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Just curious. When I adopted my daughter overseas I expected very vague info & the way they word things is quite comical. ( calm, good at cleaning - to describe a 3yr old!) But from your experience(s) how accurate were the initial photolistings?
One of the books I'm reading they asked FP's the same question. One of my favorites was when a child was described as "needs two parent home ". Actually meant "may need 2 people to restrain the child." LOL
DH & I were looking at a little boy who is described as " shuts down & stares into space when confronted with large crowds. " Does this mean possible RAD, possible Autism or just general anxiety?
Any funny stories to share??
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We have friends who finalized their adoption of a 6 & 8 year old sibling set. The photolisting said the boy loves to play sports, esp. baseball.
They got the kids home and found out immediately that the boy had never played baseball in his life!!! Who knows where they got the idea that he loves to play baseball and sports.
" shuts down & stares into space when confronted with large crowds. "
Could be simple as PTSD or complex as Dissociative Disorder. If its mentioned in a photolisting, I would assume its pretty bad.
Our little guy was said to be slow to warm up to people and that he sleeps in. He will run up to strangers in the park and want to hug them and gets up at like 5:30am sometimes. I was more surprised at how much they didn't tell us! He has been such a handful since we got him and nobody prepared us for all the things we are struggling with and I know these behaviors didn't start the day we got him...
We are adopting teenagers, so I have read maybe 20-30 full profiles (the full 30+pagers) after looking at the photolistings to narrow the scope a bit. All of the kids except 1 had reasonably accurate (but fluffy) information in the photolisting... and that one exception, wow.
His photolisting stated that he was a wonderful kid that really wanted to have lots of pets and a mom.
However, the full profile revealed a very long history of animal abuse and violence/disrespect toward women. I'm not really sure what the caseworker that wrote his profile was smoking when she wrote the photolisting blurb, but it's doing this kid a huge disservice by advertising for the polar opposite of what he really needs... no pets and a strong father figure!
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I would say that in of our two girls listings they gave a reasonable summary of the girls basic personality while skipping over any potential issues. Both included some accurate details that to some extent made them a match for our family. Our oldest had the line "would like to have younger siblings" and our middle said "would like to have lots of siblings". They each got siblings that matched the description and were thrilled about it. There were also some basic likes/dislikes such as horses, computers, and Disney movies. That was all accurate, but how much does it matter, anyway? I don't know.
Oh, and as for skipping over issues, we were expecting and welcoming issues, so that was fine, too. Although, we have known another girl who was photolisted that really didn't have any issues, so you never know on that.