Positive Language in Adoption
Using positive language reinforces the message that adoption is a healthy way of building a family. When speaking with others about adoption, whether family members, friends or co-workers, using the following positive terminology in place of the "traditional", assists with the understanding of what adoption truly is for everyone involved, from a very real and human standpoint.
Below are the positive language terms to use connection with the adoption of a child. Though please don't feel we'll be offended if you use this language, we know everyone is still learning. It's healthier for the child to hear positive language about himself and his background.
Not Real parent, but Birth parent- "His birth parents are from Ethiopia"
Not Natural parent but Birth parent
Not Own child, but Birth child "Elijah is my birth child"
Not Adopted child; Own child but call them both My child "Elijah and _____ are my children"
Not Illegitimate but Born to unmarried parents
Not Give up but Terminate parental rights "His birth parents terminated their parental rights soon after he was born"
Not Give away but Make an adoption plan "His birth parents chose to make an adoption plan for him."
Not To keep but To parent "They chose to parent instead of making an adoption plan"
Not Adoptive parent but Parent
Not An unwanted child but a Child placed for adoption
Not Is adopted but Was adopted
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Dossier Submitted Yay!
We are so excited to have submitted our dossier today. Yay! It took us 8 months to get in.
Later this week it will be sent to Washington DC to get authenticated again. Then, we will be what's called a "waiting family". We will be anxiously waiting for 8-10 months. The timeline with all adoptions is uncertain. 8-10 months is the timeline as of now. 8-10 months is kind of like the length of a pregnancy, which is kind of special to think about. In the adoption world they call it being "paper pregnant".
Then, we will get a referral. Here's how a referral works, as I understand it. The babies are placed for adoption by a family member or abandoned. They are then sent to a Ethiopia run orphanage. There are several orphanages in the country who do their best to take good care of the babies and children though many of these are overly crowded. The country of Ethiopia then gives the baby and children medical tests. Then if the baby is deemed adoptable they refer babies and children to the 4 adoption agencies that legally work in Ethiopia (CHI is one of them of course). The agencies then match those referrals to the waiting approved families. It tends to work that the next person on the list gets the next baby that meets their requests (you can request certain ages, gender, and special needs). The older the child and the more special needs you are okay with the sooner you will get a referral. Boys also get referred sooner because more people request girls. Our only requests are that we'd like a boy under 6 months of age, and there are certain special needs we're okay with.
After a family accepts a referral then the baby moves to the CHI House of Hope to be cared for a little better. A few weeks after we accept a referral we will travel for the first time to Ethiopia. This recently changed, when we first started the process you only had to make one trip to Ethiopia, but now you have to make two. During the first trip we will meet the baby and then go to court and meet with a judge to officially declare that we will adopt this child. Then we will have to leave him with the capable caretakers at the House of Hope for 6-8 weeks. During this time they arrange our visas and schedule our second court date. Then we will go back and bring him home forever! What a great day that will be!
Later this week it will be sent to Washington DC to get authenticated again. Then, we will be what's called a "waiting family". We will be anxiously waiting for 8-10 months. The timeline with all adoptions is uncertain. 8-10 months is the timeline as of now. 8-10 months is kind of like the length of a pregnancy, which is kind of special to think about. In the adoption world they call it being "paper pregnant".
Then, we will get a referral. Here's how a referral works, as I understand it. The babies are placed for adoption by a family member or abandoned. They are then sent to a Ethiopia run orphanage. There are several orphanages in the country who do their best to take good care of the babies and children though many of these are overly crowded. The country of Ethiopia then gives the baby and children medical tests. Then if the baby is deemed adoptable they refer babies and children to the 4 adoption agencies that legally work in Ethiopia (CHI is one of them of course). The agencies then match those referrals to the waiting approved families. It tends to work that the next person on the list gets the next baby that meets their requests (you can request certain ages, gender, and special needs). The older the child and the more special needs you are okay with the sooner you will get a referral. Boys also get referred sooner because more people request girls. Our only requests are that we'd like a boy under 6 months of age, and there are certain special needs we're okay with.
