I am New! Need Agency Advice??

congrats on your decision. we adopted a toddler girl and brought her home this past june. Feel free to pm me.

Hi there and welcome to the forum. We adopted a 20 month old boy last spring and it sounds like we have a lot in common. Feel free to PM me too!

It is all very possible, and congrats for deciding to move forward. But remember that every child, even from Poland, has been through trauma and for some reason were not adopted in Poland. Our child would be considered happy and healthy. We have been home 2 years and it has been the hardest two years we have ever faced as parents. We already had a bio child, so it wasn't getting used to being a parent. Everyone in Poland was upfront about what our daughter had been through and were she was. She was 3.5 at an 18 mo level. Overcoming trauma at a young age is just hard to do. I mention this, not to say you are unrealistic, but to do some research on attachment and trauma. You will have to deal with this in some way. Maybe mild, maybe more--but understand that even if they are "healthy" they have been traumatized in some way. I get the idea from some posts and parents that we may have experience the wrath of trauma a bit more than others. Still our daughter has made tremendous strides. She also was never diagnosed with RAD. She started kindergarten last week on-time which we didn't even think was going to be possible. People have noticed she is different after the summer, even her posture has improved. She is still behind, but she is clearly older than the kids that will start kindergarten next year. We have all sorts of supports in place for her so she can be succesful, but she hasn't needed some of them. She is more in control of herself and understands her emotions better. We understand trauma better and have been able to help her understand her reactions better. But is/was hard. We were an international traveling family with a kid that had been all over the world, that loved night trains in Ukraine, learning new languages, and 20 hour plane rides to some new destination. We haven't done international travel in 2 years since coming home. Just getting our daughter able to travel to the grandparents with us was a big step. We will be trying international later this year/early next year. Last night I was at a PTA meeting and a friend said to me her son screamed at her for 30 minute last night over his homework and she was distraught. Then she looked at me and said, "how did you do this for two years w/ your daughter." I just said, "It is hard when your child screams at you isn't it." Truthfully, I was surprised someone who hadn't been through it realized it was hard. By the way, our daughter is the gentlest, most kind with animals. She loves them and truly cares for them. She was more careful with our cat than our bio son. So trauma doesn't equate to "mean with animals." She goes out of her way to make sure that she is petting the cat so the cat is happy. You can get the "world" which will be your family and child. It just might be harder to mold than people realize. Good luck and research trauma while you wait.

There are no guarantees in international adoption. While most parents feel that they adopted the child they were meant to have, they don't all get the Gerber baby. And many have some rather tough times, as they try to integrate the child into their family life. First off, many children come into the adoption system via abandonment. Others may come via placement by a single woman who was not in any sort of a committed relationship with the birthfather. There may be little or no information about either or both of the birthparents. You may or may not get any information about the pregnancy and delivery -- for example, whether the child was full term or preemie, whether there was any period of time during delivery when the child had respiratory distress and was not getting enough oxygen to the brain, etc. You may not get any information about the birthmother's use of alcohol, drugs, or tobacco during pregnancy. You may or may not know if, on either side of the birth family, there were serious issues such as genetically transmitted psychiatric or medical illnesses. Second, the foreign medical system may be quite different from the American one. In many countries, doctors keep records of things that are meaningless by American standards, and do not keep records of things that American pediatricians worry about. As an example, you won't find "fetal alcohol spectrum disorder" or "attachment disorder" listed in the records of most kids coming from overseas, even if they have clear signs of prenatal exposure to alcohol or show behaviors characteristic of a child who has lost the ability to trust adults. You may or may not learn that a child is showing signs of having been physically or sexually abused. And, of course, medical exams on institutionalized children may or may not be thorough. Many children come home to their new parents with undiagnosed physical conditions that would probably not have been missed by an American doctor or lab -- poor vision or hearing, for example, or the presence of Hepatitis B carrier status. And in the orphanages and foster homes, records of a child's physical, mental, and emotional development may or may not be very accurate or complete. You may not know until you meet the child if he/she is walking at age two or talking at age three. You may not know if he/she makes eye contact, is affectionate with caregivers, is texture avoidant when he/she eats, etc. And, of course, you will not know how resilient a child you are adopting. Some kids can live through absolutely horrific situations and emerge able to live a normal life. Others experience much less in the way of bad experiences, yet are traumatized severely. In general, the likelihood that a child has been severely damaged by his/her experiences in his/her birthfamily or orphanage or foster home increases with age. The older a child is, the more likely it is that he/she has had some negative experiences, and the less likely it is that adjustment to a family environment will be easy. HOWEVER, there are infants and toddlers who come home with behaviors that can be extremely worrisome, and that reflect a reaction to loss, abuse, neglect, etc. The good news is that many children do extremely well in their adoptive homes. Many children need only lots of love, nutritious food, some exercise, some structure and stability, and so on, in order to thrive. If they turn out to have some medical or emotional conditions, the parents are usually able to address them, possibly with some professional help. But even the most "normal" children MAY take a good deal of time to settle in to their families, and it may not always be easy. Delays and regressions are common. Grieving is common. Testing limits is common. Language skills can develop slowly for some children. Behaviors such as hoarding food or trying to take things away from other children are common. Anxious attachment (clinginess) is common. Parenting is never easy, but parenting a newly adopted child from overseas is often harder than parenting a homegrown child. I don't want to try to deter you from adopting. I am the very happy Mom of a daughter whom I adopted when she was 18.5 months old, and who is now 15 years old. She is the joy of my life. But you need to know that love is not enough. You may need better than average medical insurance. You may need to have access to therapists familiar with adoption issues. You may need to learn to get along without as much sleep as you usually get, and learn to adjust some of your expectations. And as to those Yorkies, do remember that small dogs -- and especially the small terriers -- tend not to be a great choice for a household with toddlers. They are more easily threatened by loud voices, fast movements, and people that handle them a bit roughly. And when they feel threatened, they may nip or snap. Small dogs can also be injured more easily if a child tries to pick them up, sit on them, etc. I usually prefer to see kids in homes with large, placid dogs who can take small kids in their stride. Still, if you are willing to spend a lot of time supervising your children and your pets, and training BOTH to behave properly with each other, kids and dogs make great companions. I waited until my daughter was almost 7 before getting a puppy. And we got a nice, medium sized Airedale terrier, who now weighs about 43 lb. My daughter is 15 now, and Kelly, the Airedale, is 9. They seem to think that they are sisters! And my daughter is a far better vet than I am. She is an expert at the correct removal of ticks, at bandaging sore paws, and so on. She learned about menstuation when we let Kelly go through a couple of heat seasons before spaying! Becca reads aloud to Kelly, who is inclined to fall asleep during the reading of a Russian novel or an economics text. And Becca is actually a more strict disciplinarian than I am. (Kelly sleeps on MY bed, however, much to my daughter's annoyance.) Sharon