Exploring Adoption

Canadian Expats want to adopt from Liberia

A reader writes:

We are Canadian expats in China, and we are looking into adopting children from Liberia. We are trying to find out information on how to do this kind of adoption as expats.

• What are the laws?
• How do we find information?
• What process do we go through?

Readers, what suggestions can you offer this couple?

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.

Adoption Book Named Finalist for National Award

The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for this year's award. In the nonfiction category, one of five finalists was an adoption-themed book:

The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade, by Anne Fessler (Penguin Press)

Congratulations to the author on this amazing achievement! Sounds like a fascinating read -- can't wait to get my hands on it.

For more information about the National Book Critics Circle, visit http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com.

Bonding with An Older Adopted Child

A reader who is adopting a 9-year-old asks:

What suggestions do you have for facilitating bonding with the son I will soon adopt? I want to make it a positive experience for both of us.

I'd like to hear from readers who have adopted older children. What works? What doesn't work?

Please post your responses in the Comments area or e-mail me and I'll pass along the information.

 

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.

Planning to Adopt from China? If You’re Fat or Ugly, Don’t Bother

Beginning May 1, people will find it more difficult to adopt children from China. Xing Kaimin, director of the China Center for Adoption affairs, says the new rules will guarantee “optimal family conditions” for adopted children.

The restrictions are as follows:

• Applicants should have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of less than 40. This applies to both men and women. A BMI of 40 indicates extreme obesity, and according to the ministry, obese people are more likely to suffer from diseases and might have a shorter life expectancy.
• Applicants must be married for at least two years. Xing says that a “complete family” is essential for adopted children.
• Those who were earlier divorced should have been currently married for at least five years.
• Couples must have less than four children.
• Couples must be in the 30 to 50 age group.
• Applicants cannot be wheelchair dependent.
• Applicants cannot take medication for psychiatric conditions including depression and anxiety.
• Applicants cannot have a “severe facial deformity.”
• Applicants cannot be “economically precarious.”

Xing says that the guidelines are temporary and might be revised.

Sources:
China Daily, “New criteria spelt out for adoption by foreigners,” December 25, 2006

The Boston Globe, “China defends new adoption rules,” January 3, 2007.

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.

Talking With Your Adopted Children About Adoption

A reader writes:

I have a 4-year-old son. I can see some questions coming up in the not-too-distant-future about adoption. We haven’t hidden the topic from him, but we haven’t discussed it specifically either.

What books do you recommend that help parents talk with their kids about adoption? (books for parents or for kids).

Readers, what are your favorites? My kids have been out of the toddler stage for some time so these types of books are not fresh in my mind. What books have worked best for you?

Please respond in the Comments area or e-mail me and I'll post your recommendations.

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.

Jennifer Aniston to Adopt

Here’s the latest celebrity adoption gossip news:

Jennifer Aniston has decided to adopt a baby. Rather than adopting internationally, as several celebs have done of late, Jennifer has decided to adopt an American child. Her lawyers are reportedly approaching adoption agencies in Los Angeles on her behalf.

Everyone has something to say about Madonna’s adoption of a boy from Malawi, Africa.

Liam Neeson says he has “issues with taking a child away from its parents if they were alive, its culture, its country.”

Angelina Jolie has suggested that Madonna took a risk in adopting from a country in which there is no legal framework for adoption.

Oprah Winfrey spoke out in Madonna’s defense, saying that her adoption was an “amazing” act. On the British current affairs show NewsNight, Oprah said, “I applaud Madonna. I think it’s an amazing thing that she did, and it makes me sick that people criticize her, because there are millions of children in this world who will die because no one came to save them.”

Madonna herself is befuddled by all the criticism surrounding her adoption, saying she was warned it might be difficult but hadn’t expected so much criticism. She told David Letterman she was “saving a life” by adopting David.

Back to Oprah:
Oprah insists that she is not the least bit interested in adopting. Earlier this month, she opened a school for disadvantaged girls in South Africa. The $40 million facility, funded entirely by Oprah’s foundation, will provide free education to 152 girls from across South Africa. The school aims to prepare them to become leaders not only in politics, but also in science, the arts, medicine, and law.