After a family accepts a referral then the baby moves to the CHI House of Hope to be cared for a little better. A few weeks after we accept a referral we will travel for the first time to Ethiopia. This recently changed, when we first started the process you only had to make one trip to Ethiopia, but now you have to make two. During the first trip we will meet the baby and then go to court and meet with a judge to officially declare that we will adopt this child. Then we will have to leave him with the capable caretakers at the House of Hope for 6-8 weeks. During this time they arrange our visas and schedule our second court date. Then we will go back and bring him home forever! What a great day that will be!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The next step- PAPERWORK!
So, Elijah is at his grandparents house for a few days, so I have extra time to blog. So, now that I've updated on our decision to adopt let me update you on where we've been since then.
After being accepted by Children's Hope International (there was a small application and commitment fee). Next they sent us a packet with instructions on getting all of our paperwork together. The first step was to get a home study. A home study is where a social worker investigates us and our home to make a recommendation (or not) to allow us to adopt. We found a local adoption agency called Coordinators 2 that would conduct our home study. As part of our home study with them we had to attend several education classes. We had to complete an autobiography and also some other written activities. We had to get two background checks, one of which took our finger prints. We met with our social worker 3 times. The second time was in our home. The meeting in our home was a breeze, I of course cleaned up quite a bit, but she didn't inspect with a white glove or anything. She wrote the home study that recommended us to adopt. The whole process of the home study took about 6 months. This is a little longer than a home study usually takes, but ours was delayed for two reasons. One, my finger prints had to be taken twice and then still the second one didn't work, so they had to investigate my background another way. Also, we took a few weeks longer to do our written assignments. Meanwhile I was also preparing some of our other documents we needed for our dossier.
In June we received our home study! Yay!
The next big thing we had to do was to apply to USCIS (immigration services). We are basically immigrating a child born in another country to become an American citizen, so we have to get a special visa. We had to have our favorable home study before we could apply for this. We applied right away. We had to go in and get fingerprinted again (to make sure we're not criminals).
Meanwhile we were preparing our dossier. For the dossier we have exactly 20 documents all of which had to be notarized and state authenticated. The documents include doctors letters (saying we're healthy), 3 reference letters, a power of attorney to the agency representative, more education classes, original birth and marriage certificates, and other legal documents. On August 5 (or so) we received our approval from USCIS. YAY #2.
Today we took everything to be state certified. This checks the notarization.
I'm hoping to get everything back by like next Tuesday and then we'll submit our dossier! YAY!!!!
After that, it goes to be certified again on the national level. Then, we will officially be a "waiting family". We will wait about 8-10 months to be matched with a baby boy (yes, we've requested a boy). The waiting time is not because there are not enough babies to be adopted, in fact there are many babies and children in Ethiopia who could be adopted and aren't. The wait time is a legal processing time. They just takes a long time to process the families who are adopting.
After being accepted by Children's Hope International (there was a small application and commitment fee). Next they sent us a packet with instructions on getting all of our paperwork together. The first step was to get a home study. A home study is where a social worker investigates us and our home to make a recommendation (or not) to allow us to adopt. We found a local adoption agency called Coordinators 2 that would conduct our home study. As part of our home study with them we had to attend several education classes. We had to complete an autobiography and also some other written activities. We had to get two background checks, one of which took our finger prints. We met with our social worker 3 times. The second time was in our home. The meeting in our home was a breeze, I of course cleaned up quite a bit, but she didn't inspect with a white glove or anything. She wrote the home study that recommended us to adopt. The whole process of the home study took about 6 months. This is a little longer than a home study usually takes, but ours was delayed for two reasons. One, my finger prints had to be taken twice and then still the second one didn't work, so they had to investigate my background another way. Also, we took a few weeks longer to do our written assignments. Meanwhile I was also preparing some of our other documents we needed for our dossier.
In June we received our home study! Yay!
The next big thing we had to do was to apply to USCIS (immigration services). We are basically immigrating a child born in another country to become an American citizen, so we have to get a special visa. We had to have our favorable home study before we could apply for this. We applied right away. We had to go in and get fingerprinted again (to make sure we're not criminals).
Meanwhile we were preparing our dossier. For the dossier we have exactly 20 documents all of which had to be notarized and state authenticated. The documents include doctors letters (saying we're healthy), 3 reference letters, a power of attorney to the agency representative, more education classes, original birth and marriage certificates, and other legal documents. On August 5 (or so) we received our approval from USCIS. YAY #2.
Today we took everything to be state certified. This checks the notarization.
