Kansas Couple Fails to Report Missing Son
This story is about a couple from the town of El Dorado, Kansas, not very far from where our family is from. It says that 10 years ago, this couple’s 11-year-old adopted son ran away (according to the couple), and they never reported him missing. They didn’t know where he was, but they figured he must have gone back to his biological parents (you know, the one whose home he was taken out of and put into foster care).
Apparently he was a very troubled kid and they weren’t sorry to see him go. I know a little bit about how that is; when a troubled kid finally gets arrested or hospitalized, the parents and other siblings feel a relief that they are often ashamed of. But who can blame them? If every day is a fight, it IS a relief to stop fighting for a little while. And if your child is safe–in detention or in the hospital–you can actually take a deep breath and let your guard down for a few days. I have mixed feelings about those youth programs, but I think that letting parents and kids be separated from each other for a little bit is a great advantage.
But this 11-year-old boy, Adam Herrman, was not in the hospital or in juvenile detention. He was just gone, and the Herrmans didn’t tell anyone. Right now the police are investigating this using the protocols of a death–and rightly so. They’re actually just trying to find this young man, who would be 21 now, to make sure he’s alive and well…but they seem to doubt it. I doubt it, too.
But even if he is alive, and did find his way back to a family that took him in, this couple has so much to answer for. Did they think parenting would be easy? Did they think that a child from an abusive home would have no behavioral issues? DId they think that they could just stop being parents because their son was a handful? Did they think an 11-year-old child could fend for himself “out there”–wherever that was? Did they ever call his biological parents or siblings to ask if he made it there okay (the article is clear that they just assumed that that’s where he went)? Did they reach out to social and community services for help with him? Did they send money to assist whoever was supporting their child for the last 10 years? Did they think their responsibility was over?
Parenting tip #354456: You really MUST know where your child is.
The article doesn’t say how the police found out that the boy “ran away” and that the parents didn’t report him missing. It doesn’t matter, though it would be interesting to know. The absence of a child from someone’s life causes all sorts of problems–what did they tell the school? their relatives? their friends? What did they report on their taxes? It causes too many problems…and makes it pretty clear to me that this poor boy can’t possibly be alive any longer.
Obviously I can’t have any idea what happened. The article is pretty sketchy, and I’m sure that a lot of information will trickle out in the next few weeks, until people get bored by the story. I also know that the media tends to print the most sensational details and leave out all the others. I’m speculating that one of the parents lost his or her temper with Adam, hit him too hard, and he died, then they came up with this run-away story to cover it up. But I don’t know.
It does seem pretty clear to me that if he IS alive, the Herrmans are good candidates for Worst Parents Ever, and that young Adam is actually lucky to be away from them. But I don’t think he is alive. God help all our troubled children and their troubled parents. We can do better than this.
Odd Little Man Out
Our nieces are visiting this weekend. It’s been nice; they’re good girls, and get along really well with my kids. The only problem is that instead of being the only boy with two girls around, poor David is not the only boy with FOUR girls around, and they’re all older–12, 11, 10, and 8. Even L, who is just two-and-a-half years older than David, hangs out with the older girls, and not with David. I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it. The girls have done a good job of including David, but he’s not interested in playing Barbies or telling spooky stories by flashlight.
He does actually have boy cousins, but one is 2 and one is 15. He likes them a lot, and they visit, too (or, at least, the 15-year-old does, and the little one will), but it’s hard for him to remember that when four girls go squealing off and he’s left alone. To be fair, though, Girl 1 is almost 13 and doesn’t have a lot of patience with the younger girls, but she does have a lot of patience with David. She’s been doing a good job keeping an eye on him and making sure he isn’t left out too much.
It’s times like this, though, that I wish we had adopted another son, so that David would have a built-in companion, like the girls do. We haven’t ruled it out entirely, but we haven’t made any plans, either, and the kids keep getting older.
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
2008 is ending, and 2009 is about to begin. When I was my children’s ages, I couldn’t imagine what life would be like so far in the future. And it was–of course–impossible to imagine myself in my 39th year. The farthest I ever got was knowing that I would turn 30 in the year 2000. Anything past that was unimaginable.
But time goes fast. Here we are on the cusp of 2009. My children will turn 13, 12, and 6 this year. I met their father when I was 13, started public school when I was 12, and got my first pair of glasses when I was 6. I remember those years pretty clearly, but I wonder what I have lost. I wonder what elements of 2008 will be forgotten and never remembered. I hope it’s not much, because every year with my children, no matter how hard it’s been in other ways, is full of memories and love to be grasped and cherished.
I hope 2009 is exceptional for everyone who is reading this. I hope that it’s full of joy and success in whatever ways are important to you. Remember that blessings and prayers are like uncashed checks; you have to do something with them to get their true value. You all will be in my prayers; use them well.
Happy New Year.
