Questions....

GWUAlum · January 2013

DH and I are exploring our options and studying adoption. We both know we want to adopt at some point. We've decided we want to go the international route. Origionally we were looking into Russia, but for now that is off the table obviously. Now we are looking at Poland and Bulgaria. If you have any experience with either I'd like to hear the good bad and ugly of your experience.

I've been reading blogs and doing my research. I realize that children have attachment issues from the lack of love and attention received while they are in the orphanages. Here's my main concern...DH and I both work fulltime. I do not see that changing. Do y'all think it'll be a problem since we'll have to have a daycare or babysitter during the day? I've not really thought about this until here recently and it has me kind of concerned that this could be a major road block for us.

TIA

Have a Great Day

12bailey18 · January 2013

Hi, we are also planning to go the international route. I don't have experience on those two countries but I will say I think your best bet is to talk to some agencies. Even if you don't sign up with them tomorrow, you can at least open up the dialogue, attend informational seminars, etc.. During that time they would be able to answer those specific questions. We haven't officially chosen our agency but I've attended a few webinars online from different agencies where I was able to ask questions that maybe weren't on the websites or elsewhere online. It has really helped me! I can't remember which country I researched but there was one that required at least one parent to stay home for 6 months after returning to the states. I have researched a ton of countries and have only seen that one time so I would assume you would be fine- I know it wasn't Bulgaria and I don't believe it was Poland. The agencies I have talked to have been very eager to help me and answer my questions- stress free without having to commit to them.

DaisyZH · January 2013

We have been looking at international, although not Poland or Bulgaria. The one thing that comes to mind is our agency mentioned there was a required amount of time you had to be home with your child before returning to work. I can't for the life of me find it now and I don't remember how long. Maybe just something to check with your agency.

GWUAlum · January 2013

I will ask them for sure. I know I can't stay home for 6 months. According to a video I watched you have to stay in Poland for 6 weeks on your second trip, which will make it difficult to stay for an extended time once we get home too.

silliestbunny · January 2013

We adopted domestically twice and are working on our third adoption. My heart has always been w/international adoption though.

There are a few women on this board that will likely share their views after adopting internationally... but here are my thoughts (keep in mind I am an outsider looking in.)

You really need to be aware of what a child's needs will be when they come home and that may require time away from work. Being sensitive to the adjustment of a new home, new language, new foods, new environment... it takes time. Regardless of what an agency or country requires, think about it from the perspective of the child. Can the child assimilate quickly? What will your childcare look like? Are there others (even in the blogosphere) that have done it the way you are proposing?

None of this is meant as a deterrent or judgment...just advocating for the child and helping you think through some of the issues you might want to consider.

Good luck and hope you stick around

Stacy092306 · January 2013

We are just starting the international adoption process. We plan to adopt from Moldova. We both work full time, but I plan to use FMLA leave to take off at least 6-8 weeks once we come home. (It will be unpaid since I will have used all my vacation time traveling to the country twice.) My mom will be watching the child when I go back to work, so I hope by the 6-8 week mark that he or she will be adjusting ok and will be ok staying with my mom.

CaptainSerious · January 2013

My husband and I adopted 2 children from Peru, 2 years apart. The oldest came home in 2010, at 7, and the youngest came home last Spring, at age 5. We both work full-time.

I wrote you you a long post explaining my answer, but the nest ate it. I will try to reconstruct and repost it before the end of the weekend.

In short, it can be done well if you can take some time off during the initial adjustment period and if you pretty much make bonding your sole priority for several months. The adjustment is very tough on everyone, but it's the most amazing thing in my life I ever had to work hard at.

CaptainSerious · January 2013

I don?t think there are any regular posters on this board that have adopted from either Poland or Bulgaria. If you want the good, bad, and ugly of the adjustment phase (and after) of international adoption from another country, feel free to search my posts. I?ve been very open about all of what we experienced, both because this board has been an amazing support to me and in the hopes of helping others going into-through it.

The amount of attachment difficulty a child has is often directly related to two factors: how long they lived in an institutionalized setting; and how many bonding disruptions they have had. By ?bonding disruption? I mean how many times they have lost a primary caregiver from their lives (or at least lost steady day-to-day care from them). Although there?s no way to predict for sure which children will have a harder time truly bonding to adoptive parents, there is a rule of thumb I?ve come across that says that the transition will take at least a year, plus an additional month for every year of the child?s age. This was remarkably true for my older son.

As I said, both my husband and I work full-time. Each time we adopted, I took time off, both for the adoption trip and then to ensure our children had no other primary caregiver in their first months with us. Given both or children were ?older? when we adopted them, it was recommended that we not allow them to have any other caregivers for the first six months with us.

