Tell me about failed adoption

[not_what_you_d_expect]

@SSG_Schwartz

I probably don’t fit the category of what you are looking for, but I will tell my story:

We are unable to have children naturally. We finally accepted that fact, and went through the classes required to foster or adopt a child. We went through the background checks and the home inspections. We waited, hoping to at least foster a child. We paid a lot of money for the classes, the background check, the home inspection, but we wanted to raise a child.

I had one of my co-workers tell me that he had got his girlfriend pregnant and since I was looking to adopt, would I take his child? I agreed and waited for the day when he said I could meet the mother. Two weeks later he told me the mother had an abortion.

About a year later, I am deployed to Iraq, and my wife tells me she has met a woman who is pregnant for the fourth time, this time with twins, but she has no children she is raising. This woman has given her three previous children to her brother to raise and she cannot bear to make him raise two more. So we talk to the mother, she says she wants us to have her babies and will do anything to help us. So we hire a family lawyer, pay almost $2000 for her to write up the court paper work. I take my leave from Iraq and come home to sign the papers. I ask my wife if she is ready for this. I ask the mother if this is what she want to do. Both women say that this is the best thing that could happen. …

When the mother delivers two beautiful baby girls, she decides that she cannot let someone else raise them, and she will let her brother have them until she can get off of drugs and alcohol. Well, it has been five years now, and she has yet to get off crack. Or take any of her kids.

SFC Schwartz

This is just so awful. I feel bad for you and your wife. My daughter is just exploring adoption. It is so expensive.

They do not make it easy for a person to adopt. Did you guys give up? If that’s not too personal a question to ask.

[lavenderviolet]

@SSG_Schwartz

I probably don’t fit the category of what you are looking for, but I will tell my story:

We are unable to have children naturally. We finally accepted that fact, and went through the classes required to foster or adopt a child. We went through the background checks and the home inspections. We waited, hoping to at least foster a child. We paid a lot of money for the classes, the background check, the home inspection, but we wanted to raise a child.

It’s very sad to hear that you encountered so many situations where your hopes were raised but then dashed. I am not clear on what happened with the foster system efforts. Did you tell them to stop considering you after that coworker brought up the idea of adopting a child? If so, did something happen that meant they wouldn’t consider letting you back into the program after that didn’t work out? If that isn’t the case, I hope you can find a way to get back into the system and open your home to someone who needs caring parents. If something in the system stopped you from being considered after that, I definitely don’t think that’s fair. You sound like the kind of person who would be a great parent and I hope that something does work out for you guys.

[Nava]

@olivesmarch4th

My husband, a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology, just completed his written qualification exams (his oral defense is Monday) and one of his questions was the weight of evidence for RAD.

That’s truly tragic, but when it comes to children especially, love is an action, not something you feel. People don’t ‘‘luuuurve’’ their natural born kids, necessarily, either.

Best wishes on the defense and boy, do I hear you!

I think rhubarbarin has a point here:

For these kids, due to the often psychotically violent behavior and sexual acting-out, a group home or institution with heavy security is often the safest solution. I know I couldn’t afford it. If the child is put back into state care, it’s covered.

But - it’s just sad that she does, that healthcare can be such a horrible drain on a family’s resources that it can be a logical reason to place your child in government’s care.

[rhubarbarin]

What’s extra messed-up that there are multiple options to assist families dealing with serious health problems in their children, and health insurance will cover a lot of things - but treatment for mental illness, which claims rather a lot of lives 13-18, is much complicated. If your kid is dying from anorexia nervosa, a serious danger to themselves or others, or has PTSD, RAD, etc - in-patient treatment beyond a couple weeks in a state loony bin (which can make things worse) or therapy beyond weekly sessions is not even an option, financially, for most families, even if you have pretty good insurance.

Although, the new health care plan made a few provisions for this - IIRC all states are now mandated to provide better mental health coverage through CHIP.