do you think your agency prepared you well for....

I don't think that my Colombia agency was all that helpful, however, our social worker in our home state was a gem. She has years of experience in Intl Adoption and has internationally adopted children herself. She suggested a great reading list -- in addition to our required education classes. When we got our referral, she consulted with us and talked about what we might expect from a 2 year old. After placement, once home, she answered questions I had. She told us that she wanted to see our lifebook at our last post-placement. WE diligently finished it and she reviewed it and made very helpful suggestions. About 4 months after our last post-placement visit, something happened that concerned me. I called her and she willingly spent time making suggestions to help us (and she didn't ask us to pay her or anything). I think that the agency is less important and the Social Worker is key. He/She knows you, has seen the way you live, and actually gets to know your child. He/she can make suggestions for preparation that apply to your specific family dynamic, and then follow through after placement. I am truly grateful to have had such a great social worker.

So far my agency has been good. My social worker was great! Since my agency is out of state, I have never actually met anyone personally. I think once I receive a referral and travel to Colombia, then I will really see how prepared I feel!

Like Sumerce said, I think that the social worker plays a large role in preparation. Our home study social worker worked directly for our agency, so while they were the same, I'm sure others with the same agency who had different social workers might have felt differently. We LOVE our social worker. In fact, she is the entire reason that we have remained with our same agency for all three adoptions. While we were her first ever Colombian adoption, she did her best to research and learn right along with us. Any time she could not answer our questions she would call the agency's head office and find out directly from them or search around for the answers to our questions. She was very diligent in making sure we were preparing ourselves for every aspect of adoption, and she has remained a source of support even after our adoption was completed. If anything, we were overprepared with the issues of adoption and the issues of common parenting were left entirely up to us. I would have loved to see more "new parent" classes offered by our agency that focused on baby/child care. We did attend a class like this at our local hospital because we wanted to make sure we knew all the newest safety concerns, but we were the only adoptive parents and some of it (the labor/first days of life stuff) just didn't apply to us and seemed awkward. I would still recommend taking a new parent class through a local hospital or community education. In addition, we read a lot of books regarding adoption, parenting, baby care, education, family structure, etc. We like to read, research and learn, so this was pretty fun for us. I agree with Sumerce that the agency is less important in this regard and the social worker is key. I think where the agency matters more is in the relationships they have established with ICBF, if they abide by Colombian laws. That is more likely where agency reputation matters more. You can have a great social worker who ends up working for a lame agency, or a lame social worker who ends up working at a well established, reputable agency. Either way there are ups and downs in adoption, and researching both the agency's reputation in Colombia as well as their local social work staff (or who ever your home study agency will be) is equally important. I hope that makes sense and doesn't come across like I am opposed to any particular agency. It is just a reality of international adoption that both agency reputation (overseas and at home) and the social worker impact the tone of the adoption experience. One big thing I was not prepared for happened during our first trip to Colombia. I was not really prepared to defend my decisions as a mother to others who questioned them. Our daughter had been given rice cereal and fruit at the orphanage at a very young age - much younger than is recommended in the US. When she was placed with us she could not even really hold her head up (within a week or so she could) and she was perfectly content with just the bottle - no desire for the rice cereal...oh, and she slept through the night! Wah hoo! So, since she acted as though she didn't need the rice cereal (which has sugar in it in Colombia) and fruit, I made an executive decision to just continue with the bottle until she seemed like she needed more or until we got home and could start on rice cereal (without sugar) and vegetables (instead of fruit) like our pediatrician had recommended. However, the doctor (who visited us at the hotel to check her height and weight and make sure a previous cold was better) in Colombia threw an incredible fit over my decision and ranted over it, stating that I was going to impair my daughter's neurological development and ruin her taste buds, making her a picky eater for life and causing her to have an eating disorder...AND...she said that our daughter needed to be on a DIET to cut back the calories she was getting from her bottle at 4 months old!!! Since my husband had already left to come home for work I was there alone and I nearly fell apart. I called our pediatrician in tears and when they asked if I could leave a message on the nurse line I said, "NO! I'm calling from South America and I need to talk to MY doctor!!!!!" I was so scared I was going to ruin our baby and really felt like I had to justify every decision to everyone who asked or told me to do something different. Many people on the street would stop us and tell me to cover up her head, face or feet, even though she was sweating from head to toe and sweat was dripping off her nose and upper lip. Little did they know we were going to bring her back to a place where the lakes freeze over! I was just so intimidated and had a hard time feeling that I had the authority to make the decisions and didn't have to justify them. Not that this only happened in Colombia...other friends (who did not adopt) also felt the need to give me advice and at times it came across a bit condescending like because I had not given birth, or had missed out on the first four months I needed extra advice to learn how to be a mom. Whew...sorry that was so long...I didn't intend to explain all of that, bit it was the one thing I could think of that caught me off guard as far as preparation.