If you adopt an ?older? child internationally, I highly recommend you do something similar. But don?t panic! If the children are of school age, this does not mean you need to take 6 months off from work. The key is to come up with a well-thought-out plan and provide it to your employer with a specific time-frame and a guarantee that you will return to work. Be inventive, find ways to limit your time away (maybe you and your husband can split time?), and present the plan knowing that it will leave your boss reeling. Chances are your employer hasn?t had employees people adopt, yet along ask for extended time off to do so. The key is to be flexible and find ways to accommodate all their fears about you being out of the office. Train your relief, offer to work from home, or at the very least, make yourself available while on leave.

We adopted my older son, M, when he was 7, at the end of July 2010. Due to his circumstances, we expected him to have very serious difficulties attaching to us. He needed surgery almost immediately after we returned home, in August, and started school in September. I used a combination of personal/vacation/furlough time for the six weeks we were in Peru and when we returned. Any days we spent at doctor?s appointments, as well as during his surgery and recovery time (so most of August), was charged to my accrued sick time. When he started school in September, I returned to work, but left work every day in time to pick him up after school. Since my office would not allow ?part-time employment,? I used my remaining personal/vacation time to cover my absences. In January, I returned to work full-time. This worked wonderfully for us. My employers loved that I was really only out of the office for three months instead of the projected 6, but my son still got the full 6 months bonding-time. M is fully attached to us, trusts us, and I couldn?t imagine having a better bond.

We brought my younger son, J, home this Spring, at age 5. I again used a combination of paid/unpaid time to cover my time out of the office, but this time added in unpaid family leave time. We spent 4 weeks in Peru this time, and returned home at the end of March. Since it was so close to the end of the school year, we waited until September to start him in school, and I stayed home with him until then. This was a much longer break from work, but since I had previously adopted and stuck to the plan I outlined (and NJ law entitles me to 6 months leave), they felt comfortable knowing I would again train my relief, be available if they needed me, and return as promised. The funny thing is that although J didn?t seem to have the warning signs that would indicate difficulty attaching, we?ve had a bit of difficulty forming a solid bond with him in ways that are very different than we experienced with M, despite all the time I took to be home with him. Part of it is that he bonded completely with M right away, and doesn?t see a need to bond with us. Part of it is that we didn?t go through all the same steps with him that we did with M, because he was younger, didn?t have the same traumatic past, and I was able to be home with him. I sometimes wonder if I didn?t enroll him in twice-a-week Gymboree classes (in July and August) or leave him in the gym?s babysitting room while I worked out during those first months if things would have gone smoother, but I needed those times as a reprieve (he spoke incessantly, in speech-delayed Spanish, which took so much effort for me to understand), and second guessing isn?t going to help things now. We are all fallible and just doing the best we can, and our job now is to continue reassuring him and working towards that connection in his own time.

GWUAlum · January 2013

Thanks Captain! That helps a lot. I'm starting a new job on the 21st. I'm going to have to get a feel on how things work there. I know we won't be making any trips this year, so that kind of helps. Next year I'll get two weeks pay, and I'll qualify for FMLA. It'll help also. I don't think I've "met" anyone that has adopted and both parents work full-time.

Mrs.Slick · January 2013

DS is from an orphanage overseas and we both work full time. I did take off 10 weeks from work though using fmla. It has helped immensely with attachment and bonding. Once I go back to work in three weeks ::sniffle:: he will go to a small in home certified daycare instead of a large one that may resemble an orphanage environment.

The book The Connected Child as well as my agencies online videos on attachment and bonding have helped a lot.

GWUAlum · January 2013

I will deff check out the book. I'll have to give more thought and do more research on daycares. I'm not a fan myself, but don't really have much of a choice. I will probably take the 12 weeks of FMLA. I can imagine it'll be hard to go back to work. I probably won't want too.

