mcnh63, I'm not surprised that so many people dropped out of your classes. If they were like our classes, I can see why they would.
The way our agency does the classes, you are not necessarily with any of the same people from one class to the next, so there was no way for us to know who continued on through the process and who didn't. I would like to know how many people stuck it out, because basically, each class was designed to emphasize the worst case scenarios.
Although most people were there in hopes of adopting toddlers to elementary aged kids, hopefully without "too many" problems, the agency made it seem like we were all going to be matched with teenaged firestarters who would sodomize our pets. That is who they were preparing us for, at every turn.
Whenever anybody asked a question like "but aren't there a few kids who don't have all those problems?" the agency would say "don't count on it." So I can imagine that a lot of people would give up on the process and look for alternatives.
From the agency's and the kids' perspective, I can totally see why this is necessary; they need fparents who are going to be committed even when the going is very rough.
The irony is that the very sworker who told us at the first class that we would "never" get a child under 5 was assigned to be our worker once we had completed everything, and she is the one who networked for us and was responsible for finding us R, the world's cutest one year old. Now, he could grow up to start fires and do very bad things to the dog, but for now at least, it looks like if you stick it out through the classes and hang in there, there can be a positive outcome
