openness in Poland adoption?

May I ask why you'd want to be in touch with abusive and alcoholic parents who had no business raising kids to begin with? Do you think your kids would benefit from such a connection? Would your kids feel safe with you if they found out you are in touch with the parents that abused them? Would they live their lives thinking one day you're going to return them back to the family that caused them so much pain? Do you think your kids would ever be able to comprehend why you've opted to stay in touch with people who caused them harm? Would you really want your teenager adopted kids have any type of contact with manipulative adults who could cause them further mental harm by saying bad things about you at a period in their lives when teenagers are known to rebel against their parents? Open adoptions are fine when parents willingly placed their children for adoption because they didn't have the means to raise them, or because they were not mature enough to raise them. Open adoptions should be discouraged when the kids were removed from abusive and alcoholic parents. It's not healthy for the kids, and dare I say it's even dangerous!

Not all birth families are abusive and alcoholic. Yes, some are, but some are not. My daughter's first family felt that she would have a better life in America because she was born with deformed legs. My son's family had issues with the fact that he was born without legs. Both of them were abandoned at birth so there was no abuse. I have met other children adopted internationally whose first parents were teens, unable to raise them, some children are given up due to poverty or illness. One little girl I know what placed for adoption because her mother had several children and when her husband died she decided she could not continue to feed and care for the children by herself. She felt the youngest had the best chance of being adopted and loved so she brought her youngest to an orphanage that she knew did adoptions. Each situation is different, adoptive parents like any other parent have to look at the facts and figure out what is best for each child.

We were given our dd's files which contains enough information on the parents to find them, and probably the siblings as well. I asked for information like a pictures of the parents and/or siblings (who were also in care) and was told it wasn't possible. It seems they frowned on what we consider "open adoption" because they want the kids to be fully part of the families that adopt them. (I understand that it is possible with open adoption, but most people didn't seem to believe that in Poland.) I've struggled with the issues that hylo lists above. Each situation is different so you'll just have to wait and see. If anyone has searched in Poland for siblings I would be interested in what you did.

I remember waiting for the judge to call my husband and I into the courtroom in April. So many emotions, the day had finally arrived to adopt our son! I had our facilitator ask the law guardian about his mother. (Dad was unidentified) Had she left some momento, letter, picture? The law guardian looked at me sadly while she respoded in Polish that in the 20 years she had been doing this job, NO ONE had ever left a child anything. This was hard to swallow but a well thought out plan was not made for my son. When the time comes I will share age appropriate information about his mother and siblings. There is no loving story in his early years, so I try my hardest to make up for that every day.

hylo - you do bring up a good point regarding the different circumstances of the child's birth family and their relinquishment, and for me coming from a domestic independent side, I did not deal with abusive birth families. However, coming from being a foster mom, I did deal with what were considered "neglectful" parents by the state's standard, and I hate to say that a lot of it had to do with cultural misunderstandings, spite, and opting to prefer being "safe than sorry" by the state. My former foster daughter's father did turn out to be a very confused individual in need of mental health services which he refused. However, her mother is doing wonderfully with therapy, and has her daughter back. This almost didn't happen. At one point, she called me crying after having a visit cancelled for phone tag! She was on the verge of giving up, convinced that no matter what she did, they wouldn't give her her daughter back. She had been jumping through all their hoops, and they just kept coming up with new stuff for her to do before letting her have her daughter. I'm glad I was able to talk her back down to earth, and less than 2 months later, she was reunited with her daughter. But from this experience I know that there are parents who just can't deal with what it takes to get their kids back. It's not that they don't want to, it's that they are overwhelemed, and society already looks down on them for having their kids taken away to begin with. So I don't want to prejudge my future child's first family without knowing the facts. Having said that, consider that no matter what the background is, the child deserves to know where they come from. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean direct contact, but to pretend everything was honky dorry, or to withhold information about their origin is not our place as adoptive parents. I know of aparents who feel that sharing something like the fact that the birth mother was a prostitute is out of the question. I think this is not their place. Clearly, don't share this with a child. But eventually, whatever you know, the child should know. And if a teen will want to search anyway, which many do and for good reason, how much easier it will be on the whole family if we can assist and be supportive of this. I am not intimidated by the fact that I will not be the only mother my child has ever had. My child will have me, their first mother, their grand mothers, their god-mother, if they ever participate in a student exchange program they'll have a host mother, if they marry they'll have a mother-in-law....but they will only have one set of PARENTS, ie those who PARENTED them, and that's us. Anyway, that's WHY I'm interested in open adoption. But clearly I will not choose to maintain contact with someone who seriously hurt my child, or whose presence in our lives would be disruptive to their tranquil upbringing. I am not saying open adoption or bust. I am just saying it has it's merits. :arrow:

I think it is great to be open to it and maybe there will be an aunt or grandparent that they want you to maintain contact with. I've heard of that sometimes. It is also likely that you won't want any contact once you realize what you are dealing with. Then there is the gray line of - what about siblings? What about that aunt that took your child in for a few months, but refused to do it the third time? Even if I am interested, how would I go about tracking them down - and when would I do it? Either way - the information is hers and we will slowly reveal it to her as she has the ability to process it and communicate the feelings she has about the information. I do consider them to be similar to medical records and some day I will pass ownership of them over to her. (I have every prescription order that she was ever given for instance, every social worker visit write-up, the write-up for the meetings w/ parents after she was taken, her birth/medical records, etc.) It is a difficult question and one that becomes more complicated due to cultural differences, trauma, distance, etc.

