Phone Interview

We had a phone interview this morning with our social worker from our placement adoption agency.  She asked questions about how our homestudy went, lots of questions about our learning and understanding of "older child adoption," and told us how things are going so far with our beautiful country of choice. 

We have asked for a child under the age of 5, which means that it will likely be a child (boy is our guess, since many want girls) who is at least 3.  Any child over 24 months old is considered an "older child" as far as adoption goes.  There are so many special needs and issues that we have to be aware of and prepared for since we are adopting an institutionalized child over the age of 2.  It is not an easy transition for the child or for the family, and our social worker's job is to make 100 percent certain that we understand the road ahead. 

I do not think it is ever possible to be fully prepared.  We can read and learn and listen to the experiences of others, but our child will be an individual who will have his or her own set of skills and obstacles and ways of testing us and coping with life.  We do accept this unknown, however, so we are still proceeding.  She gave us ideas for more books to read and told us to start our required educational hours online.  She is also sending us a list of families to talk to who have adopted institutionalized children and others who have adopted older children from another African country.

We are still excited about this particular African nation (which we cannot name on here) and being one of the first families to adopt from there.   The government in that country is proceeding very cautiously, which means it will be longer for us (still estimating one year) but safer for their children.  It looks like there will only be about 2 families in our agency ahead of us in the process.  We get to learn as we go.  It sounds exciting to me.  You can ask me if I feel the same way in a year.