Adopt a Special Kid

It’s been almost 4 years (Sept 6^th) that our three boys moved in with us. Without AASK, our parenting experience would be totally different. The staff are genuine in their desire to help children in the foster care system find their their forever homes. We have been supported by the agency since our orientation and still continue to have them as a resource. Parenting has it’s challenges all of which are overshadowed by the rewards. I am thankful for Adopt A Special Kid and the role they play in my life and the lives of my children!
If you have ever considered adoption as an option to create your family — I urge you to come to an orientation and learn how you can enrich you life through parenting.

Several years ago, when my two oldest kids were 9 and 7, my wife announced that she wanted a third. The idea was a bit of a surprise to me, but hey, I’m open-​minded.
But she didn’t want to deal with pregnancy and nursing and diapers and vomit and all the crap that having an infant entails. She had been doing some reading about adopting at-​risk kids and thought that maybe serendipity had laid a wonderful plan in our lap. Why not adopt an older kid who really needed a good home, do something good for the world (and the kid of course) AND avoid all the «start-​up» stuff?
We found AASK through some friends who had been through their program, but were still waiting for an adoption. We met with the caring, competent and organized staff and, after being interviewed for suitability, attended an orientation meeting with other prospective parents. We then attended a weekend workshop where we learned all about at-​risk kids, showing them the right kind of love and dealing with the fact that they likely had experienced a great deal of trauma in their young lives.
You see, unlike on TV, 5 year olds don’t suddenly go from having loving, caring devoted parents to being part of the foster-​care system. Yeah, sure, there is the occasional orphaning of such a child from a car crash, but those kids get taken in by extended family. No, any 5 year-​old available for adoption has most likely been either abandoned, or removed from the home. These are kids with drug and alcohol addicted parents, sexually or physically abused or neglected kids. Many of them are born with fetal alcohol syndrome and so might have learning disabilities and problems coping with the world. Whatever their situation, the common thread for all these kids is that at their core, they feel abandoned, unloved and, often, unlovable.
We put a lot of time in the process. We went to picnics held for families with adopted kids and met them and their new parents. We paid personal visits to some families who had adopted several kids and learned all about the time and energy it would entail. It was very cool to see how well some of them were thriving after only a year or so in a loving, caring family. The whole process taught us how incredibly resilient the human spirit is.
However, after all that, we did some serious reflection. It was one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever made, but in the end we decided that parenting is hard enough with our own crazy gene pool, and we also felt that it could be unfair to our two existing kids given the amount of time and energy an at-​risk child would consume.
We decided to give it a go for our own biological third, and if Mrs. Z wasn’t pregnant within a month, we’d abandon the whole idea. However, since I have such impressive swimmers she was knocked up in about a week. And we now have a 9-​year old girl who, unlike the AASK kids, and through nothing other than fate, luck, good fortune or whatever you want to call it, wound up born into a caring, loving family.
If you’ve ever thought about adopting an older kid, check these guys out. They do amazing work and they’ll answer all your questions.
Maybe you’ll find that you have more courage than we did.