Part One

In my last post, I told you some exciting news. My family is slowly, carefully, methodically moving forward with considering another placement. This is not something we were looking for, but … sometimes the most awesome things in life are not events or situations you planned for …


I was contacted by a mom needing advice and assistance for her family. This is not unusual, as I receive these kinds of requests more often than you would think. There are many reasons why placements disrupt. Some parents are simply not dispositionally able to make good therapeutic parents. There is nothing sinister or wrong about that ... it is just reality. Others cannot manage one child’s pathology and keep other children safe and thriving at the same time. (This is the case for many families!) Still others have additional major life events thrown at them that tip the scales of an already maxxed out family. And still others have goodness of fit issues that pervade and even supersede some of the many other issues involved with the placement.


I would never have understood twenty years ago how much goodness of fit had the potential to make or break a placement. In families created solely by biology, even if one child is significantly different from one of the parents, they usually share similarities with the other parent, or an aunt or someone from whom they acquired those genetic tendencies. In adoptive families, it is not impossible for one or two parents to be raising a child who is the polar opposite of the rest of the family. That makes it so hard for everyone.


In the case of the aforementioned family, serious behavioral issues, significant additional family crisis (unrelated to the child) and a very poor fit have all contributed to the need for this family to seek alternatives.


I spoke with the mom on the telephone, and the conversation went like many before it. I told the mom to put what we had talked about in an email and I would begin to network to find a suitable placement. No stirrings were occurring in me at that time, that perhaps my family was the suitable placement.


The mom promptly complied, and the next day her email arrived in my Inbox. I read all the way through it, covering all the same information we had discussed on the phone. But before I finished reading, I realized I was having a different reaction to this situation. I realized how many similarities there were between this child’s situation and Beth’s original situation.


I showed the email to Stephanie and Beth, and I must have had a gleam in my eye, for very soon after reading it, Stephanie knew what I was “suggesting”. I say that loosely because this unfolded in a most unexpected way.

Stay tuned!


Goodness of fit in adoption

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