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Adoption is a complex process. And if you think *getting* a child is complicated, raising an adopted child is even more complicated. It's a lifelong process which involves lots of joy and fun and love, and which also involves lots of loss, grief, and heartbreak.
Because adoption is so complicated, I'd really discourage you from thinking in terms of "success" and "failure." In the first place, a relentless focus on making sure the adoption is a "success" and the child is a "success" puts a lot of pressure on everyone to cover up things that are hurtful, sad, or troubling. And those things need to be acknowledged and dealt with. Every adoption involves grief and loss, and if a child doesn't have permission to deal with those, it's going to cause a raft of trouble down the road.
In the second place, the whole idea of "success" implies that everybody and everything associated with the adoption is being constantly evaluated. I can imagine both parents and child thinking, "Are we a success today? How about tomorrow? What if we're not success tomorrow? Then what happens? Does the adoption disrupt?" Adoption is about building relationships through good days and bad days, about loving one another for who we really are. It shouldn't be about pushing anybody into a pre-determined mold of "success."
So, yeah. I'm not in favor of the happy management-speak. Try to go with it understanding that it is a very complex form of human relationship, not a task that can be labeled "success" or "failure" at the end of every day.
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