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adoption

Mommy’s Diary: More Courses to Attend

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Pictures from Tama Zoo we visited on Labor Day

I haven’t updated here on our adoption/foster care processes, but we actually made quite a bit progress over the summer! We attended a bunch of meetings and foster care group courses. We also got the chance to visit an orphanage.

I wrote about our first group course here. The second one was held a month later, and of course, it was on Sunday. I feel like every event  falls on Sundays, which is a problem for us since we attend church on Sundays. But considering that the Child Guidance Center offers these courses that are required for hopeful foster parents only twice a year, we just had to do it when they were offered.

After the first group course I came home terribly depressed and sad because the meeting revolved around the issue of foster parent abuse. It saddened me to think of these children and made me really consider what is necessary for me not to become an abuser like these other people.  Thankfully, after the last two meetings, I came home encouraged because the topics were generally more pleasant and revolved around various exciting child raising possibilities. After these meetings, I felt very secure that we could be suitable foster parents. Still though, there was a feeling of irritation I could not quite shake.

During these latter two meetings, we had chances to spend time getting to know other couples who wanted to be foster parents. We had a group discussion times where we could share our thoughts on the study materials, ask questions and and reveal concerns. This is from where my irritation stems. I noticed that many couples had personal, marital and relationship issues that need to be dealt with before they should consider enter the foster care program. Three out of five couples who attended the courses said they are thinking of foster care only because they could not have their biological children. What saddened me was that the wives were so desperate, they’ve probably tried fertility treatments for years (I’m guessing because they seemed older, 40s or maybe in 50s), but the husbands were so indifferent and distant. One guys said he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to do this, but his wife forced him into attending the courses. The other guy said he only needed a child for inheritance purposes. Inheritance?! Are you Bill Gates?! What do you have thats so wonderful?! At another meeting with these same couples we had a chance to visit inside an orphanage. Te husbands spent their time outside smoking, uninterested and uncaring. Why would anyone give these people children?

If that’s the reality of the foster care in Japan, I’m heart broken. The kids might be better off staying at the orphanage with government supplied care takers.

Mommy’s Diary 58: Adoption Progress

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Hello! Today I want to take a break of Kiko’s terrible two nightmare talk and talk about our adoption process. After our initial interview with ISSJ, we were notified that we got approved! Yay! Now we can move on to collecting necessary documents for the study. If you are new here, my husband and I are trying to adopt a child, and going through two different routes to increase our chances of receiving a child: we are trying both adoption and foster care. I’ve written our process for foster care registration here in the past.

When we received the letter from ISSJ informing us of the list of necessary documents, we glanced at it and put it back on Andy’s desk. The letter sat there for a bit – there is a long list of documents we have to get, starting from certified copies of birth certificates, marriage certificates, physical evaluations, personal statements, self biographies, pictures of our place and so on. Today we decided to tackle this long list and got a little over half done. We had to order Andy’s birth certificate from the U.S., since we live in Japan now. Andy started writing his biography, and has spent at least 3 hours on it already.

Although collecting all these documents is a lot of work, I think it is good that the agency requires a through information and background check of the hopeful parents. If I were a parent who was putting my child up for adoption, I would want the agency to be as through as possible. I forgot to write about our initial interview with the case workers at ISSJ, but it went well, and Andy and I wished that the child guidance center did the same thing for foster care registration. The ISSJ case workers asked many questions about our selves, our plans etc, many of the topics Andy and I had discussed at home. I think having an interview like that would help weed out some of the bad foster parents…  I like ISSJ, I feel like they really make sure to place the priority on the children.

We are hoping to have all the documents sent to the agency by the end of this summer, so we can do the home study. I am excited. Another step forward toward adoption.

Photos are from my Instagram – Follow me @vivatveritas

Mommy’s Diary 53: Foster Care Registration Process So Far

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My mini sailor, 1 year and 2 months 🙂

Hello! I wanted to do an update on the foster care registration process that Andy and I are in the midst of. As Andy mentioned in the past, we are working on getting approved as an approved “adoption family” while at the same time getting registered as foster care parents. We are also working with a private adoption agency, but for the foster care, we are dealing with the local government. I usually hate dealing with government agencies since they are a slow bureaucratic nightmare, they are not flexible and lack basic communication skills. The child guidance center which we have to deal with for foster care is no exception.

When we first approached the child guidance center to register as foster parents, Kiko was six months old. We took her to our initial interview with the case workers. They complimented us on how well behaved Kiko was and told us that we should NOT be foster parents. The case workers said that they did not want to ruin our “happy family” because the kids in the institutions are full of troubles, badly behaved and socially awkward. Even if they consider us as foster parents, they would not give us any child until Kiko turns at least three and it will be a “weekend visit”, not a long term assignment. We came back home disappointed and angry. Shouldn’t the case workers be on the kids’ sides? How dare they insult the kids when they are suppose to be protect and care for them. I don’t doubt that lot of kids have “problems” since they have some abusive history etc. But, that does not mean that the case workers should flippantly insult the kids in front of the hopeful foster parents!

After the initial interview, we weren’t sure if we should continue  pursuing the foster care option. It sounded like a long arduous fight. But in the end, we decided to push on since Andy said “Don’t take Japanese people’s “no” as an actual “no”. Japanese people will eventually say ‘yes’ if you are persistent enough”. I called back the case worker a couple times and hounded her  until she agreed to allow us to continue the process, which involves taking three group courses. So far, we’ve gone through two out of three, and the last group course is coming up this weekend.

The first group course was terrible. We had to sit in the class room for 6 hours listening to boring lectures on the Japanese orphanage and foster care systems. Most of the info I already knew. They gave us reading materials, so we could have just read it on our own and skipped the lecture. Instead, they felt it was necessary for them to read it out loud to us like we were in elementry school. The topic that bugged me the most was the abuse by foster parents. There were news articles about a foster mother who ended up killing and sexually abusing her assigned little girl. It made me really sad but at the same time, it planted doubt in my mind, “how do I know that I won’t follow the same path?”. I remember coming home all depressed thinking about this. Have you ever thought that maybe it is possible that you end up abusing your kids?

There were five other couples in the course. Those couples depressed me even more. It was obvious that the guys were brought there by their wives unwillingly. Some of them were out right sleeping during the courses. I understand the course was boring, but still. I feel like Andy and I were totally qualified to be foster parents compared to them!!