I'm hoping to get everything back by like next Tuesday and then we'll submit our dossier! YAY!!!!
After that, it goes to be certified again on the national level. Then, we will officially be a "waiting family". We will wait about 8-10 months to be matched with a baby boy (yes, we've requested a boy). The waiting time is not because there are not enough babies to be adopted, in fact there are many babies and children in Ethiopia who could be adopted and aren't. The wait time is a legal processing time. They just takes a long time to process the families who are adopting.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Our Call To Adoption
One of the main reasons I wanted to start this blog is to document our next big adventure- our adventure to our next child through adoption. So, this is the first installation on why we decided to adopt.
Even before we were married we talk about adoption being a beautiful thing and something we might consider in our future. When we decided to begin having children there was some discussion about if we should even adopt our first child. But, at that time we decided we wanted to experience a pregnancy and birth of a child, so without much trying Niki became pregnant and our wonderful little Elijah was born in October of 2008.
Elijah was only like 6 months old when we were already talking about having another child. At this time the thought and calling of adoption Niki really started thinking about a lot. I started researching it. We knew there were children who needed homes and we had a loving home with a desire and room for more. We knew this was a huge decision that would affect our family drastically! We needed to take a step back and really talk, PRAY and think. Around this time our church had a series called "40 days of prayer and fasting". We decided that this was a perfect time for us to seek the Lord and think about this decision. At the end of the 40 days Steve and I both knew that adopting was the right thing to do. We were both called to scriptures about God's love for children. We had a peace about adopting and a calling that "this was the right thing to do" children should have families and we can help one. The cost of adopting was a big barrier in our thinking. It costs $15,000- $25,000. We don't have that kind of money hanging out in a savings account. If God called us to do it, we would do it, and trust that He would provide. It was not all due at once, but over the course of about 2 years and you get a tax credit in the end (to the tune of about $12,000, which helps). We looked at our finances and decided that with a little squeezing we could save enough each month; which over time, along with some savings we already have, would be enough.
So, on with the journey.....One of the first things we found out was that many adoption agencies do not allow you to adopt out of birth order, meaning, the next child has to be younger than the children already in the home. Many studies have said it's emotionally unhealthy for the children. So, with a young child already we knew an adopted child would likely be a baby and we thought that was a good thing. At first we really researched domestic adoption. We soon found out that there was already a long list of people wanting to adopt infants domestically. Today, birth moms get to choose the family who adopts her child and we would likely be chosen quickly, but was that really the way we wanted to do it? One of our main reasons for wanting to adopt was to meet a need in the world. After some continued research and lots of prayer we expanded our view of adoption to a world-wide focus.
There are many countries that allow for international adoptions by Americans. One of the first countries to jump out to us were the African countries, Rwanda and Ethiopia. All countries have requirements, for instance most Asian countries only allow people 30 or 35 years of age or older to adopt. We were 26 and 27, this narrowed down our search to basically two countries Ethiopia and Bulgaria. Ethiopia was then the clear choice for us. My sister had recently worked in some orphanages in Uganda (Ethiopia is Uganda's neighbor, Uganda does not currently allow international adoptions) and her stories were a big part of our decision to adopt in the first place. Ethiopia is a beautiful country and the children adopted are generally pretty healthy. In Ethiopia we would get an infant as young as 6 months, in Bulgaria the child would be at least 2 years old. Some people in our church lived in Ethiopia for a while and told us how wonderful and resilient the country it is.
So, after we had decided on Ethiopia we started researching adoption agencies. We chose Children's Hope International due to their stellar reputation both in America and in Ethiopia. Their staff have been great to work with.
So, now that we're that far, i'll post another update on where we have been since then.
Even before we were married we talk about adoption being a beautiful thing and something we might consider in our future. When we decided to begin having children there was some discussion about if we should even adopt our first child. But, at that time we decided we wanted to experience a pregnancy and birth of a child, so without much trying Niki became pregnant and our wonderful little Elijah was born in October of 2008.