5 Things Never to Say to An Adoptive Parent
I got this article from CafeMom, where it was written by JayGirlsMom and posted by Cafe Suzanne. For the whole article, plus some interesting comments and horror stories, you should really go there. But here are the 5 things they put on the list:
- Don’t tell her horror stories.
- Don’t refer to the “real” mother.
- Don’t ask if the baby is “hers.”
- Don’t say, “Where is your baby from?”
- Don’t be afraid to ask genuine questions.
To be fair to the people in my life, we don’t have very many horror stories to tell. David may be a little darker than the girls, but he looks a lot like my dad and my nephew. And from the moment he was born, he has been accepted into everyone’s life as though there were a David-shaped hole just waiting for him to fill it. But I do notice that media stories tend to talk about someone’s child…or their adopted child. I was very impressed at a news story recently that told about Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s son, Connor, who recently acted in Will Smith’s new movie…it just said their son, Connor. A nice change.
We did, however, recently have some kids come up to David and try to show him how much Spanish they knew. It was pretty cute, actually, because David knows about 4 words in Spanish, and he had no idea what they were talking about. Now, if they had been adults, I might have said something like, “Just because his skin is a little darker than yours doesn’t mean he speaks Spanish.” But it’s never come up…at least, not yet.
What are They Waiting For?
I don’t know a lot about international adoptions. This is probably irresponsible of me, because I know a lot of international adoptees, including my son’s birth mother. So bear with me, because I am a total bystander in a situation that is making me extremely frustrated, but doesn’t have anything to do with me directly.
A friend of mine, a woman about my age with kids about the age of my daughters, is in the process of adopting two kids from Haiti. These are kids who have been living in an orphanage since they were tiny babies, a little boy and a little girl. K and her husband have been in the adoption process for almost 2 years; in the meantime, these little ones are growing up in a Haitian orphanage. They could be growing up in the loving arms of parents and sisters who want them more than anything, in a community that has a lot of Haitian kids…but no, they are living these extremely important and formative young years in an orphanage in one of the poorest countries in the world.
I spent a week in Haiti in 2004. The poverty was incredible; nothing can prepare you to see people living in these circumstances. And it’s only gotten worse; since then there have been several major hurricanes that have ruined the few assets that Haiti did have. Haiti is full of orphans, and its people and its government are flat broke, they have no way to care for them. The people in Haiti know this; when I was there, I walked past families settling down for the evening on the sidewalks of Port-au-Prince, because they had no other homes. Women would come up to me with beautiful brown-eyed babies and say, “Will you take my baby home? Will you take my baby to America?”
When I was there, I visited schools, churches, and hospitals, but I didn’t go to orphanges. I wish I had, so that now I could have an informed opinion of what life is like in a Haitian orphanage. Since most care-taking organizations in Haiti are church-run and foreign-run, my guess is that caring religious people are doing the work and coughing up the money to care for these little ones. From what I saw, and from everything I’ve heard since, the Haitian government is neither able nor willing to put any kind of social welfare system in place, which means that needy Haitians rely almost completely on foreign help, which comes in large part through churches and the work they do there.
So, my question now, thinking of K and the toddlers waiting for her and her family in a Haitian orphanage, is WHAT ARE THEY WAITING FOR? The government has put so many fees and piles of red tape on K and her husband, who are just regular people (not made of money), and they are still waiting to bring these kids home. Now, it looks as if the little boy may be with them by Christmas (after almost 2 years of this!), but there’s still no word on the little girl.
I agree that it’s best if a child is raised in his or her native culture. Ideally, all Haitians should live and grow and thrive in Haiti. But Haiti, as beautiful as parts of it are, is not an ideal place. It is a place saturated with poverty, violence, disaster and corruption. The USA isn’t an ideal place, either, but here we have homes and food and jobs. Here we have families who want to love and raise children, wherever they are from. Children need good loving homes. That comes before ethnicity, nationality, or culture. If your country can’t provide that, you shouldn’t make it hard on people who can provide it. And I happen to know that K and her family are very aware of the need to be immersed in Haitian culture for the sake of their babies. If they ever get them…
So, my question to Haiti is, what are you waiting for? If you can’t take care of those babies, let someone else do it.
Embryo Adoption
Embryo adoption is a fairly recent phenomenon that has resulted from in-vitro fertilization technology. When a couple does in-vitro, a whole bunch of eggs are given a whole bunch of sperm, and the result is a whole bunch of embryos, or very small babies. There have to be so many because the next step is to plant some of these in the woman’s uterus, and not all of them will take. Of course, sometimes several of them will take, and that is one reason why people in fertility treatments often have multiple births…twins, triplets, etc.
Of course, not all of the embryos get implanted. Some are saved for later, in case none of the first round of embryo implantation takes. Some are saved for future pregnancies, so that only the implantation step needs to be repeated. And some are put into freezers and stored there until…what?
