Link for Halloween

The Republican War on Trick-or-Treating

The right doesn’t want our kids to take handouts.

This week, Republicans in Congress have decided to take some time off from taking time off to announce a bold new jobs initiative: As part of the effort to reward the nation’s hardest working job creators, and punish the “growing mobs” of whining, entitled, spoiled youngsters who have taken to the streets with their irrational, socialist demands, House GOP Leader Eric Cantor this afternoon announced that America’s problems will be solved by a forward-thinking congressional initiative. Quoting himself in a speech that he almost gave last week, Rep. Cantor explained that “Republicans believe that what is fair is a hand up, not a hand out.” And that’s why Republicans today declared war on trick-or-treaters.

It’s become increasingly clear to the Republican leadership that growing mobs of masked youngsters, overrunning America’s pristine public thoroughfares with their unreasonable demands for free Skittles, are both frightening and disruptive. “If you give a kid a candy corn, he’ll eat for a day,” explained Cantor, in unveiling the new program. “But if you take away his candy corn and make him grow his own sugar cane, he’ll grow up to have a job you will eventually send overseas.”

Go read the whole thing – it’s pretty funny - but then I am so very liberal…

Have a safe Halloween and my dogs will be ever so happy when it is over because in Canada – Halloween without fireworks is not Halloween…poor puppies…

 

I’m Sorry…

Some adoptees have had this said to them when they tell someone they are adopted.  I can’t say I remember anyone saying that to me, but it’s quite possible  someone could have.  Some adoptees don’t like it, but I have been thinking about it, and am not sure if it isn’t being said as a proper response to the reality of what it means if you are adopted. 

My thinking is that when anyone has lost someone, and in the case of adoption your entire family, isn’t it proper to show respect to the individual for their loss by saying I’m sorry?

Thoughts?

 

Life goes on…

I had to take mom in for day-surgery this week and then make sure her post-op time at home went okay.  I was completely drained by the time I got home, and yesterday I was still tired and my thoughts weren’t translating into words and still aren’t the best, but I am glad I went and everything turned out okay.  Mom needs me more and more and that worries me, in case I let her down because of my health.

But getting back to taking her for surgery – she got checked in and organized and were told both the surgeon and anesthesiologist would stop by in a few minutes.  The anesthesiologist arrived first to talk about her health history and family health history asking a variety of questions.  She is forgetting some things so I was glad I was there to fill in the blanks, and others she just doesn’t see the importance of mentioning – things that are important – like the health of your lungs when you are going under anesthesia.  I don’t know if she has lost this knowledge, or never absorbed it from dad like I did, yet we all were at the dinner table when dad told us about his day and explained how things worked and answered questions.  I guess I am worrying that she is losing information she once had, but I also question if she ever really listened and learned.

Anyway, one of the questions was whether she had ever been under anesthesia, and if any of her relatives ever had a hard time waking up from anaesthesia.  That triggered me all over again, and made me realize that question must be asked by all anesthesiologists - that mine wasn’t just being overly careful – because he asked the question after finding out she had been put under before.

The whole experience triggered me that as adoptees – we aren’t entitled to that knowledge – knowledge that everyone else has and asked about.  I know this is harping on the subject of family health history, but when are people going to wake up and start talking about the very real risks to all adoptees? 

What do parents answer when they are asked that question when one of their children is going under anesthesia for surgery?  Are they really okay with not knowing an answer that could in reality have very serious implications?

 

Ethiopian adoption story

Adoption Delays for Bay Area Family

A Bay Area family is among dozens struggling to bring home their baby from Ethiopia. They say the U.S. government is to blame.

How is it the government’s fault?  Where is the agencies responsibility to their clients to ensure the child actually IS an orphan, and that all investigations to confirm that fact are done? 

The USCIS did a huge presentation on this April 6, 2011, and clearly identified the process of adoption before immigration clearance was a HUGE problem.  The problems were going on LONG before that presentation. 

The government has Alerts and Notices on their website going back to April 2010 about issues in Ethiopia – more than enough time for agencies to change their process…

Where is the prospective parents responsibility to educate themselves about the process, the concerns, the country before they begin the process?  The information from the government is right there waiting for them to read it in black and white.

 

Questions to mull on for parents

Do you consider adoption to be a valid way to join a family?

If yes,

Then why does it bother so many parents when the adoption is noted in a newspaper, or magazine article, when referring to the child? 

Have you ever explored why it bothers so many, because I believe that attitude can impact children.  Parents may not realize they show it, but their children may pick up on it, and what will it tell them?   

We are adopted.  It isn’t a one-time event – we will always be adopted, and if it bothers parents, then in reality you must feel it isn’t a valid way to join a family, or that we are less than. 

Giving the excuse that bio is not noted – that is, and will always be, at least in our lifetime the standard way to form a family and is the default assumption for the reader.

Either being adopted is fine or it isn’t.

I see this come up time and time again.  This time it was done intentionally to show a similarity between the child and mother that readers may not expect to be there, because they already know the child is adopted.  

http://celebritybabies.people.com/2011/10/20/katherine-heigl-elle-women-in-hollywood-naleigh-loves-stilettos/

P.s. I don’t think it is always needed, but I don’t see any reason to get upset over it being noted.

 

To me this does not work

I have seen this article linked many times recently and to me the article tries to combine two things that don’t necessarily work together.

Top 10 Keys to using Positive Adoption Language

The article starts off with this:

Every year, our country dedicates the month of November as National Adoption Month. The goal is to raise awareness about the adoption of children from foster care and facilitate the creation of forever families for the 115,000 children in foster care nationwide. Worldwide, the number of children in need of adoptive parents climbs into the millions.

It goes on talking about foster care adoption which I support for children who are legally free for adoption.  I take no exception to what they write until it comes to this:

Positive Adoption Language:

Words are very powerful. Positive adoption language aims to end the negative stereotypes and misconceptions regarding adoption, while educating others that all families look different and form in different ways. Here are some keys to positive adoption language.

And specifically this:

5. When speaking about adoption, it is important to note that birth parents make an adoption plan to place the child in a home to be cared for and raised. The child who was adopted was not “given away” or “unwanted.” The child should know he or she is loved and an adoption plan was created for them to live in a forever family.

And how exactly did parents who had their rights terminated by the state for cause come up with that plan, and exactly what was included in that plan to get their rights terminated.  Think about that for a minute – the full implications of it – because if you want to use PAL with foster care adoptions then it has to work.

So many other 10 PAL statements do not work in conjunction with adoption from foster care that it makes no sense to link the two together.

Neither does PAL work for step parent adoption – go ahead and see how it fails at each statement.  I  would hesitate to apply it to most international adoptions either, and certainly not to all domestic adoptions.

I’m not a fan of PAL as I find it dishonest and tries to sugar-coat something that comes with a whole lot of loss and pain, and seeks to elevate one side over the other instead of simply recognising both sides are important.

Linking the two parts of this article together does not work for me at all.