Sources:
Stuff.co.nz
iAfrica.com
BBC News
Contact Music
USA Today
Hollywood.com

For more updates on celebrity adoption, click this link.

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.

Submit Your Story to 'Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul'

Unless you’ve been living on another planet during the past few years, you’ve probably heard of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series.  Here’s good news for everyone in adoption land: A new “Chicken Soup” is coming – Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul.

This fall, I had a lengthy face-to-face chat with LeAnn Thieman, a delightful woman (and adoptive mom) who is editing “Adopted Soul.” LeAnn, who lives in Colorado, shared the process she goes through to write and edit the Chicken Soup books (she’s edited eight of them):

• LeAnn collects around 2,000 stories (per book), reads them all and selects the top 200 or so.
• She has a stable of 40 volunteer readers who read those 200 stories and score them 8, 9, or 10, which helps her narrow the field to the top 100 stories.
• LeAnn then “soups” up each story, recrafting them to fit the style and tone of the Chicken Soup books. Eighty stories appear in each book.

Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul will contain stories from all representatives of the adoption triad: birth/first parents, adopted people, and adoptive parents. During our conversation LeAnn mentioned that several stories about adoption from Vietnam have already been submitted. But if you have a connection to Vietnam adoption, don’t let that stop you from submitting. Just be aware that LeAnn is looking for a variety of stories that represent many different types of experiences.

I’ll add one piece of advice for those who are considering submitting: Check out a copy of a Chicken Soup from the library or purchase one at a (used) bookstore. Read 10-20 of the stories to get a good feel for the style, tone, and length the editors are looking for. Educating yourself about the books will put you ahead of 90 percent of the people who submit.

Here are the submission guidelines LeAnn sent. Put on your thinking cap, and start writing!

Chicken Soup for the Adopted Soul is collecting true stories sharing the love, laughter, longing, and life events of adopted families. We are eager to read stories written by kids, parents, extended families and friends, recounting tales of becoming a family, growing up, special occasions, reunions, etc. Please share your heart-warming, insightful, humorous and powerfully moving stories that will make readers laugh, cry, or sigh.

Here are some tips for writing it Chicken Soup-style:

Stories must be true, inspirational, 1,000 words or less. They should be positive, universal, and non-controversial. No essays, commentaries, tributes, philosophical or biographical pieces accepted.

Include action and dialogue with the characters expressing their feelings throughout the conflict or situation. It should end in a result, such as a lesson learned, a positive change or pay-off.

Above all, let it come from your heart.

The submission deadline is March 1, 2007, for release in March, 2008. Submit stories on line at www.ChickenSoup.com., Submit a Story.

For sample stories or more information, see my website at www.LeAnnThieman.com.  For each story selected, a 50-word biography will be included about the author and a permission fee of $200 will be paid. Due to the volume of stories we receive, only finalists will be notified prior to publication.

Thank you for joining us in touching the hearts of millions of adoptive families everywhere. I can’t wait to read your stories!

LeAnn Thieman
Jack Canfield                                 
Mark Victor Hansen

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.

New Adoption Poll: Adopting Special Needs Children

The results of last week's adoption blog poll are in. Here's how prospective adoptive parents responded to the statement:

My extended family supports my decision to adopt:

Wholeheartedly - 64.9%
With reservations - 25.7%
They've disowned me - 2.7%
They don't know yet - 6.8%

This week's poll asks prospective adoptive parents:

When I think about adopting a child who may have serious emotional and/or physical challenges, I:

• Have nightmares
• Need more time to consider my options
• Feel prepared
• Am looking forward to it

Cast your vote in the right-hand sidebar of this blog! As soon as you vote, you'll be able to see the results from those who have already taken the survey.

 

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.

Barbara Curtis, Adoptive Mom, Featured in 'Today's Christian'

Barbara Curtis, a former "acid-dropping hippie chick," now urges Christians to find common ground with people from "the other side."

I had the privilege of profiling Barbara for Today's Christian magazine, in an article titled, "Credible Christianity" (Jan/Feb. 2007).