I felt adequately prepared by both of the agencies that we used to adopt Anna, although I don't think any agency can prepare you for EVERYTHING that you might possibly encounter. Since our international agency is out of state, we had to go through a different agency for our homestudy. That agency required us to take parenting classes, and while at first I was a little annoyed about it (feeling like it was just one more hoop we had to jump through), I was very glad afterwards for all of the great information we had obtained about the special needs and considerations of parenting an adopted child. Our larger, internation agency also had us do about 2 months of online parenting/adoption classes, and we got to email/interact with other families who were also going through the adoption process, so it was cool to share information and gain insight from them. Our international agency also sent us a HUGE packet of info about Colombia which was very helpful, and of course we did our own reading/research on Colombia, and got a lot of information from other families who had already adopted from Colombia and were willing to share their experience.Megan, I totally hear you on the whole bundling the baby and all the sugary cereal/baby food! Thankfully another friend had warned me to bring my own "sugar-free" rice cereal and jars of veggies since they are impossible to find here!

We also had the social worker from the same agency that we're using, and we LOVE our social worker! Since you spend more time with them than with anyone else from the agency (at least with our agency) our relationship with her has been very important. I was a bit obsessed with research before we went, so I knew a lot about the process and Colombia before we went, but I didn't really feel prepared to be a "Mom." I know you can never really feel prepared, but I think with adoption you can get so absorbed with the process that you don't focus at all on what happens after you're placed with the child! Some general parenting classes would have helped, I'm guessing, but since we didn't take any, I can't be sure...

I think we were adequately prepared, although most of our prepartion was accomplished on our own. Our agency did have required reading for us and they required we attend a weekend event for instruction, Q&A (from other a-parents), etc. The weekend was interesting and I'm sure it was valuable to nearly every participating couple, but it lacked for us. There were some "unique" circumstances to our adoption in that we were adopting an older child and we were the first Colombian adoption out of our agency's local office. We were the only couple at the weekend event I mentioned previously not adopting an infant. In that sense, the weekend was very informative and on point, but it just didn't apply to us. We were already parents to two teenagers and had years of parenting experience under our belt, so that combined with all the research, reading and studying that we did, I believe we had our eyes opened and were prepared; however, mostly because our own proactive approach. I do believe the experience was indeed valuable for our agency. We learned together. I trust that perhaps they are in a better place now to prepare those adopting an older child. If I am honest, I feel, however, that in general, there needs to be much more pre-adoptive counseling for those adopting older children. I'd like to see a slightly longer process and a little more scrutiny, perhaps closer observation as well before approving families for older child adoption. I don't intend for this to be harsh, but better prepartion and greater understanding and expectations will lead to a more successful result for all. Just my .02.

i agree 100%!!!! i adopted older children...they were 8 and 9 when they moved in. (domestic foster care...not colombia....but still.....) and man, i was NOT prepared! i wish someone had made me sit through more trainings...and made me talk to parents of older adopted children. the only reason i'm glad i didn't have to do all that is because when they called me about them, i would have said no. and i really like my kids....but man, is it difficult! ;)

Our social worker here was NOT helpful at all, but we were fortunate enough to meet other families who had traveled to Bogota within the last 4 years (3 couples in total) and they were very helpful. We did a lot of research on our own. Reading blogs from people who are there seems to help. But we haven't gone yet, so I can't say for sure whether we were adequately prepared until we go. I FEEL pretty prepared - but it was all individual effort on our part, not the agency.

I just want to say that, while we adopted an infant, I completely agree with your statement. I believe that the reason the adoption of a sibling group was interrupted while we were there was because of lack of preparation for the adoptive parents. And it caused such heartbreak to all those involved. While adopting an infant had its challenges, those adopting older children had so many more aspects to deal with that I was in awe of them each and every day.