay in contact with any member of the family they were from.
Social workers have a LOT to learn.
Don't think that your experience is the only one that counts.
My boyfriend's mother had Munchausen's by proxy. He was the proxy. He and his younger siblings all ended up in the system, yet all still wanted a relationship with their mother no matter how heinous she was (and we're talking multiple day hospital stays in some cases). Their father became a drug addict when he found out what his wife had been doing. They wanted a relationship with him too.
That doesn't take away what these people did to their children or how completely unfit they were as parents. But even now, at 32 years old, my boyfriend grieves for his mom (she died of an OD several years after they were taken away... his father wasn't far behind her). An adoptive family wouldn't have taken away from that pain, not replaced his biological parents no matter how little he saw them as "mom and dad" compared to others who raised him.
I will be adopting from the foster care system. If my children want to maintain a relationship with their birth parent, then so be it. That does not make me any less of the child's mom.
I will not attempt defend parents who harm, abuse, beat, or rape their children. Nor will I for a moment attempt to defend social workers who do not do the job they signed up for and are paid for. I will not defend a system that is broken. None of those things should ever, ever happen.
However, I will defend good social workers who are doing their best within the constraints they have to operate within. I will ask you to consider that we, as a society, pay a lot of lip service to "the kids" but the reality is the kids are dead last when it comes to government spending, programs, and oversight. If kids were put first then there would never be budget cuts to schools, daycare subsidies, or food stamps. If kids were put first every school system would be top notch, regardless of neighborhood. If kids were put first the foster care system would be completely different and kids would be taken away from abusive parents immediately, and those parents would be in jail for decades if not forever.
I am working to fight and change the system. That is all I can do.
I agree with much of what you have said. Many Americans profess to care about children - but do not vote as though children are a priority.
Also, many people seem to think that Child and Family Service Workers or Child Protective Service workers are "Social Workers". They are not. The people who investigate abuse and neglect are generally individuals with a BA in any field.
They are not professional social workers who hold MSW degrees.
I thought that I should say that in defense of the social work profession.
Don't think that your experience is the only one that counts.
My boyfriend's mother had Munchausen's by proxy. He was the proxy. He and his younger siblings all ended up in the system, yet all still wanted a relationship with their mother no matter how heinous she was (and we're talking multiple day hospital stays in some cases). Their father became a drug addict when he found out what his wife had been doing. They wanted a relationship with him too.
That doesn't take away what these people did to their children or how completely unfit they were as parents. But even now, at 32 years old, my boyfriend grieves for his mom (she died of an OD several years after they were taken away... his father wasn't far behind her). An adoptive family wouldn't have taken away from that pain, not replaced his biological parents no matter how little he saw them as "mom and dad" compared to others who raised him.
I will be adopting from the foster care system. If my children want to maintain a relationship with their birth parent, then so be it. That does not make me any less of the child's mom.
That's fine for your boyfriend's mother. However, Three wolves experience is not unusual - nor is her reaction.
What if your children are like Three Wolves in the Snow and do not want to maintain a relationship with their biological families?
Don't think that your experience is the only one that counts.
My boyfriend's mother had Munchausen's by proxy. He was the proxy. He and his younger siblings all ended up in the system, yet all still wanted a relationship with their mother no matter how heinous she was (and we're talking multiple day hospital stays in some cases). Their father became a drug addict when he found out what his wife had been doing. They wanted a relationship with him too.
That doesn't take away what these people did to their children or how completely unfit they were as parents. But even now, at 32 years old, my boyfriend grieves for his mom (she died of an OD several years after they were taken away... his father wasn't far behind her). An adoptive family wouldn't have taken away from that pain, not replaced his biological parents no matter how little he saw them as "mom and dad" compared to others who raised him.
I will be adopting from the foster care system. If my children want to maintain a relationship with their birth parent, then so be it. That does not make me any less of the child's mom.
