My 10 Wishes for 2002

When parents decide to adopt, they begin a lifelong learning process about adoption options, families, adoptive parenting, grief, loss, and abandonment. Sometimes adoptive parenting also leads us to learn about emotional, behavioral, psychological, or physical disabilities.

Many of us become not only more knowledgeable, but are deeply affected by our new insights. The following list is my hopes and wishes for our children, other parents, and the adoption world in general.

I wish…

1. That the domestic foster care system would be upgraded and improved so that foster children had better case management from their social workers, and so that they could be placed with forever families faster.

2. That all adoption agencies had required parent training programs that discussed parenting, attachment and bonding, adjustment, adoption loss and grief, and more.

3. That adoption support personnel--agencies, therapists, psychiatrists, pediatricians--would become more educated about attachment issues: its causes, manifestations, and effective treatment.

4. That the attachment field would advocate and support more research and studies into attachment treatment approaches.

5. That the adoption community could think of some "magic" formula or public relations approach that would help the "rest" of the world to acknowledge that adoption is just one of many ways to create a family, rather than a second-best choice.

6. That all states (in America) would consider international adoption to be final when the adoption is completed in the foreign country rather than requiring re-adoption: more time, paperwork, and fees.

7. That the American citizenship status, now extended to internationally adopted children, included an automatic decree of citizenship, rather than requiring parents to do additional paperwork and pay addition money to get either a citizenship certificate or a passport.

8. That pediatricians would become more familiar with adoption medicine--issues that often impact children who were adopted: attachment, sensory integration disorder, grief, loss, FAS/FAE, giardia, etc.

9. That more books and stories about families and adoption were available for school age and middle school children to help them adjust to newly adopted siblings.

10. That all of us adoptive parents could become wiser, more thoughtful, more helpful, more knowledgeable, and even stronger as we continue to parent our children into 2002.

Best wishes to everyone as 2001 ends and we look forward to 2002. Wishing you all successful, educational, and loving older child adoption journeys.

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