The Plan. Revised. Part V.

[So, we had learned of a boy in China who was in need of a family, and would soon be too old to be legally adopted.  We had discovered that, contrary to our expectations about time frame, China's requirements, and our finances, we could realistically adopt him.  We had thought, and prayed, and been encouraged by an unexpected encounter with the adoptive parents of a little girl from China with the same special need as the boy we were considering.  And we had watched video footage of him that gave us more of a mental picture of him, but also raised some new questions.]

By now it was a week after we had gotten the initial e-mail from this boy's U.S. adoption agency saying that it would probably be possible for us to adopt the child we had inquired about.  On Monday, we got busy with our second round of questions.  I joined yahoo groups, hoping to learn from their members, and sent off e-mails to various people asking various questions.  One of the e-mails went to our Family Finder at the agency to ask if we could find out more about this child's foster family.  I was told that China does not encourage contact between adoptive and foster families, and that it was unlikely that we could find out any more about them unless he told us himself after being adopted by us.  So, no help there.  I also sent an e-mail to the woman who had originally written the e-mail we had first seen about this boy, asking if I could talk to her about him, and if anyone else had contacted her to find out more about him.  We were the only ones who had contacted her, and she was happy to talk to me over the phone between such-and-such hours.

So Monday night I called and talked to this boy's advocate.  I was a little disappointed to find out that her child had been adopted at age two, and so she couldn't answer many of my questions as to what life in the SWI was like for older children.  But she was able to tell me a little bit more about her meeting with the director of the SWI, and how the director had seemed to care so much for this boy, and wanted so badly for him to have a family.  She also agreed to post my questions to the yahoo group for this SWI, so that any parents who had adopted older children from there could answer my questions if they were willing.

A couple of people e-mailed me detailed responses, and one woman sent me an invitation to call her.  Some of what was shared I won't go into here because it was personal.  But I learned some things that helped me get a feel for what it might be like to grow up in that environment:

--The staff generally do care about the children and try to do right by them.  But of course, there is only so much adult attention to go around, and sometimes bigger kids are mean to smaller ones.  Several parents shared the types of discipline (punishment) their children had experienced, although they weren't sure if it was an orphanage-wide policy or if discipline is nanny-specific.
--Some (but not all) of the older children attend school in the community.  The boy we were considering appears to be one of them.  They walk back and forth each day.  At least one child experienced severe bullying at the community school.
--The orphanage encourages families from the community to take children home for weekends or holidays.  At the designated time, children are brought into the lobby and pre-screened families are invited to pick out which child they will take home for a visit.  The mother who told me this said that on the one hand, it gives kids good manners and experience with family life.  On the other hand, it can lead them to be over-pleasers in order to be chosen.
--The kids in the traveling choir (which our boy was in) have had lots of experiences in the wider world, so are not as sheltered as is typical of orphans.
--Of all the families that one mother was aware of that have adopted older children from this orphanage, only one has experienced significant behavioral problems.  That's not to say their kids don't have issues relating to having spent their growing-up years in an institution, but they have tended to settle into their families well.
--In this orphanage, kids who don't get adopted go to work in a factory or go to trade school at about age 16.
--Kids who do get adopted are allowed to continue contact with their friends at the orphanage.

The things I learned about the SWI were not 100% as I had hoped, but by and large painted a picture of a stable environment where children could give some attention to growing up and not just survival.  In any case, there were no serious red flags.  One of the parents ended her e-mail with: "I will leave you with this....from my experience there are more good reasons to say yes than reasons to say no."

The last big, unsettled question in our minds was what would be the costs for this boy of leaving the relationships and competencies he has in China in order to be adopted, vs. the costs of staying there and living with discrimination and without permanent legal connections to anyone.  That question was the one we couldn't answer.  We knew he would face significant discrimination and lack of opportunities if he stayed in China...but he seemed to have a talent for acquiring advocates, and if his director was willing to go to bat for him in adulthood as strongly as she had in trying to get him adopted, he might well do better than many young men in his position.  It sounded like he had a significant relationship with his foster family...but they presumably were unable or unwilling to adopt him, since they had not done so, and there was no way of knowing whether the relationship would be permanent, like the one we would have with him if we adopted him.  There are some very vocal (and eloquent) adult international adoptees who feel that taking a child away from their language and culture and birth country relationships is just too damaging...but this child was old enough that, while he would never again feel at home in China in the same way that he does now, he would certainly maintain language, relationships, and cultural competency even if he spent the next ten years as part of our family in the U.S.

In the end (I think on Thursday night) we discussed everything that we had learned and reached a few conclusions.

1.  There were way more unknowns than we liked about this boy's situation in China, and the likely outcomes if we didn't adopt him, but his SWI director did know his situation and how his life might turn out, and she clearly felt very strongly that being adopted was in his best interest.  Furthermore, it sounded like he himself had wanted very badly to be adopted, even by a foreign family, at the time he was first listed, and we guessed that he had been asked again and said yes again before he participated in the Journey of Hope event (where the video footage was taken), after he was already living in his foster family.
2.  While we still hadn't heard any voice speaking from heaven, the information we needed and the answers to our questions had been falling into place in ways that felt more than accidental.  We had done our best to consider every angle and to track down every piece of data that might help us make a responsible decision, and after all that process, we were not left with any reason to say no.  Lots of unknowns, yes, but we knew more things than many parents in our position were able to find out, and all of what we knew was pointing in the same direction.

Meanwhile, time was moving on, and the deadline for this boy's adoption (his 14th birthday) was not negotiable.  So we took a deep breath and decided to move forward, on the theory that the way things were coming together was the answer to our prayers for guidance.  By Friday of that week I was filling out the application form for this boy's U.S. agency, and making arrangements with an agency in our state to do our homestudy.


A few days later, I wrote to a friend:  "We are moving forward with [the adoption] process--with some trepidation!--but we have been praying and paying attention, and it seems that all of our concerns are being answered one by one.  At least, those for which an answer is possible."