[ProactiveMom]

When I read how committed so many of you are and how long you have waited to adopt a child—I don’t know whether to cry or scream. I only wish there were a more comprehensive way of matching waiting children to waiting parents. So many children wait so terribly long hoping that someone will recognize in them the child they always wanted. They wait so long that they begin to believe no-one will ever want them. We worry that this is how our foster son is feeling and although he knows that we love and care about him, we are not an adoptive family. We made the decision to foster special needs children in crisis rather than adopt and after 13 years and nearly 150 children, we’re eternally grateful to the adoptive parents (many of them single parents) that have shared their lives and taken our kids into their hearts and homes.

But here it is…the worry of what will happen to this sweet and gentle boy. His birthday is this month, he’ll be 12. Tomorrow, he is running in the city wide relay races after having earned his entry by having the second fastest time in his grade school, he’s in the 5th grade. He’s handsome, friendly and trusting. He still thinks paper hats and knock-knock jokes are great and that there is an art to bug catching. So what if he’s a little immature—kids grow up way too fast these days—but he’s thrilled to have a parent visit him at school, proud to introduce you to everyone he knows and never too cool for a hug or I love you’s. He’d run a hundred miles or read a thousand books to make you proud. There’s comfort in staying young, innocent and no rush to face all the confusion of where his life might go and worry if he’ll be rejected again. His previous adoption didn’t work and he was turned back because they didn’t grasp that along with all the enjoyment of having a child’s wide eyed adoration at being praised for even the smallest of things came the responsibility of understanding that his emotional need to be their little boy also made him less savvy at navigating a complex world without a guiding hand. He may look at the world from a different slant and his unique way of correlating information may look akin to Aspergers but he maintains a love of school, a hunger for knowledge and the desire to please his teachers.

I talked to his caseworker today and she’s hesitant to come out for a visit because once again she has nothing to tell him—No-one has inquired about him again this year. Maybe his write-up in the adoption books make him seem like he’s just too needy of time and attention? Isn’t spending time with your child, watching the latest PG movie, building science projects, keeping them safe and helping to mold them into decent honest people what being a parent is all about? Maybe people are afraid he’s too old to love them as parents? Don’t they know that he truly believes someone out there will see what a good heart he has and that they’ve been waiting all this time just to find him? Maybe it’s just too much to ask that he’d adore and thrive being an only child for the first time in his life. That maybe for once, he’d be the light of some-ones life after having always been one of many.

As much as it breaks our hearts to not adopt this child, it has been the only rule that has given us and all of the children we’ve loved and cared for all these years the ability to cherish the time we have together and appreciate it for a stage of life that is the stepping stone for the next stage—adoption.

As foster parents we aren’t supposed to seek adoptive parents…So we ask this:

Please look twice at the older children, they truly do know what you are offering and so many are hoping that you might see what they offer in return. BTW, single parents are very welcome in Oregon!

[DianeScraps]

I just want to send you some HUGS!

And I wish that awesome foster parents like you could do the descriptions that those of us searching for children read so we could get a much truer sense of the child

Diane