Elijah was only like 6 months old when we were already talking about having another child. At this time the thought and calling of adoption Niki really started thinking about a lot. I started researching it. We knew there were children who needed homes and we had a loving home with a desire and room for more. We knew this was a huge decision that would affect our family drastically! We needed to take a step back and really talk, PRAY and think. Around this time our church had a series called "40 days of prayer and fasting". We decided that this was a perfect time for us to seek the Lord and think about this decision. At the end of the 40 days Steve and I both knew that adopting was the right thing to do. We were both called to scriptures about God's love for children. We had a peace about adopting and a calling that "this was the right thing to do" children should have families and we can help one. The cost of adopting was a big barrier in our thinking. It costs $15,000- $25,000. We don't have that kind of money hanging out in a savings account. If God called us to do it, we would do it, and trust that He would provide. It was not all due at once, but over the course of about 2 years and you get a tax credit in the end (to the tune of about $12,000, which helps). We looked at our finances and decided that with a little squeezing we could save enough each month; which over time, along with some savings we already have, would be enough.
So, on with the journey.....One of the first things we found out was that many adoption agencies do not allow you to adopt out of birth order, meaning, the next child has to be younger than the children already in the home. Many studies have said it's emotionally unhealthy for the children. So, with a young child already we knew an adopted child would likely be a baby and we thought that was a good thing. At first we really researched domestic adoption. We soon found out that there was already a long list of people wanting to adopt infants domestically. Today, birth moms get to choose the family who adopts her child and we would likely be chosen quickly, but was that really the way we wanted to do it? One of our main reasons for wanting to adopt was to meet a need in the world. After some continued research and lots of prayer we expanded our view of adoption to a world-wide focus.
There are many countries that allow for international adoptions by Americans. One of the first countries to jump out to us were the African countries, Rwanda and Ethiopia. All countries have requirements, for instance most Asian countries only allow people 30 or 35 years of age or older to adopt. We were 26 and 27, this narrowed down our search to basically two countries Ethiopia and Bulgaria. Ethiopia was then the clear choice for us. My sister had recently worked in some orphanages in Uganda (Ethiopia is Uganda's neighbor, Uganda does not currently allow international adoptions) and her stories were a big part of our decision to adopt in the first place. Ethiopia is a beautiful country and the children adopted are generally pretty healthy. In Ethiopia we would get an infant as young as 6 months, in Bulgaria the child would be at least 2 years old. Some people in our church lived in Ethiopia for a while and told us how wonderful and resilient the country it is.
So, after we had decided on Ethiopia we started researching adoption agencies. We chose Children's Hope International due to their stellar reputation both in America and in Ethiopia. Their staff have been great to work with.
So, now that we're that far, i'll post another update on where we have been since then.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
About Us
Hi, We're the Gourley's. Our family consists of Steve, Niki, Elijah (born October 2008) and Gus (the Golden Retriever). The head of our house is the Lord. We seek Him for guidance in our lives. We were married in 2006 and it's been an amazing journey since!
We live at the summer camp where we work, Camp Piankatank. Camp Piankatank is a Christian camp. We minister to about 700 kids in a summer and hundreds more in "retreat season". This blog is not about Camp Piankatank, but is about us as a family and our adventures, some of which happen to happen at Camp Piankatank. We try not to let camp rule our lives, but at least in the months of June-August it pretty much does.
Some of our interests are growing Godly children, our church, family, camping, friends, adoption (more on that later) and home schooling. Niki is interested in homey kinds of things, cooking, baking, cloth diapering, mothering, etc. So, as the main blogger Niki may post about things she is interested in.
Our little boy Elijah is currently 22 months old. He is a hilarious little guy with tons of personality. He's loud, adventurous, lively and sweet all at the same time. He's a little boy all the way! He's a joy and sometimes a challenge, but what child isn't challenging sometimes.
We live at the summer camp where we work, Camp Piankatank. Camp Piankatank is a Christian camp. We minister to about 700 kids in a summer and hundreds more in "retreat season". This blog is not about Camp Piankatank, but is about us as a family and our adventures, some of which happen to happen at Camp Piankatank. We try not to let camp rule our lives, but at least in the months of June-August it pretty much does.
Some of our interests are growing Godly children, our church, family, camping, friends, adoption (more on that later) and home schooling. Niki is interested in homey kinds of things, cooking, baking, cloth diapering, mothering, etc. So, as the main blogger Niki may post about things she is interested in.
Our little boy Elijah is currently 22 months old. He is a hilarious little guy with tons of personality. He's loud, adventurous, lively and sweet all at the same time. He's a little boy all the way! He's a joy and sometimes a challenge, but what child isn't challenging sometimes.
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