[fredalina]

The supervisory period is such a blessing for these children and their adoptive parents. As a pp said, there is usually a honeymoon period of a week to several months in which you really don't know the real child. Many, even young toddlers, have serious behavior issues they've learned for a variety of reasons.

The biggest reason of all, though, is for the children. It's yet one more way to try to ensure the kids stay safe. Heaven forbid they be adopted by an abusive family and there's no supervision to at least provide *some* buffer that it will be discovered. And, let's face it, what these kids need most, after physical safety, is permanency. They need their adoptive home to be their *forever* home. How devastating would it be to a child psychologically to go from relative to relative, then from foster home to foster home, then be told they are being adopted by a permanent family, then be ripped away from them and put back in foster care?!?!?! All because there was no state supervisory period to ensure this is, indeed, a good match.

As for spanking, there are many ways to discipline without spanking, and there are many reasons this is particularly important for kids from the system. It's much more important that your future adoptive child not be spanked than that your bio kids feel some type of resentment that they were spanked and the adoptive child wasn't. Especially when you have the option of adapting your parenting technique for the bio kids as well.