K - Love your comment: "I am not intimidated by the fact that I will not be the only mother my child has ever had." Your children will benefit from your open opinion as well. I don't know what ages of children you are looking to add to your family, but nevertheless, almost all children want their birth parents to be respected. This may even include children who were abused (again some, not all). My 3 adoptees were all older adoptees and 2 of them distinctly remember their birth parents and are still going through a grieving process for them. We need to be respectful of that process and help them through it to become healthy adults. So....as with your last question, 3 adoptions, 3 different responses. But first, the similarity. All 3 adoptions, we were given our childrens' original birth certificates and their new birth certificates. Their original birth certs. have the birth parents full names (mom's maiden name) and birth-dates. Our children are aware we have this information and they have all been told that we will hand this information over to them when we feel they are mature enough to handle it (but not before they are 18 and out of high school). We do not have any direct contact with birthparents. Our son was adopted over 9 years ago and at that time, Poland would not release any sibling information to us except that he was the youngest of 8 children. We do not know the names or ages of his brothers/sisters. We were told that he was the only sibling to be adopted to the states. With our middle daughter, we were given the names and birthdates of all her siblings (she is the middle of 9). Her two youngest siblings are in the states and we have email contact with them. Here other siblings are in Poland and, because of our trip back this summer, she now has email contact with her siblings. Our daughter is healing from RAD and PTSD, her getting to meet her older siblings and seeing them for the first time in 5 years and knowing that they were safe was very therapeutic for her (know that we went with the full approval of her therapist and had intense therapy session prior to and upon returning from our trip). Our youngest we were also given the names and birthdates of all her siblings. 5 of her siblings are here in the states and we have varying degrees of contact with them. 2 we see every summer for a weekend plus phone and email contact. 1 we have email contact with. The remaining 2, well, their parents have made it known that they wish to have zero contact with our daughter. Long story, their eternal loss. 3 additional half-siblings are still in Poland and there is no contact.

Polishmom- what great stories! Your talking about siblings makes me wonder... if we say we are interested in one child or two siblings, would they ever split up a referral of a bigger sibling group among several waiting families? There are criteria we feel comfortable with and we put that down. But there are situations that we would still consider if they came up... and I certainly don't want to contribute to splitting up siblings. Of course, if other siblings have already been adopted or aren't in the system, that's a different story. Having said that, I am worried about getting a call out of the blue years after adopting, because our child's sibling is available for adoption. The expense is absolutely beyond our means as it is, and we will only be going through it once.... yet I cannot imagine turning down an opportunity to (re)unite siblings if possible. Clearly, not all adoptive families are open to contact, as you pointed out, so if we were to turn down such an opportunity, we may not even get a chance to have contact bc the other family is insecure or whatever other reason they might have for pretending their adopted child doesn't have family elsewhere. :(

K, the new Polish law states that if the biological parents of adopted children have another child removed from their home - the first contact is with the adoptive parents to see if they are interested in adopting the latest child removed from the family. This has occured on several occassions and I know a family that has received such a call. The situation of multiple siblings being split is not all that uncommon. There are groups of 7 siblings, 8 and even more. The court splits them immediately, and they are placed for adoption as separate groups - some single, some double, some triple. It could very well be that you'll be offered 2 children of a sibling group of 8. But they will specifically tell you that the others are either in the process of adoption with another family or are not going to be adopted internationally. There are cases where the court is adamant of keeping siblings separated. We received such a referral that stated the youngest was being mocked and laughed at by his older siblings and therefore the court recommended that he be adopted as a single child without any siblings. There are stories of a sibling group being split where the court stated that both groups must be adopted to the same country, so they can maintain contact after adoption. There are many different scenarios. It's not necessarily in your control as to whether you can adopt all siblings. Especially not when it's a group of 7... It's not always in an adopted child's favour anyway to adopt their sibling. Not in a case where the child has any bad memories from living with this sibling. There are cases of children being removed from a family, getting adopted, and then the biological parents continue to have more kids. While biologically yes they are all children of the same parents - there's really nothing that says that they MUST be raised by the same adoptive family. After all - neither group knows of each other's existence. There are also stories of a mother having a child by a different father each time. It doesn't mean that it's in the benefit of all this mother's children to be raised together. Sure, it's frightening to know that one day someone will call us and tell us "they had another child." But we already know our answer. When you get the referral ask as many questions as you can about the parents ages, the siblings, etc. It will help you make a more educated decision.