While the article doesn't mention it, Barbara is the mother of 12 children, four of whom have Down syndrome (three of her children with Down syndrome were adopted).

Barbara is an incredible woman who voices a strong challenge to Christians: Get off your duff and forge relationships with people in your community who think differently than you do. She's the author of a neat book, Reaching the Left from the Right: Talking About Social Issues With People Who Don't Think Like You.

She also writes a popular blog for moms called Mommy Life. Stop by for a visit and tell her Laura Christianson sent you!

Here's what readers of Today's Christian are saying about the article:

"I used to be one of those people that decent people love to hate. It took wanting to please God to entice me to "clean up." I'm still not through cleaning up, and probably will never be.   was taken to Christ by an ex-heroin user/prostitute (like myself).  I pretty much scoffed at the "let me hold you and pray over you, and you shall by saved" type of Christians.

Please give Laura's words some thought and much action! I shudder to think that I may have died without knowing Christ. Let's go into the trenches and help some of these broken people."

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.

New Book About Cambodian Adoption

On March 24, 2001, American writer Kari Grady Grossman walked into a crowded orphanage outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and met her eight-month-old son. One of the first questions Kari asked was, “How did he get here?” 

The complex and, at times, heartwrenching answer is told in her new book, Bones That Float: A Story of Adopting Cambodia. Kari’s book is selling for a pre-publication price of $20 through February 20.

Four years in the making, the book encompasses Kari’s personal journey to adoption, Cambodia’s gruesome history of war and genocide, and the stories of two Cambodians — one who escaped the Khmer Rouge’s bloody reign and one who did not.

The dust jacket copy reads:
The interweaving stories grab your heartstrings and never let go. From the moment Kari realizes that she will never be an “earth momma” practicing prenatal yoga to years later, as Kari wends her way on the back of a moto-taxi through Phnom Penh’s smog-choked streets trying to make a difference in her son’s birth nation, you can’t read impassively.

Bones That Float takes you into the Khmer Rouge jungle where boy soldiers force starving families to labor all day at gunpoint, and it brings you to modern-day Phnom Penh streets where foreign pedophiles purchase the innocence of preteen Cambodian girls.  But ultimately Bones That Float—a Cambodian phrase for the sacred that rises above the suffering—is a tale of hope.  Kari reminds us that our world is “one big family” and that we cannot—or dare not—turn our backs on people who suffer, in part because of our own country’s foreign policy missteps. To read Bones That Float is to open your heart to caring.

From today until February 5, Kari will be in Cambodia and will be sending dispatches from the Grady Grossman School to her blog so readers can meet the people the book is benefiting and participate in finding solutions to the problems they face. 

Pre-sale orders of Bones That Float will receive a link to an Ebook in pdf format to be followed by a signed and numbered hard copy in March. Every book will have 10 postcards in the back to pass out. 
Kari will send anyone who hosts a book discussion with 10 people or more a DVD of the school, artwork from the students, and Cambodian appetizer recipes (YUM!). She will also call your event to answer questions about the book or the school. 

Funds raised through book sales will support the installation of an Internet-connected computer hub at the Grady Grossman school, and will launch Kari’s vision of connecting schools in rural Cambodia (and other developing nations) with schools in the US (and other developed nations). Funds will also facilitate web based, cross-cultural, e-learning exchanges (pen pals, VOIP English tutoring, problem solving, economic development, scholarship raising, student exchange, etc.)

Kari Grady Grossman has spent nearly two decades traveling, writing, and producing documentaries. Her writing has appeared on Discovery Channel Online, including coverage of a Mount Everest expedition and the Alaskan Iditarod.  After traveling to Cambodia in 2001 to adopt their son, the Grossmans created the Grady Grossman School.  Proceeds from this book will support the school, which now educates nearly 500 children a year. In 2006, she and her husband traveled to India to adopt their second child.  A book on that country is forthcoming.  Kari is a 1990 graduate of Syracuse University and resides in Lander, Wyoming.

Learn more about the book and read excerpts at bonesthatfloat.com.

 

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and check out my Exploring Adoption bookstore.