That's a choice, you are not being told that you have to lunch with some witch who damaged her child. I wanted to know when I was younger, too. I thought that if my bio parents could just see me, they would want me back and be nice to me. Kids don't think rationally. I remember finding my adoption papers, what the adopted parents had to sign in court. I didn't understand most of it because I was pretty young when I found them. I remember the birth certificate that had been changed. Instead of my bio parents' names, it was the adopted parents' names. Everything else on there was the same: their ages, where I was born, the doctor who delivered me, the birth date, but the bio parents' names had been replaced...and I remember thinking it wasn't fair that I didn't get to know. (Even though I knew their names when I was four, I was told that I would talk about them using their first names, never calling them 'mom' or 'dad', children can forget things like that as they get older and do not associate with those people anymore.)
I was given information the very day that I turned 18. When I got back from the military, one of the first things I did was get information from the adopted parents where to write for the records. I got an enormously long file of a chronological list of events that happened, (that were reported that is....a lot of stuff that I actually have memories of were not reported...surprise), and I got one letter. The letter was from a grandmother.
I could get no more from the agency. Still, as an adult, the agency protected the birth parents. The only way we siblings would ever be able to meet was to sign waivers and have the losers sign them too, (guess what they didn't do), or to hire a private detective.
In 2001, apparently my sister did just that. How the heck that detective found me I will never know. My sister did not know the last name that I was given when I got adopted. I move(d) a LOT. I didn't have a long paper trail following me around, (cars, credit cards, mortgages, nothing of the sort), so imagine my surprise when I got home from work one day to find a note on my door. See, the detective couldn't reach me, so SHE CALLED MY NEIGHBOR, who then put the note on my door.
Fast forward: I now have a relationship (sort of), with my brothers, and a relationship with my sister. Apparently I look a lot like "dear old dad", so it's hard for her to even look at me since I'm a constant reminder of the monster who hurt her. I know my memories, I have the police reports, I know what happened to me. They have filled in things that I didn't remember that happened to me. They also have let me know what happened to them.
And one day....I talked to the bio mom. And I talked to her for awhile, over emails and letters. At first, oh she got me. She got me really good. She put on such an act...how she "loved" me, how she "cared", how she saved all of these things because she "missed me" so much. She laid it on thick, and me, still thinking like that child, lapped it all up like a moron.
But you see, in time, true colors always reveal themselves. She is just as evil and psycho today as she was back then. She pretends that the police were lying. She says the social workers were lying. None of those things happened, she says. (Nevermind that I have scars to prove that they did happen, nevermind my memories.) She says I am "making it up", and everyone was out to get her because no one liked her in that town, they liked the bio dad. And then she played her victim card to the hilt. It was alllllllllll about her and what a victim SHE was. And if you call her on it, she says that YOU are abusing HER (apparently the truth is abusive.)
I am an adult. I have the mental capacity, the emotional strength, to deal with this crap. I would never have been able to deal with the bs like this were I still a child. I know how to handle this lying, manipulative, conniving, psychotic woman. I know that it doesn't matter if she convinces relatives who have never met me that there's something wrong with me. If they want to believe that, heck with them. I am strong enough to handle that. I would NOT have been strong enough to handle that as a child.
I have the strength to handle the stories shared by my siblings. I have the strength to keep fighting for a relationship with my siblings, who all want one, but as I posted earlier, have been devastated by what happened to the point that they do NOT know how to deal. It's too hard for them. They never got a chance to "deal" with it away from all of the crazy.
See, my adopted parents not only took me to a psychologist when I was younger, (of course I would need one after all of that...and I will say, that psychologist was goooooood at what she did. I still remember some sessions, and thinking back on it now, through adult eyes, and even seeing some of the pictures she had me draw, I realize just how good she was), and they did not pretend I was not adopted. They couldn't, of course, I was old enough to know. They bought me children's stories to make me feel not alone in the world about it. They took me to that psychologist to help me work things out that confuses kids...kids do NOT understand why any of this happens, and they tend to blame themselves for everything that happened...Lord knows I did that for a long time.
