Adoption Movie Guide: X-Men: First Class

Your story is unique, and you didn't get to choose it. You do get to choose how it influences your world view.

Sometimes you feel like an outsider. Charles Xavier reads other people’s minds. Erik Lensherr moves metal with his mind, especially when he’s angry.  Hank McCoy has prehensile feet. Raven often disguises the fact that her skin has a particularly bright shade of blue. Do you view your uniqueness as a curse or as a blessing? Does it help you live a fulfilling life, or does it create a sense of “You against the world?”

Sebastian Shaw is a unique person (unfortunately, the movie’s term is “Mutant”) who tries to use his uniqueness to rule the world. Charles tries to stand in his way by gathering a group of differently-gifted people to oppose him.

How is This Relevant to Adoption? 

A person touched by adoption has a life story that differs from the experiences and expectations of many others. Some view their unique story as a building block for community: like Charles, they find joy in their story and seek out others with similar experiences. Some experience it with a level of distress: like McCoy and Raven they fear being ridiculed or misjudged by others, wish that their story was hidden, and struggle to come to accept themselves. Some, like Lensherr, view their story with pain and anger and are uncertain how to direct their lives in light of their experience. All are on a journey of processing.

 

 X-Men: First Class is an excellent study in choosing what to do with the hand you’ve been dealt.

Book Review: We Wanted You

In Liz Rosenberg’s We Wanted You, a family reflects on their experience of waiting and preparing for a child whom they have since adopted. The story shares how the adoptive parents wanted and waited to adopt a child. They were excited to have the child added to their family, and still are. They acknowledge that they are not the “first father and mother” of the child, and they express that in spite of this, they are “really” parents to the child because of all they have done.

This book is worth a look; the cover artwork suggests that the family has adopted cross-culturally, which maybe adds emphasis to the statement that they are “really” parents. I can see this book being helpful in situations where a child feels like he or she doesn’t fit into a family because of different appearances. This could be a helpful resource for cross-cultural adoptive families with young children. A Mother for Choco and You’re Not My Real Mother both serve similar purposes. 

We Wanted You does not do much to address the child’s first family; it seems to simply acknowledge their existence. You can make this book a better tool by adding a page or two about your child's first family.


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Book Review: The Best Single Mom in the World: How I Was Adopted

Mary Zisk shares from her heart in this self-illustrated story. The narration is in the voice of the young daughter, who re-creates the family’s ritual recitation of her adoption story. Mom was single and happy, but wanted to share her life with a child. She went to an adoption agency who searched “high and low, near and far, all over the world” for a child in need. They found one overseas, who had a birthmother who “wanted the best for you but… couldn’t take care of you.” So the mom flew overseas, met her, and brought her home.

I appreciate that this book addresses single parenthood; most adoption kids’ books show two-parent families. This book allows the child to admit, “sometimes I wish we had a dad in our family.” It also highlights positive male influences in the child’s life, and affirms the child’s happiness with her mother (the book starts and ends with the child affirming that her mother is the best mother in the world.)

The book is good in that it provides a rare resource for children in a not-very-rare situation.

I have some reservations, though. Although the book acknowledges that the birth mother could not take care of the child, the feel of the book really is more about “finding a child for a mom” rather than “finding a mom for a child.” I imagine that wasn’t the author’s intent, but it is quite possible to read that message in the book. We know very little about the birth mother. Why couldn’t she care for the child? Will there be any contact? What is her name? We’re not told anything.

If you’re a single adoptive parent, this book could be helpful, but you’ll probably need to add quite a bit of your child’s own story into it to make it more complete. As it stands, it’s missing quite a bit.

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Adoption Movie Guide: Batman Begins

Today I'm posting at Reel Spirituality. Here's the first part of the article - please click over there for the rest! 

Bruce Wayne has a charmed life.  He has loving, supportive parents, a loyal, caring butler, and a palatial estate to call home. But tragedy strikes. One evening, young Bruce is at the opera with his parents. Bruce, afraid of bats, is terrified by a scene in which the actors are dressed as bats. He asks his father to let him leave. While standing in an alley outside of the theater, Bruce’s parents are mugged and murdered. Although the murderer was caught, Bruce struggled with anger and guilt – his fear brings his parents into the alley. Bruce is raised by Alfred, but leaves home as a young adult to study the criminal mind. He learns to confront his fear and decides to use fear to terrify criminals. Symbolic of his attempt to master his own fear, Bruce takes on an alter-ego and becomes Batman.

How is This Relevant to Adoption? 

When Bruce’s parents die, Alfred is left to care for Bruce. Bruce travels the world and struggles with finding his identity but is always able to trust Alfred. Alfred repeatedly affirms that he will never give up on Bruce. Bruce asks why Alfred cares about him and about the Wayne family, and Alfred expresses that it’s because he was entrusted with caring for Bruce by Bruce’s father.

