School starts tomorrow for Beth. I’m kind of bummed. I really like having my fun-to-be-around kids at home. Of course, I didn’t always feel that way about all the kids! I completely get how some of you are absolutely chomping at the bits to offload!

Now that the ATN conference is over, and school is about to begin, my mind has shifted to another exciting prospect … one I was successfully able to avoid dwelling on when I was much busier.

I have mentioned several times that we are probably going to be adding... more

Beth and I did errands today and then had our teeth cleaned; next we met her teacher for this year, and visited her teacher from last year. The school had a cookout and had all kinds of inflatable water toys on the playground for the kids to enjoy. It is so beastly hot here we haven’t been walking the dogs much or riding the horses … we have been hunkering down inside.

It has been just the two of us for several days, as my husband and Steph were in Minnesota with Kyle and Marie, watching the Kansas City Chiefs at training... more

Beth and I had a wonderful visit with her first adoptive family last night. I’ll call them “Diane” and “Tim”. Beth had some misgivings earlier in the day. I gave her the option of cancelling, but she stuck with our plans to go. It was her idea to initiate the visit. I understood that she was nervous about it. We did a few errands in the late afternoon and then headed over to their house for pizza. We brought dessert … home made éclairs.... more

Tonight Beth and I are at a very special dinner date. We are having pizza with Beth’s first adoptive family. She arrived in the US from China at 8 months of age, and came to live with my family two weeks before her third birthday. In the interim she lived with her first adoptive family.

They are really nice folks and I am looking forward to seeing them. I can’t fault them at all for the way Beth’s trajectory unfolded. They learned they were pregnant just weeks before they were scheduled to travel. They asked both the local... more

One of the underlying themes I hear all the time from parents contacting me is how their extended families just don’t get the big picture. Most of us come to grips with the fact that our neighbors, the school staff, folks at church and the glaring lady at the grocery store are clueless. But when our own families forget the things they know about the child they raised or the sibling they giggled with or conspired with … well, that’s harder to take.

My dad has struggled forever over what to do about Amy.... more

I think it is only fitting that I add a post script to this series of blogs by telling you about seeing Amy yesterday. I haven’t seen her since May, nor heard from her. Apparently she has changed her phone number, but I wasn’t told. That’s fine, she’s not the first one of my kids to do that.

As I mentioned previously, she hadn’t paid a nickel of rent since taking up residence in her apartment last September. The first six months rent were paid in advance, as arranged by my husband, using money we made her save (direct... more

As I discuss the particular situation of one family, one reader wondered about the attachment therapist suggesting that the family take some time to regroup. The reader wondered why the therapist wouldn’t get the family in immediately, given that the family is clearly in crisis.

I think some of the answer to that question lies in this mom’s own musings about this situation. She says …

I... more

Continuing with one particular family’s story, I have been corresponding with a mom who, along with her husband, adopted two boys from Eastern Europe. While the younger child is doing well, the older one has successfully planted fear within this mom … she is afraid of him, and few folks appear to be listening to her very valid concerns. She recently was visited by her state social services agency, and she wrote to tell me about... more

The other day I spoke with a mom on the phone who had adopted sibs from Eastern Europe. One child was doing fine, but the other one was not. The older child was in respite at a home that “sort of” understood the dynamics, but not really. This child has threatened mom’s life, in the presence of Dad, and Mom was still shouldering 200% of the burden for making big decisions about the boy’s future and the family’s future. Like so many moms before her, she was in tears on the phone. In one of her emails to me, she said:

When... more

I had a conversation this morning with Janet Keall, an adult adoptee who spoke at the ATN conference last week. She had quite an impact on our parents. For her part, she was quite amazed and appreciative of how open and interested in learning the conference attendees proved themselves to be. Of course, it is the folks who most want to learn about their kids and how to impact their kids who attend the conferences, so it isn’t surprising that the population was skewed... more