The Connected Child

Part of the process to adopt is being educated and trained.  There is training in adoption itself as well as parenting and child development with regards to adoption and there is training on China and the international agreement called The Hague Convention.  I'll write more about the latter another time.  Today, I wanted to post on one of our assigned readings called The Connected Child: Bring hope and healing to your adoptive family by Karyn Purvis. I think over time, I will post more and more about what I think about what I'm learning, but for now, I just want to say that there is a lot to consider when adopting.  :)  Duh, right?

One thing we know is most likely going to be true is that our child or children will be coming from an orphanage.  Although foster care is starting in China, it is not common.  With hundreds of thousands of children abandoned, foster care is simply not an option for all of them.  Many children end up in institutions.  I try not to read much about the institutions because I get nightmares.  I have to trust that Jesus will take care of getting our little one(s) to our home and trust that He is Sovereign and loves them even more than we do.

With that said, there are serious ramifications for being brought up in an orphanage.  Many little ones appear to have a flat head because they lay in bed and look at the ceiling all day.  I don't want to go into too much detail at the moment, but the mental and emotional trauma on a child's brain for laying all day long every day can be quite severe.  Think about it, without touch, conversation, eye contact, colors, stimuli from the environment, etc.... the brain has no need to make the necessary connections and patterns that in the first few years of life it so desperately wants and is geared to do.  In the first few years of life, the brain is basically becoming a tangle of wires connecting this experience to that and in turn learning.  When a child isn't exposed to anything to help make that tangle, then they won't have an understanding of complex things like facial expressions, tone of voice, or very many "normal" and common things to have already understood at age two or three.

I wonder if as we go through this process, if we will end up getting the mindset that we are actually starting with a newborn - in many respects.  Yes, our child will most likely be mobile and into everything, but he or she will have to start over with learning language and understanding the world around them and how to live in a family.  It may mean sleepless nights and baby sign language and baby wearing - even if we have a 3 year old.

I'm not sure how we'll feel at the end of the book - but right now, I do really think it may be healthy to just start considering our child to be a newborn.  Except the only problem with that is that he or she has been abandoned and maybe even hurt.  They won't come home with a clean slate.  They will come with baggage...

So, as you can see by this post, there's a lot going on in my head.  A lot going on in my heart.  I want to be as best prepared to help our little one as much as possible... there's so much unknown.

One of the questions we had to answer on one of our forms was whether we think "our love will be enough" and I can say that I am fully ready to love, love, and love some more.  But in the same token, I'm totally open to counseling and realizing we aren't the first ones to ever do this and will need help.

That's all for now - I need to turn my thinking towards homeschooling now.  :)  Although anyone who knows would understand that a mom's brain is working on many different things all at once.  I think blogging though will help at least get my thoughts out so that they aren't just swirling around in there becoming overwhelming.