We completed the Pre-Adoption Training Classes last weekend and have the Certificates to show it! Here's what they say:

(our name) has completed 12 hours of Special Needs Pre-Adoption Training on:

• Separation & Loss
  
• Cultural Considerations & Natural Family Values
  
• Attachment and Child Development
  
• Parenting Abused & Neglected Children
  
• Impact of Child Abuse on Development
  
• Positive Behavior Management
  
• Impact of Adoption on Your Family

From here, we choose an agency then apply. Then we get The Questionnaire that we must answer in depth. Over a hundred questions. There are 15 more steps after that. I counted.

The classes were very good, rather intense, and I'm more committed to adopting children from foster care than ever. We have had a series of long dinner discussions with our daughter about what we've learned, what's happening next, and all manner of related topics.

The training was three days of classes, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and that's a short time for so much information, some of it's still processing. Amazingly, there's a manual! It's almost two inches thick with articles and information on every subject relating to special needs adoption you can think of. I love it.

It was inspiring to be in a room with about 24 other couples or singles of every family composition you can imagine, all there with the desire to adopt a child or children from foster care.

Some things that we took away:

The ethnicity and culture of our future children is not a real deciding factor, we're more focused on discovering the range of special needs we are comfortable dealing with. Low to moderate needs is where we are right now, but we'll know our minds better after the homestudy and after discussing it with our future adoption worker.

If you are going down this path and have experienced or observed abuse in the past--yourself, other family members, or close friends--be honest about it with yourself and with your adoption partner if you have one, because it WILL come back to you during the kinds of discussions and presentations that occur in these classes. The same is true for any topic listed above that you may have first-hand knowledge of. They warned us at the beginning about this, and they were right.

There are no guarantees. We were told repeatedly that, as thorough as the case histories are of the children who enter the foster care system and are waiting for adoption, the therapists, doctors, caseworkers, and other parties don't always get the complete picture, even though they make every effort to do so. It's not common but it's also not unheard of for a child to present signs of previously unknown abuse, even of an unknown disability, long after the placement or even the adoption has taken place. For instance, let's suppose that for whatever reason, you go in thinking that you are not prepared to deal with sexually abused children and are clear about that with your adoption worker, there is always the chance that you may still end up adopting a child who has been sexually abused but no one knew about it. Again, there are no guarantees.

Now we are preparing to choose an agency, apply, and set in motion the paperwork avalanche known as homestudy. But we're very hopeful, excited, and certain of what we're doing. We've started the journey and know what to do next.

(Note: this is a partial cross-post from my blog at The New Homemaker.)