Suppose you’re wondering how you go about looking for adoptive parents. While you’re thinking about or are in the stages of placing your child for adoption, you’d like to find adoptive parents. In that case, you’ll find plenty of helpful tidbits of information on finding the best adoptive parents for your child by reading this article. I’ll go over the red flags, the family profiles, what you should look for in adoptive parents, and how to find adoptive parents that are accepting of your child.
Where Do You Start Looking for Adoptive Parents?
How do you find adoptive parents for your child? For starters, think about what you’re looking for with adoptive parents. Some things you should consider are:
- What’s their neighborhood like? Do they live in a diverse area? Is their community warm and inviting?
- Do you envision your child growing up in the city, country, or suburbs? Do you see them going to college? Do the adoptive parents fulfill that vision?
- What things do they like to do as a family? Do they want to travel? Play games? Learn new things?
- Do the adoptive parents have other children? How old are they?
- What do they like to do for fun, and will they share those activities with your child?
- What do they do for a living? Do they enjoy their careers?
- What matters most to the adoptive parents? Do they have great values?
- What do they believe in? Would you like the adoptive parents to have the same religious beliefs as you?
- Why do they want to adopt? Will they teach your child about their adoption? What will they say about you as the birth parent? Do they use positive adoption language?
By outlining what you’d like to look for in adoptive parents, you can confidently start your search to find the perfect fit. Looking for adoptive parents doesn’t have to be a treacherous journey that you have to face alone. You can always have help with your search.
How Do I Find a Great Adoption Agency or Attorney to Help Me Find Adoptive Parents?
It helps to research the best adoption agencies near you and find a reputable adoption attorney. If you live in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma, or New York, the Gladney Center for Adoption is a great place to start looking for adoptive parents. Gladney is full of excellent staff who will help you on your search, and in fact, there are many adoption services available to you even after adoption. Gladney believes that every child is deserving of a loving and caring family, and they won’t stop until all children have a loving and stable forever family home. If all of this sounds great for you and your child, you can contact Gladney and find a center near you.
Adoption attorneys can help you understand your rights throughout the adoption process, even when finding potential adoptive parents. When finding and working with an adoption attorney, be sure that they respect you as a person and want what’s best for your child as well. Be sure that they aren’t just favoring the adoptive family, but they’re fully interested and determined in helping you find the best adoptive parents.
What Are Family Profiles?
The adoption professional will give you adoptive parent profiles that will most likely be in scrapbook format with details about the adoptive parents.
There are things you should look for in an adoption family profile. Are the parents happy in their photos? Do the adoptive parents provide a descriptive background about their lives? Are they passionate about their hobbies and interests? Do they talk about their other family members like other children or other household members? Do the adoptive parents explain why they want to adopt? Family profiles are made to help you as the expectant parent get to know some essential details about the hopeful adoptive family, so make sure to take your time to consider each family you look at.
Will the Adoptive Parents Accept Your Child?
Some confident adoptive parents are ready to parent any child whether your child has special needs, is of a different race (also known as transracial adoption), is from another country (also known as international adoption), is part of a sibling group, and has different beliefs and values. Although some adoptive parents aren’t ready or willing to adopt a child with specific lifestyles different from their own, your adoption professional can help you find a great adoptive family. The latter is more than prepared to care for your child.
Every child deserves to be loved and accepted despite their differences and needs. When finding the right adoptive family, discuss the requirements and disparities that’ll come with adopting your child. Explain to them the unique needs your child has and express any concerns you may have. You can even write a thought-out letter to the adoptive parents accepting your child and let them know how crucial it is for your child to have unconditional love and connection from their new parents.
What If You Have More Than One Child to Place for Adoption?
Before we get into the informal part of this article, I’d love to share my real-life experience with this. When my twin sister and I were placed for adoption, we were placed as a sibling group. Because my sister had developmental delays when she was born, a few adoptive parents wanted to split us up. While in foster care, our foster mother did everything she could to keep my twin and me together. And when we did get adopted together at 5 years old, we were both happy to never be without the other. I couldn’t imagine being split up from her, and I’m thankful my adoptive parents chose to keep us together.