davidandheather · January 2013

CaptainSerious:
I don?t think there are any regular posters on this board that have adopted from either Poland or Bulgaria. If you want the good, bad, and ugly of the adjustment phase (and after) of international adoption from another country, feel free to search my posts. I?ve been very open about all of what we experienced, both because this board has been an amazing support to me and in the hopes of helping others going into-through it.
The amount of attachment difficulty a child has is often directly related to two factors: how long they lived in an institutionalized setting; and how many bonding disruptions they have had. By ?bonding disruption? I mean how many times they have lost a primary caregiver from their lives (or at least lost steady day-to-day care from them). Although there?s no way to predict for sure which children will have a harder time truly bonding to adoptive parents, there is a rule of thumb I?ve come across that says that the transition will take at least a year, plus an additional month for every year of the child?s age. This was remarkably true for my older son.
As I said, both my husband and I work full-time. Each time we adopted, I took time off, both for the adoption trip and then to ensure our children had no other primary caregiver in their first months with us. Given both or children were ?older? when we adopted them, it was recommended that we not allow them to have any other caregivers for the first six months with us.
If you adopt an ?older? child internationally, I highly recommend you do something similar. But don?t panic! If the children are of school age, this does not mean you need to take 6 months off from work. The key is to come up with a well-thought-out plan and provide it to your employer with a specific time-frame and a guarantee that you will return to work. Be inventive, find ways to limit your time away (maybe you and your husband can split time?), and present the plan knowing that it will leave your boss reeling. Chances are your employer hasn?t had employees people adopt, yet along ask for extended time off to do so. The key is to be flexible and find ways to accommodate all their fears about you being out of the office. Train your relief, offer to work from home, or at the very least, make yourself available while on leave.
We adopted my older son, M, when he was 7, at the end of July 2010. Due to his circumstances, we expected him to have very serious difficulties attaching to us. He needed surgery almost immediately after we returned home, in August, and started school in September. I used a combination of personal/vacation/furlough time for the six weeks we were in Peru and when we returned. Any days we spent at doctor?s appointments, as well as during his surgery and recovery time (so most of August), was charged to my accrued sick time. When he started school in September, I returned to work, but left work every day in time to pick him up after school. Since my office would not allow ?part-time employment,? I used my remaining personal/vacation time to cover my absences. In January, I returned to work full-time. This worked wonderfully for us. My employers loved that I was really only out of the office for three months instead of the projected 6, but my son still got the full 6 months bonding-time. M is fully attached to us, trusts us, and I couldn?t imagine having a better bond.
We brought my younger son, J, home this Spring, at age 5. I again used a combination of paid/unpaid time to cover my time out of the office, but this time added in unpaid family leave time. We spent 4 weeks in Peru this time, and returned home at the end of March. Since it was so close to the end of the school year, we waited until September to start him in school, and I stayed home with him until then. This was a much longer break from work, but since I had previously adopted and stuck to the plan I outlined (and NJ law entitles me to 6 months leave), they felt comfortable knowing I would again train my relief, be available if they needed me, and return as promised. The funny thing is that although J didn?t seem to have the warning signs that would indicate difficulty attaching, we?ve had a bit of difficulty forming a solid bond with him in ways that are very different than we experienced with M, despite all the time I took to be home with him. Part of it is that he bonded completely with M right away, and doesn?t see a need to bond with us. Part of it is that we didn?t go through all the same steps with him that we did with M, because he was younger, didn?t have the same traumatic past, and I was able to be home with him. I sometimes wonder if I didn?t enroll him in twice-a-week Gymboree classes (in July and August) or leave him in the gym?s babysitting room while I worked out during those first months if things would have gone smoother, but I needed those times as a reprieve (he spoke incessantly, in speech-delayed Spanish, which took so much effort for me to understand), and second guessing isn?t going to help things now. We are all fallible and just doing the best we can, and our job now is to continue reassuring him and working towards that connection in his own time.

Thank you so much for taking the time to type all this out and share. It is so helpful.

CaptainSerious · January 2013

You're welcome.

Just another thing: neither my agency or Peru required us to spend a certain amount of time home, but my agency recommended the six months. Given my sons' background, we worked at finding a wy to make that feasible, and I'm so glad we did. It took M a good year and a half until we felt he was completely through his adjustment and he fully trusted us and felt completely safe with us. J has still been with us since March, and we still aren't there. It's a process that takes a lot of time, reassurance, and consistency, and I can't imagine how far it would have set us back if we hadn't taken that extra time upfront.

Also, if it helps, we found a very responsible college student who spoke their native language (of course, Spanish wasn't too difficult to find) to be their nanny when we went back to work full-time. It was mportant to us that after a full dy of school, they got the individual attention they need and deserved.

I've got a lot of great book recommendations on the adjustment period and parenting children who were adopted at an "older" age, when you are ready to prepare for that.

GWUAlum · January 2013

CaptainSerious:
You're welcome.
Just another thing: neither my agency or Peru required us to spend a certain amount of time home, but my agency recommended the six months. Given my sons' background, we worked at finding a wy to make that feasible, and I'm so glad we did. It took M a good year and a half until we felt he was completely through his adjustment and he fully trusted us and felt completely safe with us. J has still been with us since March, and we still aren't there. It's a process that takes a lot of time, reassurance, and consistency, and I can't imagine how far it would have set us back if we hadn't taken that extra time upfront.
Also, if it helps, we found a very responsible college student who spoke their native language (of course, Spanish wasn't too difficult to find) to be their nanny when we went back to work full-time. It was mportant to us that after a full dy of school, they got the individual attention they need and deserved.
I've got a lot of great book recommendations on the adjustment period and parenting children who were adopted at an "older" age, when you are ready to prepare for that.

I'll have to look into the nanny thing once we get to that point. I'll have to keep that in mind about the books. I really appreciate all the advice!

Want a personalized experience?

Questions....

Re: Questions....

Choose Another Board

Search Boards