10 Things Adult Trans-racial Adoptees Want You To Know

Source: http://creatingafamily.org

1. Love your kids with your whole heart. Love may not be everything, but it is a great step in the right direction.
2. Let your children know that you are always open to talking about adoption and race by bringing these topics up periodically. Look for opportunities in your everyday life where race or genetics or adoption comes up naturally.
3. Every so often, check in with your child to see what they are experiencing with adoption and with transracial adoption. Don’t assume they will tell you on their own even if you are receptive to the conversation.
4. It is easier if you adopt more than one child of color. Having someone else in the family of your race makes life easier.
5. Hang out with other mixed race families. Your children need to see that there are other families that look like theirs. It is all the better if some of these families are also adoptive families.

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FIVE Facts We Must Teach Our Black Kids. Add your thoughts and ideas – share with us.

Source: http://creatingafamily.org

The real experts on adoption are the people who have lived the experience—adoptees. What do young adult transracial adoptees say are the most important things white parents must teach their black kids to keep them safe in this racial world we live in?

Whenever we hear a case such as the killing of Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown (or the local cases of police violence against young black men that never make the national news) every parent of a black son wonders what they can do to make certain that their child doesn’t become a statistic. White parents of African American children have the added disadvantage of teaching their children about a situation they likely haven’t experienced.

For example, on a recent Creating a Family radio show on Interracial Adoptive Parenting: White Parents with Brown Children, the guest said many black parents know that in order to get their driver’s license their children, especially their sons, must not only know the basics of how to drive a car, change a tire, and avoid other crazy drivers, they must also understand what it means to DWB (Drive While Black). As parents they have the added responsibility of making sure their sons can control their temper and stay respectful and safe even in situations that seem/are very unfair.

On a Creating a Family show with a panel of young adult African American and Haitian American adoptees, I asked what their parents did to prepare them to live safely in today’s world and what they would recommend for this current generation of transracial adoptive parents and children. They gave the following five suggestions.

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Distorting the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) – Katie Jay’s guest blogger, Johnston Moore

Source: http://childrendeservefamilies.com

The boys with a picture of their ancestor, Chief White Cloud.

This is a guest blog post from Johnston Moore. Johnston Moore and his wife Terri have been married 26 years and have adopted seven children from the Los Angeles County foster care system. After a career in Hollywood, John co-founded and now serves as Executive Director of Home Forever. John writes extensively and speaks at numerous churches and conferences about foster care and adoption, and he strongly believes that children, traumatized or not, need stability and permanence far more than some manufactured phantom connection to a culture that was never theirs.

Last December, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a new DOJ initiative aimed at promoting compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a 1978 federal law passed in response to the “wholesale removal” of Native American children from their families. Tribes were rightly concerned at the time that many Indian children were removed from their families by non-Indian social workers unfamiliar with tribal child-rearing practices and placed in non-Indian foster and adoptive homes away from Indian Country, where many were forced to assimilate into the majority culture, losing connection to the tribal life and customs in which they had been raised. Tribes and Indian families suffered greatly too, as they saw many of their younger members taken away.

In his announcement, Holder pledged to “ensure that the next generation of great tribal leaders can grow up in homes that are not only safe and loving, but also suffused with the proud traditions of Indian cultures.” In that statement, Holder demonstrates an alarming level of naiveté regarding ICWA, and the ways it is impacting children today.

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Children Are Waiting: Every Child Is Worthy of a Permanent Family

Eman – I will rise by Chris Tomlin

This video was shot while visiting our son for the first son in Ghana. I simply can’t explain what that moment was like. This moment happened on the 2nd or 3rd day. We were sitting in the orphanage and the children starting to sing.

Click here to watch the video.

News from Armenia: US Citizens are no longer required to obtain a visa for entry to Armenia!

News from Armenia: US Citizens are no longer required to obtain a visa for entry to Armenia! Hopscotch Adoptions’ Armenian Travel Guide has been updated to reflect this change.  If you have been notified of impending travel prior to April 30, be sure to ask for the updated guide.

Grant Organizations Friendly to Latter Day Saint Families

 

• The Rollstone Foundation
• A Child Waits
• Golden Dawn Adoption Assistance
• The Never Alone Foundation
• Help Us Adopt
• Gift of Adoption

Thanks to the Valenzuela family for sharing this list.

How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across A Lifetime

Source: http://www.ted.com

By Nadine Burke Harris

Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where those who’ve experienced high levels of trauma are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. An impassioned plea for pediatric medicine to confront the prevention and treatment of trauma, head-on.

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Anything You Can Do…. I Can Too!

See video.

Mothers of children with Down syndrome Survey

Hello!

My name is Amanda Smith. I am conducting a survey of biological and adoptive mothers of children with Down syndrome for my dissertation. I have been more successful in receiving responses from biological mothers. I am trying to now reach more mothers who have adopted.

Overall, the purpose of this research is to understand the feelings and experiences of being a mother in general and being a mother to a child with Down syndrome. The survey will take no longer than 5 minutes. The first page of the survey is a welcome letter that will inform those who click on the link that their information is confidential and the survey is anonymous.  If you would forward on this link to my survey to any support groups or parent groups you may have, I would be incredibly grateful. If anyone completes the survey and would like more information  or would like to share about their experiences, please don’t hesitate to send them my email address.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/mothers_of_children_with_DS

Mothers of children with Down syndrome Survey

Hello! As a caregiver of a child with Down syndrome you know firsthand the trials and successes you feel as a parent and for your child. Being a mother gives you experiences that are identical to no one else.

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Thank you for your time!

Amanda A Smith, Ed.S.

Children Are Waiting: Every Child Is Worthy of a Permanent Family

Welcome Home Godwin Derrick

Click here to watch the video.