Bruce feels guilt over his parents’ death and masks the feeling of guilt with anger. Many adoptees do struggle with feelings of guilt over their separation from their parents, and sometimes that feeling of guilt is expressed through anger.  

Please click on over to Reel Spirituality for the rest of this review

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What to Expect if You Foster/Adopt

Adoptions from foster care happen when a trained and approved foster family adopts a child that's been living with them in foster care. Sometimes the child was moved to their home through a "matched placement" - this happens when a child has been in foster care for a long time, reunification with their family is unlikely, and the previous foster home wouldn’t commit to adopt the child. Other children are adopted by their longtime foster parents. 

Some are adopted through extended family or NREFM (say nerf-em) placements, which stands for "non-related extended family member" – in these cases, someone knows a specific child in foster care and gets trained and approved as a foster parent for the express purpose of adopting that child. Adoptions are completed by grandparents, sports coaches, teachers, Sunday School leaders, family friends, and parents of the child’s friends.

Most foster care adoptions happen within the state of the child’s residence, but adoptions across state lines are possible. In some cases, foster-adoptive placements are even made internationally.

If you’re interested in adopting an older foster child, a sibling set in foster care, or a child in foster care with special needs, your best first step is to contact a foster care agency or a child welfare agency and ask to be certified. There is a great need for families open to adopting these kids. The agency will require that your family complete a thorough process of training and assessment called a home study.

The term “home study” is a bit of a misnomer. Although it sounds like a house inspection, it is really more like a series of biographical interviews of you and your family. Training is offered to bring you “up to speed” on the experiences of the children in foster care as well as general and specialized parenting skills. Your house is inspected, and you are coached on how to bring it into compliance with foster care regulations. Home studies can take several months to complete, and once it’s completed you will be certified as a foster and adoptive parent.

Once you're certified, you’ll need to choose between the two main ways in which kids might come to your home. One is through traditional foster care. There are many children in foster care in the US, and many of their families are able to reunify fairly quickly. Many counties practice concurrent planning - they work on helping families reunify, but also find a foster family willing to adopt the child, in case reunification cannot happen. Foster/adopt parents who succeed in this situation understand that the main goal is for the child to reunify with their family, but who are also willing to adopt the child if reunification cannot happen. The most successful parents in this role are those who love children and are willing to adopt, but are not desperate to adopt.

Football and Family - The Blind Side as an Adoption Movie

I'm really excited about this! I've asked several adoption bloggers to share about a movie that's connected with their adoption story in a powerful way. New guest posts will run every other week or so, on Fridays. With the Superbowl two days away it seems fitting that the first post, by adoption blogger and author Lori Holden, is about the touching, family-friendly football film, The Blindside.

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It was my turn to pick the Date Night movie, since Husband had chosen Sherlock Holmes over the holiday break. His worry and my fear were that my pick would be too sappy, too predictable, too easy to know the whole story from just the trailer.

But. The Blind Side begins with football (a clip of Joe Theismann and Lawrence Taylor) and ends with football (spoiler avoidance). So Husband was quickly on board. And he STAYED on board due to the strength of the acting, the interesting plot twists (that seem slightly over-the-top, except that they actually happened), and the endearing, welling-up feel-good story. You probably already know that The Blind Side is an adoption story. A transracial adoption story. A crack-addicted biological mom, a barely-known father, and a shattered childhood story.

(Technically, there wasn't an adoption -- just legal guardianship out of foster care.)

Still. It's the story of a boy with no family (functionally speaking), and a family who was open to him. Of the openness on both sides that allowed for an amazing transformation of both the boy and the family.

Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Ann Tuohy, a Memphis socialite and lover of beautiful things, a steel magnolia with an unyielding will. Singer Tim McGraw is her husband, Sean, owner of a slew of Taco Bells who doesn't need to report to work on a regular schedule. They have two children: Collins, a high school cheerleader, and SJ (Sean Jr), a young and precocious boy who befriends the older and lonely Michael, played exquisitely by Quinton Aaron.

Michael, 16-ish, quiet and somewhat lost, has been in and out of foster homes most of his life. He eventually leaves each one to seek his elusive mother, sometimes finding her and sometimes not. He owns the clothes on his back and an extra shirt. He hangs out at a laundromat. By chance, he gets into a private school.

Where he struggles academically. Where he crosses paths with SJ and later with the whole Tuohy family. Where testing shows that he scores incredibly low on every measured criteria except one: Protective Instinct, which is at 98%. This proves to be the key to both Michael's past as well as his future.