Will siblings remain together if you place them for adoption? Whether you work with an adoption agency or with an adoption attorney, they’ll agree that there’s a proven positive impact with siblings being adopted together. If you have multiple children, it’s beneficial to keep them together (except in the cases of sibling abuse and different parental custody situations). Siblings are important when choosing adoptive parents, so be sure to ask the adoptive parents how they feel about sibling groups. There are many positives when it comes to siblings being adopted together. First, siblings who are adopted together won’t ever feel alone, especially with a new family. Second, siblings won’t ever have to worry about being separated from each other. Third, siblings are always going to have that forever connection in their lives. Adoptive families will always look at the positives and negatives of adopting siblings, but the positives usually always outweigh the negatives.
What Are the Red Flags You Should Look for in Adoptive Parents?
While there are many wonderful adoptive parents, there are reasons to decline a hopeful adoptive family. One big red flag to look out for is if the adoptive parents are in it for money instead of your child. Another red flag is if the adoptive parents are more interested in your child instead of getting to know you as a person. Deceptive adoptive parents could also be a red flag if the adoptive family is too secretive or dishonest about who they say they are. It’s best to do some more research on the red flags expectant parents should watch for in adoptive parents.
Here are a few more red flags to look out for with adoptive parents:
The adoptive parents feel guilty for not wanting to adopt your child: Suppose they quickly change their mind about adopting your child once they meet you or once your child is placed with them. That shows that they were being biased about you and your child or weren’t as prepared to adopt as they thought they were.
Friends and family pressure them to adopt any child that becomes available: In some cases, the adoptive parents’ friends and family might pressure them to adopt a child because they want a sibling, grandchild, niece, nephew, cousin, friend’s child’s playmate, etc. If the potential adoptive parents bring this up multiple times in conversations with you, it shows that they aren’t ready to adopt your child for the sake of having a child as their own.
To save a relationship: Believe it or not, a few hopeful adoptive parents want to adopt a child to save a failing relationship. When you meet the couple and find out that they are having relationship troubles, having them adopt your child will also turmoil for all involved.
The adoptive parents talk about doing a good deed by adopting: Adoption is a beautiful way to grow a family. However, if you find the adoptive parents boastingly talking about the excellent act they’re doing to pay a debt to society, you should consider finding new adoptive parents.
What Are Some Questions You Should Ask the Adoptive Parents?
Meeting the adoptive parents can have you feeling both excited and nervous, so coming up with some great questions to ask the hopeful adoptive parents will be beneficial. What are some questions you could ask an adoptive family before placing? You can ask them about what they think of your adoption plan, what they do for a living, their family life, how they plan to discipline, their values, how they met, their religious beliefs, and anything else you wrote down when you were thinking about what the adoptive family will be like for you. Ask questions that will help you get to know the adoptive parents better, and be open to them to ask questions for you as well.
What If You Don’t Like the Adoptive Parents?
Sometimes, people don’t click, and it’s perfectly fine if the adoptive parents you chose aren’t to your liking. You can let your adoption professional know if you want to continue looking for adoptive parents, and you can look through more family profiles. Then, either you or your adoption professional can let the adoptive parents know that it isn’t going to work out and continue with your search to find the right adoptive parents for your child.
It’s okay to change your mind about choosing the adoptive parents. Although some adoptive parents do get heartbroken when adoption plans fall through, it’s still your choice to do what you think is best for your child.
What If the Adoptive Parents Don’t Like Your Child or You?
There’s plenty of reasons why adoptive parents change their mind about adopting, and you should never take it personally. Although, if you find that the adoptive parents are mean, judgemental, snobbish, or vastly rude to you, that’s a vital sign that the adoption won’t work out by any means. You should find adoptive parents that have the utmost respect and love for both you and your child.
What Happens After You Found Great Adoptive Parents?
Congratulations! You’ve found amazing adoptive parents that love and accept your child unconditionally. Now that you found fantastic adoptive parents, you can go over your adoption plan, discuss what the adoption options will be like for everyone, and talk about your plans for the future. There’s also the termination of parental rights that will end the legal parental relationship between you and your child.
But that isn’t the end of adoption, especially if you’ve chosen an open or semi-open adoption. If you’ve chosen closed adoption, you’ll have closure knowing that your child is placed in a loving home while maintaining your privacy. If you chose an open or semi-open adoption, you can give updates about your life and receive updates about your child. You can also visit the adoptive family and form a lifelong bond. By choosing a wonderful adoptive family, you’ve blessed a couple with the gift of a forever family.
Are you considering adoption and want to give your child the best life possible? Let us help you find an adoptive family that you love. Visit Adoption.org or call 1-800-ADOPT-98.