As soon as I heard the news regarding the teen shooter, I wondered to myself if he’d either been a foster child or been adopted as an older child. I quickly tried to blow off that thought as paranoia on my part, having lived so long with children described like him. Yet reading these words today on a CNN site sent chills up my spine.

“Todd Landry, director of the Nebraska Division of Family and Children's Services, described for reporters the laundry list of residential... more

I’m hearing from many adoptive mothers who are saying the same thing. This era of blogging is allowing many of us to realize we are in similar circumstances, fighting the same battles, and facing equal challenges.

One of the most surprising ones I’ve faced have involved kids, adopted as older children, who are totally unable to leave the nest at age 18. Growing up I’d hear many of my own parent’s friends counting the days until their rebellious kids turned 18 and then the parents would theoretically be free from strife.

I’ve found this to not be a possibility for us.

A dear friend of mine, the mom of twelve challenging children and my colleague at Adopt... more

I’ve been asked to describe my adoptions and one in particular stands out in my mind as difficult. I’d flown to east Texas in early 1999, four years after my previous adoption in 1995. My caseworker liked several years to pass after an adoption finalization and I trusted her instincts totally.

Entering their foster home I was a bit stunned to find a hoochy-dressed seven year old, a four year old still in sagging diapers, and a raging, spitting, biting, non-verbal two year old who continuously pumped out from his rear end what resembled goat turds. These three children were... more

My pictures don’t match my posts in that I may write about one child but show the picture of another. Often I don’t name the child, I’ll give their age as an indicator of the maturity level I should be dealing with, but sometimes I’m talking about their age back then, blurring the lines but protecting their privacy. I'm not talking about my son-in-law pictured here, he's an extremely successful man.

Some of my grown kids are finding out that all the things I dogged them about as teenagers have come to pass.

“I told y’all it was a cold, cruel world out there,” is my favorite... more

I’ve recently had my daughter and her five children move in with us while her husband returns to El Salvador to work on his residency papers. For the last seven years they have lived a mile from us, so my grandchildren are completely comfortable here. Several of my older sons have moved out, now in their late teens and early twenties, and a friend from church sent a crew to renovate an upstairs area that now holds my daughter plus her 12, 10, 8, and 3 year olds and their new baby.

Fortunately her kids didn’t have to change schools or bus routes, their family... more

I have a once very violent, angry son who has been in several lock-ups and therapeutic settings for nearly two years now. Visiting once a month, if he earns his home stay pass, has been pleasant as his homesickness for this family has finally overcome his old reluctance to be a part of anything.

In a month he will transition out of the program, not because he is cured but because they are a nine month program and feel that they’ve done all they can, what with their intensive 24-7 therapeutic environment.

We all agree he is better, but still dangerously unable to control his temper at times.

It is with a great deal of trepidation that I’m agreeing to have him return... more

Reading Nancy Spoolstra’s post on an adoption disruption situation, I was reminded of stepping up years ago and adopting a sibling group after they’d disrupted.

The caseworker had told me that he felt the first parents were totally unprepared for a group of school aged children, their emotional issues and what it would do to their family of three. Within months the new mom was expecting a baby and decided that she simply couldn’t parent a new baby, her birth... more

What I don’t know about adoption could cover several continents. I think the longer I’m in the adoption world, the less that I truly know. I am not any kind of expert or guru simply by the fact that I have so many children.

Before I had so many, when I was debating about writing a thesis for my PhD or simply jumping off the academic safe place into the abyss of older child adoption, I thought I was fairly knowledgeable. Yet the higher I climbed in the university world, the more I realized how little I truly knew.

It’s a big world out there; chock... more

I’ve been talking to several adoptive parents lately, good-hearted, intelligent couples who wanted to share their upper middle class lives with older children who needed a family.

They excitedly contacted social services, had a home study done, got their fingerprints cleared, and jumped through every hoop that was demanded of them.

They fixed up bedrooms, buying the best, outfitting closets, packing book bags in anticipation, repainting, renovating and buying larger vans or automobiles. Beside themselves with anticipation, several of them already... more

I should have been born in a more tropical climate, Georgia is steamy and humid, but our winters bore me. We rarely see snow, most days are pretty enough for me to work outside, but our nights are cold with damaging frosts.

I probably shouldn’t complain as one adoptive mom of a large family in Minnesota told me that their ground freezes six feet deep. That is unfathomable to me. I’ve always felt that I wasn’t having fun unless I was sweating.

So I fight a lingering... more