There are four ways that scenario could go.
- One, the owning couple (I say owning because they are considered property) can leave them in storage forever.
- Two, the owning couple can implant them later and bear and raise the resulting child/children.
- Three, they can be signed over to a research facility for destruction (a necessary step to embryonic stem cell research).
- Four, they can be donated or sold to another infertile couple who can then implant them and raise a child that they did become pregnant with and give birth to, but who is not of their combined genetic material.
Choice one happens a lot, because many couples are undecided about what to do with their embryos. They don’t want to give them away in case they want to use them later, or they know they don’t want any more kids, but are uncomfortable with the idea of someone else raising their genetic baby.
Step two rarely happens because the embryos in question are the leftover ones, the ones that are still in storage after the genetic parents are done with them.
Choice three is illegal, at least until January, because the Bush administration considers embryos, which have all the information required to be identified as human, to be unborn children, and has forbidden scientists to destroy any more for the sake of research. This did, of course, cause an uproar in certain circles, even though it has been demonstrated time and time again that adult stem cells and cord-blood cells show far more promise in terms of research than embryonic stem cells do. We can expect this option to be back on the table after January.
Choice four, to let another couple adopt the embryos, is becoming more and more common, as this article discusses. For a couple whose infertility problems have to do with conceiving, rather than carrying, a baby, this can be an ideal option. Those tiny embryos are people in suspended animation, and just need a warm safe place to grow. For couples who can release their claim to those embryos, other prospective parents can provide that warm safe place.
I have considered this option in the past, since I do firmly believe that embryos are human beings and should have a chance at life, and that stem cell research needs to be focused where it can actually help someone–in the areas of adult and cord-blood cells. The cost was a little steep for us, though very inexpensive compared to a traditional agency-moderated adoption. You can find more information about embryo adoption, often called Snowflake Adoption (since no two embryos are alike) here.
This adds a whole new dimension to the adoption conversation. Parents who adopt and implant embryos are that child’s adoptive parents AND their birth parents. The adopted mother did carry that adopted baby in her womb and give birth to it. Yet, that baby also has a very real biological connection to other people, people who simply didn’t want it…at least not when the baby was still an embryo. That baby has full biological siblings, maybe even a twin or triplet, somewhere–siblings that his birth parents didn’t give birth to.
It almost requires a whole new language, because it’s very hard to talk about using the traditional terms. It’s a different ballgame when “birthmother,” “first parent,” and “biological parents” aren’t even referring to the same people. But Americans are good at inventing new language, so I think we’re up to the challenge. I’d rather see these embryos have the environment, love, and nutrition they need to get born, then to grow into beloved and productive members of society. As President Bush said, “These children are not spare parts.”
National Adoption Day
Today is National Adoption Day. I guess there are activities all over the country to celebrate National Adoption Day, though I never heard of any in my area (maybe I’m just not in the right networks). The emphasis of this observance is on foster-to-adoption, to provide permanent homes and loving families for the 129,000 kids who are waiting for adoption placement.
It’s really sad to think that the parents of that many kids have neglected or abused them so badly that their parental rights have been terminated. Many of these kids are damaged, but for so many of them, healing is possible, with love, structure, and patience. One of many examples of this successful joining of lives can be found in the following story.
This story appeared in the Fort Lauderdale paper on Friday, and I thought it was a fitting tribute to a woman whose gift from God is making family where once there was none. Lula Mae Walker has raised 9 biological and 9 adopted kids, and is adopting two more, twin teenage girls. One of the comments said something about how the writer hoped those kids knew how lucky they were that someone like this would adopt them and give them a chance for a good life, but an adoptive parent never sees it like that. Lula Mae Walker’s gift isn’t taking in poor unfortunate kids, it’s gathering people from all sorts of backgrounds, many of them with deep wounds in their souls, and fusing them together with her love. I don’t know many of us who could parent 20 kids successfully and make each one feel as if they belonged to the family and were also cherished for who they are individually.
Families are made in so many ways, more than people realize. I know that foster parenting isn’t for everyone, and neither is adoption. But…129,000 kids? There are things we can do to help, even if we aren’t able to foster or adopt ourselves. Here and here are some links that might give us all some ideas how we can help.
Unadopted
Those of you who know me might remember meeting C, a sweet, freckly, fun-loving 12-year-old boy who came with his parents, sister, and brother to sit on our porch to watch the parade last month. David is crazy about C, and C does seem to have a gift with the younger kids. He taught David how to ride a skateboard, and now David wants a skateboard for Christmas more than anything.
C was home that weekend of the parade because he had earned visitation privileges from the residential center where he lived. He had been coming home weekends for a while now, as part of a transition to being home again for good. We got to see him personally, like at the parade, and also at church, where everyone rejoiced to see how much better he seemed to be doing.
