This article appeared in MotherTown – July 2006
By Christine M. Quirk/ Quips
And Quirks
Thursday, July 6, 2006
It was a note from 13-year-old Julie Sargent, a young woman from West Boylston who wants to help her parents raise $1 million to start a non-profit adoption agency. Julie and I share a love of the Red Sox and a passion for finding foster kids permanent homes. Julie has nine siblings, seven of whom were adopted via the foster care system, and her parents, Carle and Debbie, have founded U.S. Adoption Solutions, which will be dedicated to recruiting and training families and then matching them with kids who need adoptive homes.
I liked the Sargents immediately. I liked their candor and their commitment, their easy manner with their many kids, and the way adoption was simply a part of their lives, no more or less important than all the other things that made their children unique. Debbie and I are both adopted ourselves, and my son and daughter came to my husband Rich and me through the Dept. of Social Services. Their son Scott, 14, graciously answered questions which gave me some insight into my own son. As is often the case with people who have been through similar experiences, we talked straight-forwardly about our lives, about deciding to adopt, and about waiting for our kids to come home to us.
Waiting for a match is a funny thing. I wonder if, emotionally, it’s a little like being past your due date and waiting to go into labor; you’re ready, you’re anxious to get on with it, and you’re wondering what you can do to move the process along.
We did a couple of things. One of them was to look at the Web sites for waiting children. I spent hours looking at little, hopeful faces. It made me so sad I had to stop. I wanted to bring them all home. Four brothers from Alabama. Five siblings from Florida. Three girls from Kansas. Closer to home, there were toddler triplets and what we referred to as "the gang of four" -a 13-year-old girl, a 9-year-old boy, a 7-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl.
We also went to an adoption party, a place where potential families and waiting children gather to play, chat and maybe find one another. It was held at an indoor play space which Rich described as "Chuck E. Cheese without Chuck." We saw two of the gang of four there, and Rich met a teenager in the men’s room. They had a brief, lively conversation, and we started to wonder if we could consider high schoolers instead of preschoolers.
It was such an odd experience. It could have been any other day. But everyone there was either a potential parent considering adoption or a child in need of a home. It felt uncomfortably like window shopping, as if a child having a bad day or with a messy face might be less likely to be asked about. It left me feeling vaguely disturbed, and as we drove home, Rich articulated why.
"There was not one bad kid there," he said. "There were kids who had bad things happen to them, who might have some bad behavior as a result, but they were all good kids. How can they all need homes?"
I think the process scares some people. When you want to adopt a child, you must have a home study done, and I think people worry about being "good enough" to pass. Is my house big enough? Do I make enough money? What if I’m overweight or had cancer or drink a beer every now and then while I watch the ballgame? What if I sometimes argue with my spouse or am impatient?
I’m here to tell you none of that matters. Children need parents, not perfection. Our kids’ worker did home visits while our addition was under construction. We had the kids sharing a bedroom and tarps hanging in the doorways to keep out the drywall dust. That’s life. To a child without a home, your two-bedroom apartment, your adequate income and you, no matter what you look like, will be paradise.
I also think the notion of adopting an older child makes people nervous. Kids generally do not end up in the foster care system because they were born into a loving, stable home, and I think potential parents are afraid a child’s early negative experiences may have molded them into future criminals or drug addicts. Most children who are part of sibling groups, out of infancy or part of a minority group are classified as "special needs" and that term may be off-putting.
There seems to be this idea that if you adopt an infant, you can begin to mold them into your family from the beginning and there won’t be any baggage. To some extent, that may be true - a child who goes to an adoptive home straight from the hospital nursery will not have the issues a child removed from his family might. But all of us who are adopted are biologically who we are, and we will differ from the way our adoptive families are wired, whether we become their children at 3 months old or 7 years old. And many of us know people who have had trouble with the law, or with addiction, or with a myriad of other things, despite the sound upbringing their biological parents gave them. There are no guarantees.
When Rich and I embarked on our adventures into adoption, we had the full support of our friends and family. There were acquaintances, however, who turned up their noses at the foster care system. "I’d never do that in a million years," some said. "You have no idea what you’ll get."
I’ll tell you what we "got." We have two beautiful children, who are bright and sassy. Our son is 5. He’ll be going into kindergarten in the fall and can’t wait. He loves Thomas the Tank Engine, dinosaurs and catching ants in his bug-catcher. Our daughter is 3 and takes her dolly for walks in her stroller and loves Snow White and her gymnastics class. They both still ask to watch Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, they help me in the garden and they like to swing and run and play pretend. Sure, there are some challenges - what parent will tell you it’s easy all the time? - but we think they’re perfect. Their biggest obstacles to adoption were they’re older kids and their early years had some turmoil.
People have told us they admire us, they could never do what we do, and we must be extraordinary folks to take in our kids. The truth is, though, we’re nothing special. We’re just a couple of people who fell in love and wanted to raise a family together. Maybe that’s just like you. If opening your home is something you’re willing to consider, check out the resources on page 10. You are welcome to e-mail me as well. I’ll be glad to tell you everything I’ve learned.
I still look at the waiting children sometimes. The boy from the rest room is gone. So are the triplets. But the gang of four is still there. I look forward to the day when I can’t find them. It will be a happier day still when the Web site itself is unnecessary.
Christine M. Quirk is the editor of MotherTown. She lives with her family in Clinton. She can be reached at cquirk@cnc.com.