Adoption Language

So why is it in this world with all the polital correctness that drives us all nuts did I choose to become a strong advocate of using the correct "Adoption Terminology"? Good question, there are a few reasons

*Adoption already has such a negative image.

*Language is a powerful tool in presenting adoption either negatively or positively.

*It's my hope that it will be the beginning of people seeing adoption as the wonderful blessing that it is. To do that people should avoid terms like these:

Giving away or giving up a child for adoption Ouch! A parent gave their child away? That sounds so cold and heartless (is it any wonder people have a bad image of adoption?). Giving up a child? Again that sounds so hurtful and like the parent quit. Couldn't handles it. I cringe every time I hear that. Nothing could be further from the truth. There probably are exceptions but the overwhelming majority of birth mothers love their children immensely. "Placing a child for adoption" or "making an adoption plan" is a more appropriate and positive.

Unwanted Child Like I said before most birth mothers love their children and want them but given the circumstances in their lives they realize they cannot parent in the way they desire. For a birth mother to hear her child described as "unwanted" her sense of abandoning her child or shirking responsibility is only reinforced. And besides, boy, do people like us want that child. No child is unwanted (especially babies). A better term would be "unplaned child"

Natural or "real" parents/children So... because we adopted Ezra would that make us the "fake" parents? If by some miracle I ever did get pregnant would that make Ezra our "un natural child"? The thought burns me up. The terms "biological' or "birth parents" are much better

I hope this all makes sense. And now here is my quick list of positive and negative laguage of adoption.

Positive Language Negative Language

Find a family to parent your child Putting your child up for adoption

Child by birth Real child or Natural child

adopted person adopted child (when speaking of an adult)

decided to parent the child keeping the child

child born to umnamrried parents illegitimate child

meeting between birthparents and reunion

adopted child

Kiss it better

So... Ezra's foot was on the toilet seat when he slammed the lid on his toes. He cried showed me the bottom of his foot where the "injury" was and requested the healing powers of a kiss. Hmm...the bottom of a foot having just been on the highly sanitary toilet seat. So I cleverly turned his foot lovingly holding it in my hand and kissed my thumb. "No," Ezra said, "it's this part of my foot." So I kissed my fingers and lovingly rubbed the healing exlickser onto his foot. It still wasn't good enough so I finally settled on changing the subject, "Did you want to play Hi-Ho Cherry-O?" Narrowly dodged that bullet.

Networking: Making your adoption Happen

Ooooh....why is networking our adoption so hard for me? We went to an adoption conference, got some great ideas about how to spread the word that we want to adopt and I've done next to nothing with that information. But now I'm starting to feel the time has come. I need to be proactive. A suggested plan of action is

1. Do an internet search of anything in the community that might have adoption leads (e.g. search "rape recovery centers in Wa)

2. Call them. Tell them who you are and that you would like to share some adoption information with them. Ask if that would be okay.

I'm just going to stop right here and ask myself, "Why can't I do that step?" I promote adoption in the church. This is just stretching me in a direction I don't even want to go. But never mind, moving right along with the plan:

3. Go into the office personally or send a package with a letter explaining who you are and referencing the conversation you had earlier. Place the materials where they will be seen (materials including information about LDS Family Services, ways to contact us directly if they're interested in placing, adoption education in general, etc).

4. Like any good missionary knows: Follow up, and try to come back, give a presentation, etc.

5. Establish a relationship with these people.

I'm sure this is a great opportunity and I know that if we already had gotten another baby I wouldn't even be thinking of this. And I know this could be a great opportunity to bless someone else's life so that they may learn about adoption. But I just can't get past the weirdness factor right now. I may have to hide this post so that birth parents don't see what a wimp I am. I know Ryan and Ezra would be fearless. I'm so scared I want to cry.

High lights from our Christmas letter

We just sent out our family Christmas letter. We tried to keep it short but we directed everyone to the blog. I tried to send a good mix of pictures that summed up a lot of the highlights and so I thought I should include the pictures in the blog.

Now I know this will be somewhat redundant for those of your who've already read the family Christmas letter (which is probably most of you) but I want a good place to display all our pictures too. Besides I need the material to make us look fun and interesting to any potential birth family :)

This first one, was of our big snow fall in November. It was way fun (can't you tell by the look on Ezra's face what a blast he's having:) Here he just build a snow man with our next door neighbor Isabella (actually it was really the dads who did all the work while the kids occasionally helped roll the giant snow balls and then taking the new found knowledge to create miniature balls to pelt at each other. I'm guessing Isabella won the snowball fight by the look on Ezra's face.)

My sister Christina came to visit for my birthday weekend, to go to the adoption conference with us and to meet our 4th cousin Duval. Ryan and I met Duval in Arizona and shortly thereafter he moved to Washington. Within the year we followed. Not on purpose...well, okay maybe a little on purpose. It has been such a blessing to get to know him. He's written amazing books about living through the great depression. He ran away from home and eventually made enough money to care for his mother and family. Now before I exhaust that subject I better stop. If anyone wants to know more I could tell you where to find his books.

Ezra's birth family was going to join us at the adoption conference too but tragedy struck and they had to attend a funeral instead. We were so happy they were able to stop by and visit us on their way back home. We just can't help loving these people who love Ezra so much.

Yes, these master pieces are ginger graham houses. We started out trying to create the nativity scene but...Ryan's architectural genius couldn't be restrained and instead he made a two story mansion. Ezra had a great sugary creation too but somehow using the camera timer kept him too perplexed to keep it on display for very long.

We needed proof of our fun family activities so we included this one-actually I choose to include this picture because not everyone had seen Ryan's facial hair. But Ryan became a veil worker in the LDS temple and he had to shave it off. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Ryan's parents came to visit us this summer. As it happened to land on Linda's (Ryan's mom) birthday we decided to celebrate with a Dairy Queen ice cream cake. Wow, those are so good!

This is Ryan's sister Carin. She graduated from Norther Arizona University and has moved to Washington to be near us...and to go to graduate school. It just happened to be a happy coincidence that her school was close to us.