Personal Experience Adopting a Child

Adopting a child is a great act and allows a child the chance to succeed that would otherwise have had slim chance of having a healthy future. Adopting a child is not easy. It is emotional for the family adopting, the child being adopted and the family of the child being adopted. By talking to my parents who adopted my younger brother I found that there is so much stress involved.

There is so much stress because of the tons of paperwork that needs to be filed, the interviews that need to be done in order to make sure your family is a good family to take in a child and also having the child adapt to your lifestyle.

My parents began the process and found two young boys (ages 4 and 6) that were living in a home where the mother was a drug addict/alcoholic and had various boyfriends that would not treat the kids correctly. At first we would meet the mother at McDonalds or another place along with a social worker to meet and visit the children. We would get to know them and establish a bond with them. Once my parents decided that this was what they wanted to do we were able to take the boys to stay at our home.

The boys lived with us but were still going to supervised visits with their biological mother and this caused some issues. She would say things to the boys to cause problems at the house and the older brother (6) already had behavioral issues because of his previous lifestyle. He would throw tantrums for small issues such as losing a game and when throwing the tantrum he would start breaking things. It started out small but he would then start kicking in things and punching things. He would then also hit on the other siblings. My parents spent a great deal of time trying to solve the issue but when he began threatening the family and saying that he could kill them while they were sleeping, they had little choice but to protect the rest of the family. They made the decision not to adopt the older brother. They also decided that a relationship with the biological mother was more destructive than healthy for the younger boy and worked to revoke her right to see him.

Since then he has become a part of the family and we do not even think of him as being adopted. We still deal with small issues that resulted from his past with his biological lifestyle (health wise), but he has a bond with the family as if he were born into it. He is loved so much by everyone in our family and my parents have the peace of mind knowing that they have given a child a chance for a future.

Even though it is very stressful and emotional adopting a child, the reward in your heart and knowing what you have done for the child makes it all worth it in the end.