Family

Family:

a. a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not: the traditional family.

b. a social unit consisting of one or more adults together with the children they care for

 

What is a family? This question seems so straight forward at first, but as I become older and think about starting a family, I become more and more amazed at how many different types of families there are, and what exactally do I want my family to look like. Being adopted automatically changes the makeup of my family from the 'traditional family'. I have a Mom and a Dad, a brother and sister...but I also have a Birth-mom, and  sister who doesnt share my brother and sister with me. Now I also have a new family having married my husband. But wait...I don't just have our new family, I have in-laws...and I have 'birth-in-laws'.

 

I volunteer with an organization that supports adoptive families and a youth group made up of teens in fostercare, aged out of foster care and have been adopted. This too has played a part in my understanding of what a family is.

 

Family is so much more then parents and thier children.

 

I have friends who are currently adopting kids out of foster care, kids with special needs, kids in other countries that don't have the resources to care for them. Again, my idea of family is enlarged.

 

I am reminded of what the bible explains as family over and over again:

 

In Ruth 1, we learn about permenence. Naomi tells Ruth to go back to her mother, but Ruth pleads to stay saying “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”

 

In James 1:27 we are commaded "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress"

 

These stories make me ask myself, what do I want my family to look like? I pray that it is a family that loves relentlesly, that is made up through more then mere bloodline, that I can be a home to orphans. And I pray that I can encourage others to look at families differently too, that they may see a home for orphans in thier own families, that more children would find peremency, that more teenagers would be adopted, that more Christians would be empowered by the power and grace of God to carry out his good works and take care of the orphans and the widows.

 

 Here are some of the links to some of the stories mentioned that have inspired me:http://carlaburlando.blogspot.ca/
http://nataliekeller.blogspot.ca/
And if you want more information on Adoption please check out the Adoptive Families Association:
http://www.bcadoption.com/default.asp

 

Positive Adoption Langauge

 Language in Adoption. 

Being adopted, I didn't really think of the impact of language in a systemic way as judgement, but now that i am older and look back, it does have a huge impact on how that child views themselves. I remember when i was younger people would as if i knew my real mom. I remember thinking that was such a strange question, what could you possible mean my real mom...as opposed to my fake mom? Both my mom's are quite real...neither of them are ghosts or figments of my imagination. This list from http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/pdf/PositiveLanguage.pdf is a tool for you to rethink your own language around adoption to be more child friendly and less judgmental.

Positive Language                     Negative Language
Birth parent                                                                Real parent
Biological parent                                                        Natural parent
Birth child                                                                 Own child
My child                                                                   Adopted child; Own child
Born to unmarried parents                                         Illegitimate
Terminate parental rights                                            Give up
Make an adoption plan                                             Give away
To parent                                                                  To keep
Waiting child                                                             Adoptable child; available child
Biological or birth father                                             Real father
Making contact with                                                  Reunion
Parent                                                                       Adoptive parent
Inter-country adoption                                                Foreign adoption
Adoption triad                                                          Adoption triangle
Permission to sign a release                                       Disclosure
Search                                                                      Track down parents
Child placed for adoption                                          An unwanted child
Court termination                                                      Child taken away
Child with special needs                                            Handicapped child
Child from abroad                                                     Foreign child
Was adopted                                                             Is adopted

Unacceptable

Adoption

My life has been leading me to advocate and be somehow involved with children who are familyless for a long time, starting at birth, when someone adopted me, and a love of children to public relations for an orphanage in Mexico, to a career path of social work.  Love for people is a top priority to me, and unconditional love for children who otherwise will grow up in a series of temporary families just seems logical. I am currently doing a practicum at an Adoption support and advocacy group and have learned shocking things. Like there are huge numbers of children in foster care that ARE adoptable! That teenagers are adoptable...and they WANT to be adopted! and that foster parents burnout rate is so high, often because they have children who have backgrounds which involve a lot of pain, that they deal with insolation as the community, and the christian community, has not taken a bigger role in issues of fostering and adoption or even supporting those who chose to. If anyone sees this and has questions about adopting, please please contact me, or check out some of these resources:

www.bcadoption.com
www.waitingtobelong.ca
http://www.mcf.gov.bc.ca/adoption/adopt.htm
http://www.theprovince.com/life/Tattooed+teens+want+families/5387124/story.html
http://youtu.be/fifvmBnUWWw





We all want to belong from Focus on the Family Canada on Vimeo.