C and his sister were adopted at the ages of 4 and 6 from a family that abused them horrifically. Their story includes some of the worst things I have ever heard, including sexual abuse of both children. Their new parents loved them and got them into counseling, and made sure that they knew that their old parents couldn’t find them or come take them away.
And then the threats started. Even at 5 or 6, C would tell his new parents, “I’m going to kill you in your sleep,” or “I hate you and I’m going to slit your throat.” He set fires, sometimes removing the covers on the outlets so that the flames would travel up through the wiring and inside the walls. He came after them with knives and hit them in the legs with baseball bats. They put him in residential care, stuck with the program, made sure he knew he was loved at every step, and brought him home when it was time. And then it would start again.
This last time, his parents told him clearly, there would be no more second chances. There could be no more threats, no more violence, and no more fires. There was now a baby in the house as well as the older sister, and they could not allow these things to continue.
C lasted less than a week, and then he started a fire at school. His parents called an ambulance and had him taken to the ER where he was kept under security, then transferred to a residential treatment center. The next day, his parents went to court and transferred custody of him back to the state. C is now a ward of the state. He is unadopted.
Everything in me shudders at the idea of giving a child back. Whatver else C is or does, he must be a confused and frightened boy. When he’s not threatening to murder his parents, he’s kind and affectionate. His brother and sister both adore him, when he’s not terrorizing them. I do not judge his parents for a second, but I can’t stop thinking about C, all alone and knowing he finally did the thing that made them give up on him.
They haven’t really given upon him, of course. They are still hoping he can somehow get the help he needs. But honestly, I don’t know if that kind of help exists. C was more than damaged as a small child, he was broken. I don’t think he can be fixed. This couple, who are a teacher and a therapist, know every possible option and put themselves at great risk to make sure that C got everything, that everything was tried. At least they won’t have that on their conscience–they can honestly say they did everything they could possibly do for him.
And yet, he was their son for 8 years, and now he isn’t. It breaks my heart.
Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born
Tell Me Again About the Night I was Born
By Jamie Lee Curtis
1996
Every child wants to know their story. Stories are what give us identity, they teach us where we belong, and a family (or community or nation) is defined in part by sharing the same stories. That’s especially true of adopted kids, who might feel a little bit like they don’t belong in the family’s story. That’s why it’s so important to tell a child their story, over and over.
That’s what Jamie Lee Curtis does in Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born. This isn’t a story about how many hours Mommy was in labor, but it’s a story about a mommy and daddy waiting with similar anxiety and eagerness for the birth of a child. It tells of them getting a phone call in the middle of the night, saying that their long-awaited child was born, and how they flew to another place to see her in the hospital. It’s definitely the story as told my adoptive parents, because while the biological mother gets a mention, her experience isn’t explored. How can it be? The parents can only tell the child the story they know, and that is the story of how these three people became a family. It’s a story the child seems to love, because she knows all the details and asks for them specifically (“Tell me again how you and Daddy were curled up like spoons and Daddy was snoring.”).
Curtis does an excellent job in all her books of getting inside the heads of children, of expressing what delights them and what frustrates them. She is helped considerably in this by her illustrator, Laura Cornell, who paints a busy, watercolor world full of whimsy, emotion and color. The story of the child’s birth in this book may be a bit different from the traditional “tell me again about the night I was born” story, but like all those stories, it’s a story full of love, joy, and belonging.
Obama’s Adoption Policies
Actually, I have no idea what Obama might do that will make it easier for kids to have good homes. In terms of adoption itself, he has only said one thing that I can find, and that was in a letter to the director of the Family Equality Council. He says, rather ambiguously, “That’s why we have to repeal laws like the Defense of Marriage Act. That’s why we have to eliminate discrimination against LGBT families. And that’s why we have to extend equal treatment in our family and adoption laws.”
Now, I know I just said that I want children to have loving and safe homes with responsible parents, and if that meant homes with same-sex parents, that wasn’t ideal but it was a heck of a lot better than the lives these kids had been living before. I stand by that, but I also believe that a private, religious organization has the right to act according to its beliefs about what kinds of families they’ll place children in. Catholic Social Services has already come under fire for refusing to place children with same-sex couples, and in some cases they’ve had to close their offices rather than be forced to comply with this “non-descrimination” policy (which seems to discriminate against them–strange how that works). That’s tragic, because CSS was one of the most affordable and supportive organizations around, for both adoptions and for helping parents keep their babies.
Of course, Obama has also pledged to sign legislation–the Freedom of Choice Act– that removes all impediments to obtaining an abortion, including parental consent for minors. He has voted to strip federal funding from crisis pregnancy centers that present alternatives to abortion. So, perhaps adoption, which requires letting a child be born, will not be an issue for much longer, since it will soon be far easier to destroy our babies than to bear them and let them live.
I guess we’ll have to see.