Fax Initial Adoption with airSlate SignNow

Fax initial adoption

hey y'all so i wanted to give you guys another video update on our adoption process we are now a month in so that's really exciting the last time i updated you we were only a few months away from actually starting so we had not started yet and um i talked about why we chose to adopt from china what kind of came about with that decision and i meant to give you guys um kind of an overview of the timeline but i realized after i looked back at it that i got so caught up in talking about china that i completely forgot to do that so i'll do that in this video and then i'll also talk to you a little bit about what we're learning um especially in terms of like ethics and adoption and the implications of that and um kind of give you an idea of what to expect next so basic overview is that we have done the initial application so we have started some of the preliminary paperwork and we're realizing it's a lot it's a lot of paperwork so initial application initial paperwork with our agency which is holt international and we had a phone conversation with the china program director who was really sweet really informative she gave us kind of some answers to questions that we had and questions that we didn't even know that we needed to have she answered for us so it was it was awesome then we had to contact a local agency to do our home study because whole international does not have a branch in tennessee so our local agency is now working with us on the first things that are required for our home study the home study can take three to six months to complete so it's a lot of curriculum it's a lot of studying and reading it's a lot of paperwork a lot of paperwork so they basically right now are creating a profile on us to figure out who we are what's our background what do we do why do we want to adopt and what's our net worth do we meet the qualifications we need to meet um do we have a criminal background is our home safe for a child things like that so once that's kind of done we anticipate we will have our first in-home meeting with our caseworker there will be several even post adoption there will be several so that's what we're kind of anticipating we still don't really know as far as specifically with the home study other than there's just going to be a lot of paperwork to go through right now it's a lot of uploading birth certificates and marriage certificate and tax forms and things like that so as we know more i'll probably update you more on how that process is going so once the home study is completed we work with our primary agency whole international to make sure everything is compiled for our dossier that is basically the big stack of paperwork that you send to china with all of your information in it so that they can review it and say yes you're approved to adopt from our country it takes many months to compile that we should be able to send that we will both be 30 at the end of the year so once we're both 30 we can send our dossier so by christmas time we can do that then china will receive it and from there it's really just a matter of getting government approvals once all that is done they will start the process of matching us with our child and they will review our profile they will review child profiles to figure out what's the best match and then we will review the child profile they send us and you know we can consult doctors over medical needs and things like that and then we will be able to um give our confirmation once that is done and we have matched with a child then you basically start the travel process that's where a lot of families are stuck right now because of the coronavirus they're approved they're matched they just can't travel and so we are praying so hard for coronavirus to come to an end so that families can travel so that they can be with their children and it's such a such a big deal right now so we're really hopeful that um by the time we get to that point hopefully things have kind of cleared up a little bit better and we will be able to travel without any without any problems um but that's a big prayer request so that is the overall timeline so we're hoping best case scenario next fall we could be traveling to china we will be there for two weeks um doing paperwork meeting our child sightseeing and then um kind of getting acquainted before we bring them home so hopefully this will be the last christmas without our child home but we will see next what i wanted to kind of share with you guys is just what we're reading and learning if you follow me on social media you have seen some of the books that i have shared that we have been reading and the first one that i shared is this the connected child by karen purvis dr karen purvis she actually has a follow-up to this called the connected parent that is coming out now it's being released now she has actually passed away but her partner that she wrote that second book with is releasing it and doing the book tour and and all of that so i'm anxious to read that one next but this one was actually part of our curriculum from our agency over required readings so we already had a jumpstart on this just because it had been recommended to us and honestly i think this is a really important book for any parent to read because it's so informative about just the way a child thinks and how they process things it's geared specifically for adoptive parents or those who are parenting children with special needs but i think every parent could benefit from this so i highly recommend the next thing that i shared is this workbook it's called before you adopt by krista jordan she is an adoptive mom that i follow on social media and she spells it c-h-r-i-s-t-a jordan so if you are considering adoption i think you need to get your hands on this book because it really it's just a workbook so every page looks like this there will be a question and an answer section where you fill in your answer and it's just addressing the questions that you really need to be asking yourself before you step into the adoption arena so super important book what i'm reading right now is the whole brainchild and this was not part of our required reading but it was highly recommended by a lot of adoptive parents and it's by two doctors daniel siegel and tina bryson and they really just go through the um developmental stages of the brain and give you really practical ways of parenting your child in a way that will be effective for their brain development and their cognitive abilities as they as they grow up so it's really practical um it's also not super stuffy and scientific so um it's been really fascinating for me and just eye-opening i i would recommend um one thing that is a big topic that i want to touch on is just ethics and adoption because this is something that we are learning right now and we've learned a lot about because of a story that was recently in the news so if you follow anyone in the adoption community if you're in the adoption community you may have heard this story or if you just enjoy watching youtube families you might have heard this story so micah and james stauffer are pretty prominent youtubers so that's how they make their money they have monetized videos on youtube they each have a channel and then i think they have a family channel but they have a few kids and then they adopted from china a few years ago a little boy named huxley and i'm not going to go super into detail because you can read about their story i do not know them personally so i'm not going to speak to what i don't know but what i do know about this story is that it is an example of something that happens very commonly when an adoptive family goes into the process and they idealize or romanticize the process and that becomes dangerous when you start to do that because you need to be very realistic about what you're getting into adoption yes it's a beautiful thing but it is born from loss and there's trauma that that child has experienced that you're gonna have to walk with them through for the rest of their life and if you're not ready to do that when you sign up to adopt then you probably don't need to adopt and it's probably more common than you think