And then? They treated me like any other member of the family. I didn't get special treatment, except my adopted dad would make me feel special at times...like when he went on business for work, came back and had bought me a book by Dr. Suess...I was the only one who got a present, and he had written me a little note inside the front cover...that was early on. How he would go on the roller coasters with me instead of going along with everyone else who didn't want to go. How he would grab my knee and hold his hand there when I got to sit in the front seat of the car on family trips...other than that? Treated just the same.
And that is what I needed. I did not need a visit from the bio parents. I needed to heal. I needed to know what normal was. I needed to know that I was a worthy person, that I could be something, and that while it was understood I would have emotional problems when I was younger, I didn't get to act like an idiot, either.
They didn't do everything right. I think some people here have alluded to the fact that getting a kid like me is not going to be easy. It wasn't easy for them. I frustrated them. It's not my fault, of course, but they got a LOT on their plate when they had set out to find a girl for the family. They did the best they knew how. Yep, they made mistakes, but if you notice, in the previous post, I said I was lucky.
I was very lucky to get adopted, and while they did make some mistakes, this was a damn good family to get adopted in to. There was no wishy-washy anything. It was the exact environment I needed. I didn't always think that when I was a teen....and maybe it was just a little too militant I still believe to this day...but it was the environment I needed.
When I was younger, I feared going to rest stops on family vacations. I would hurry because I was so afraid that I would come out and find that they had driven off, leaving me behind. That's what abuse does to the mind of a kid. You're so sure everyone will leave you if given the chance. When we moved from one state to the other, the day before the move, I came home from school for the last time there. I walked up to a dark house, the trailer wasn't in the driveway, I was sure they had moved without me. I was 7. You see, three years and I still thought everyone was going to leave me behind to fend for myself. I sat on the front steps of the house and bawled my eyes out. My mother opened the door, asked what was wrong, I screamed at her that I thought they left me, and she scooped me up and held me for quite some time while I cried out my pain and fears.
They never did leave me.
That was exactly the environment I needed.
If you would have put the bio mom or dad in to that picture while I was growing up, allowing them to visit me, making us have lunch together as part of the agreement with the adoption agency, I would never have healed. I would never have come out as strong as I am now. I would never have known security and safety. I would never have learned what normal is. I am GLAD that my parents didn't have to agree to anything as stupid as that. I am glad that I had to wait until I was 18. Of course I didn't see it that way when I was a kid, but sometimes adults get it right by NOT allowing the child to know the bio family until they seek out the information when they turn 18. There's a darn good reason for that, and I fully support it. (After that, to hell with the bio parents, give us our information.) That rule was there to protect the bio parents, not the kids, but an unintended consequence was that it does save kids from prolonged turmoil that is absolutely unnecessary.
Your future kid may want to know...and it's of course your decision, you're the parent when you adopt. But I wrote all of that to give you a very small insight to what it's like for the kid who comes from that kind of family. I hope that you will make sure you know who those bio parents are before you put your child in to that. If that child comes from a place like mine, and no, mine is not, unfortunately, unique or unusual, I implore you to think, long and hard, before you give the okay.
Just thank you so much for your last post. It brought me to tears, and I am just SO glad that you have turned out to be such a wonderful and mature adult. That says so much about what kind of person you are.
False, false, false. Look, I agree that in many, many cases biological parents are given WAY too many chances and the children suffer at the hands of the system. I've also seen SO many wonderful, beautiful families formed through foster care. And every single one was younger than 5 at placement. I don't know where you live but I promise you in Hawaii, Colorado, Ohio and Maryland your statements are not true. I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. There is no doubt the U.S. is in desperate need of having the entire foster care system overhauled. But please don't scare away potential foster/adoptive parents with such sweeping generalizations. The children cannot afford it.
All these...stories....my SIL fostered a few older children -...but the staff knew they wanted a baby or toddler to adopt. Within 16 months they were placed with D who was 5 months....and the adoption was final a year later. No contact with the mother needed....nothing.
That is why I take most of these stories with a grain of salt..... I guess if you only want a white newborn it's an issue...but then you probably aren't most interested in raising a child.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
