State adoption

My mother is a foster parent and has successfully adopted three children from the state. She picked them each up from the hospital as newborns and had no trouble at all with terminating parental rights or the adoptions. Standard time here is that the parents get 15 months to clean up their act and if nothing happens the child is availble for adoption. So we were able to adopt them fairly quickly. I have nothing bad to say about the process.

Thank you for answering. I appreciate it. I just wanted to hear some good stories you know. All I have been getting is the negative. While I know that alot of negative things happen, Its good to hear the POSITIVE too.

No problem. I wish you luck. If you have any questions i'd be more than happy to help. If i don't know something my mother definitely will.

how long was your mom a fp before getting the newborns? here in wa once you are licensed they put you on a waiting list until a child matches what your looking for. (i dont know how to say it not trying to be rude or anything) anyways you are on the list until they tell you they have a child.
we are looking to adopt a little girl 1 yr or younger. we have a 2 and 5 yr old boys and a little girl would make our family complete. maybe even 2 lol. we were told in all the classes that you dont want to get a child that is older than your children or older than your youngest.
anyways they were telling us that it would be no problem for us getting a little girl under 1 but the closer we get to being licensed they are changing there story telling me now that we will be on the waiting list a long time. They want us to do foster care and "keep a bed open" in case they get a little girl that is open for adoption. I told them that i could only do very short term temporary foster care because I couldnt handle everyone getting attached and then them leaving. and it would be pretty hard to explain to my 5 yr old that this baby wont be your little sister. we have explained to him about adoption and he is so excited to get a sister that would tear him up. I told the agency that when the kids got older we would be more able to do foster care on different terms just not at this point.
It seems like a mess and its really hard.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to me.

Ummm. they were approved in August and we got our first baby on December 6. Now thats quite a bit shorted than normal. She was premature, biracial, and drug addicted when she was born so several families turned her down which is really sad. We have had quite a few foster children in our home of various ages and yes it is very hard.
Also, it is sometimes hard for the biological children. I'm the only bio child in my family. I was 12 when we started taking children and i had a hard time at first. I'm a lot older now and it doesn't bother me anymore. It's just people have a tendency sometimes to treat the adopted children as "special" and forget about the bio children. As long as they have some special time with you they will be fine.

As to giving up children, we only gave up two babies. One of them had a lot of physical and mental problems and we couldn't handle him at the time because we already had two babies so he went to another family who adopted him. The other little girl went back to her mother. It was difficult but it's worth it once you finally get to keep one.

If you think you have trouble giving them up you could look into emergency placement which has always been very short whenver we have done it. No more than a week or two. Or respite care. I'm not sure if that will be called the same thing where you live but here it is when one family takes another foster family's children for awhile. For example, my mother had cancer last year. When she was having chemotherapy our kids went to another family for a week because i was in school and she couldn't handle them. Those placements are short term and you'd be dealing with another foster family instead of a biological family so that might be something you'd be interested in. But again, i'm not sure how things work over there.
Hope that helped a bit.

I *am* adopted. My mom (the one that adopted me) is the best thing that has ever happened to me! She did have horror stories from adoption too. But, she successfully adopted me and my sister.

Big Sis and MoldedbyMercy ... in what state do you live? Where did the adoptions take place?

my sister just gave up her first baby to a wonderful couple who already had a little boy from adoption too. They seemed not to have any problem with it, they only waited about a month to get boy, then wanted another and found my sister, who at the time was about a month away from giving birth.

yogahoneybunny,

I'm from pennsylvania.

Thanks, Big Sis. So your mom's adoptions took place in PA? If so, that's good news. I officially have residency status there, and if the process is fairly smooth, I would consider an adoption from PA. Were the birth parents mainly involved in drugs?

Wow. What a coincidence...I also lived in Florida ... that is too weird. Palm Beach County. Molded --- what difficulties did your mom encounter? Mainly legal or personal? Can you describe (if possible...I don't want to seem pushy)?

yogahoneybunny,
Yes their parents mostly had drug problems. My sister's father was also in jail quite a bit.
My brother's mother had some mental problems. She ended up having way more children than she could handle (eight of them)

But we haven't had any problems from any of them since their rights were terminated.

Aha. How was it for you as the big sister when your mother decided to adopt? How did you adapt to the role?

Umm, to be completely honest it was a little difficult. I was an only child for 12 years then my mom decided to go into foster care. Within 6 years i was the oldest of four children. But it has really been worth it. I love them so much.
But it is definitely a big adjustment.

That must have been very difficult ... but with many adoptions at the same time, kind of exciting, too. How old is your youngest sibling? How many years between you?

Well, I'm 18
My sister is 6
My brother is 2
and my baby sister is 1
So the biggest gap is 17 years. Most people who don't know us assume she's my daughter.

Do you think that you'll ever adopt, Big Sis?

Depends,
My mom had trouble conceiving after me and with genetics and everything i'm anticipating that i may have troubles also. If that is the case i would most defintely adopt especially since i know so much about it having watched my mom do it so many times and if i stay local once i leave home i already know the people who work in our adoption agency. So i would definitely say yes, i have considered it.