that this happens where a child is adopted and then the situation becomes more than the parents expected and they decide they can't do it any longer and so they re-home which i have also learned is very poor terminology for what this is it's a dissolution of an adoption or dissolving an adoption rehoming has a really negative connotation in the adoption community because that's what you commonly say that you're doing with your pet you're re-homing them and a child is of far more worth than a pet i'm sorry to all you pet lovers and pet parents out there i love my dog so much but she people come before pets that's just probably not the best use of terminology more proper to say dissolving an adoption but this happens really commonly when parents bring a child home especially in international adoption because as is the case with china i know and probably a lot of other countries what you get in that child's profile is not their whole story especially because so many of those children have just been abandoned and you don't know what their medical history is you don't know you don't even know who their family is most of the time so you don't know their medical history or why they were abandoned you have to just kind of you know have the doctors evaluate them and try to figure it out as best they can and a lot of times there's a lot of pieces missing and there's a lot of things where they might have a special need that doesn't show up until later on it's not it's not visibly seen until they're a little bit older and if that child is adopted at 18 months or two years old you know it's not enough time in a lot of cases for them to really get an idea of what what could be um that child's need so that's something to be mindful of if you're pursuing international adoption go in with eyes wide open knowing that the profile that you get from from your agency is probably not going to be complete um there's going to be missing pieces so just expect that but you know when you romanticize or idealize things you can tend to think well you know if god is calling me to this he will make a way and it will be okay and that's absolutely true god will absolutely make a way but you have to walk in with a completely humble and surrendered heart you have to walk in saying if i'm putting my yes on the table that means no matter what happens i am that child's parent and they are my child and we will walk through it together and if you're not willing to say that then you really need to reevaluate why you're doing this and that's why i think that workbook is so helpful because it helps you kind of come to some of those conclusions about what is really your heart for adoption so i've seen a lot of really nasty stuff about this family online and i think it's important to have grace in this situation and recognize that what you see about somebody on social media or youtube or whatever it is is this much of their life so it's really easy to make a judgment about somebody based on this much information but you're missing everything else and so i will not say anything bad about this family because i don't know them i don't know huxley i don't know the situation i don't know what help they tried to get before they had to come to this conclusion but i will say that it is really really really important to do the work on the front end so that this doesn't happen because huxley has now experienced not only the loss of his birth family the loss of his caretakers in china whether that was a foster family or the orphanage workers whoever it was what he what he knew and was familiar with he lost he lost his birth country and everything that was familiar to him people who looked like him and talked like him primarily everywhere he looked and that alone is a lot of trauma for a child to endure so when you are adopting internationally you got to consider all that but now huxley has also lost his adoptive family whom he spent i think at least two years bonding with and that child has been through so much in the short amount of time that he's been alive that my heart absolutely breaks for him and any child that has to experience that so if you are someone considering adoption and i'm speaking to myself here too let's walk into this responsibly let's walk into this expecting you know the hardship that's going to come and being willing to say yes we can handle this or no this would probably be too hard for our family because you know maybe it's practical reasons like if you're someone who both parents work nine to five every day it might be really hard for you if you don't have the flexibility with your work schedule to adopt a child who's going to need extensive therapies so that's just something you need to consider but don't over idealize or romanticize what adoption is because it's born from loss and it is going to be hard and you need to be you need to be mindful of that going into it so that's all i'm going to say on that i will post several um links below to social media profiles of people that i follow whom i am learning so much from they are birth parents they are adoptees they are other adoptive parents they are adoption advocacy groups and organizations who are really trying to teach people how to adopt well because that's something that if we're going to step into this arena and i am absolutely all for adoption and advocating for anybody that thinks they want to do that but just make sure you're doing it well make sure you're doing it responsibly and that's all i'm going to say on that lastly i just wanted to give a massive thank you from the bottom of my heart steven's heart for everyone who has contributed to our adoption so far whether through prayer or just encouragements or donations people who have every single one of you who have bought a t-shirt and are wearing your t-shirts thank you so much for doing that it means so much to us those of you who have adopted through our gofundme page um we've just been so overwhelmed by the support and love that we've received from our community um you guys just you amaze us and we're so thankful for you um i did want to share we are working on a future fundraising campaign that we're really excited about because if you know us you know that we love to do woodworking flipping furniture building furniture in our spare time which is far fewer these days so we have taken a step back from our business appalachian market we're not taking orders anymore so that we can focus solely on this adoption um but we are going to incorporate some of that with our next fundraising um initiative so right now i don't have a ton of details for you guys because we're still just planning that out what that's going to look like but as i know more i will share more so stay tuned for that because it's going to be really fun and exciting and then i think my next video i might talk a little bit about some of the expenses in adoption it's a really hard topic to even talk about but i want to be really transparent with you guys that's why i set out to do these videos anyway is to just be honest and real with you but it's it's a hard topic just because you can't put a price on a child our child that we bring home is priceless because they are of infinite worth because they were created by the almighty creator of the universe and he has given them worth and so you can't put a a price on a child but the reality is that adoption is expensive and it takes money to process legal documents and things like that so i'm going to be real and i'm going to be transparent with you guys if you want to know about that so i know a lot of you have shared that you want to adopt someday so you're going to need to know about this stuff so if there's anything else that you want to know about any other questions that you have feel free to send me a comment a direct message or leave a comment and i will try to address it in a future video um but for now i'm going to sign off with a mandarin word saigia i think i said that right i hope saigia is bi um maybe i'll share some more mandarin words with you as we go along and show you how poorly i pronounce them probably but hey i'm trying so have some grace with me but i hope you guys have a great rest of your day and i will see you next time