PRIDE Training Day #4 - We did it!!!

It's official (according to the certificate pictured above), we have completed PRIDE Training. Woo hoo!
Our last day was full of useful information and was probably the class we enjoyed the most. We spent most of the morning talking about our SAFE Homestudy Assessment (the next step in our adoption journey). We were able to ask a lot of questions about the process which eased our minds a little bit. Basically, the Homestudy is an assessment of the two of us and our immediate family by our Adoption Practitioner. Sounds intrusive doesn't it. On top of helping us to prepare our documentation to apply for our adoption, our practitioner will be making sure we are ready, willing, and capable of providing a home for an adopted child. Although our house is already equipped with child locks and safety features there will be a lot of other things that she will need to know about us before we can send in our adoption application. There will be reference checks, and physicals, and police checks (apparently my husband will also need one from Australia since he lived there for 7 months, that should be fun) etc. But I promise I will explain this process more once we are actually in the middle of it.
Our afternoon was filled with information on topics that will be important once our little boy is home with us. Topics like how to create a healing and nurturing home and how to use positive adoption language with everyone we come into contact with. I know that positive adoption language will be especially important for us since we will be adopting a child of a different race. We will need to be prepared for difficult questions from family, friends, children, and strangers about our child. It will be something our family will face our entire lives. Hopefully we will answer those questions in a way that all of our children will feel equally loved by their Mom and Dad. Because no matter how our family was made, all of our children will be our own.
Something that really interested me from our discussion on Saturday was creating Life Books for your adopted child. Life Books are a way for children to learn about themselves. They are essentially a photo book about their story on how they came into our lives. I love photo books and always have since I was a child, I think I will really enjoy making one for our boy and I am sure it will also strengthen my connection with him throughout our journey. It is a book that I hope he will refer to and be proud of his entire life.
I feel like I could write this post forever, the information we received in PRIDE Training was so beneficial and important and I'm finding it hard to fit it all into one little post. We are also very excited, we are now one step closer to adopting our child. It is crazy to think that after 4 years of talking about it we are now actually on our way!

PRIDE Training Day #3

Last weeks training heaviness felt like it lasted most of the week. Luckily we went to a great concert on Friday night with some good friends. The concert gave us a chance to relax and recharge in preparation for another training session on Saturday. Unfortunately, we stayed out far too late on Friday night. I mean it seemed like a good idea at the time, but our drive to Burlington the next morning ended up being a little more rushed than we had hoped.
The first half of our day we discussed cultural heritage. We shared stories about how we have learned about our own heritage and discussed the importance of learning about our adopted child's background as well. I really liked one of the concepts that was brought up by our leader Anne. She said that if you adopt a child from a different heritage or culture you then also adopt that culture. So once we adopt our boy from China our family will be Irish, Scottish, English, Canadian, and Chinese. Whoa that's a lot, but you get what I mean.
In the morning a guest speaker came in to talk about her experience when she adopted her two girls from China. At first we were very excited to hear her story but then quickly realized that her experience was much different than ours will be. She adopted almost 10 years ago when adoptions from China were a quicker process and when there were less restrictions on the parents applying to adopt. It was nice to hear a more relaxed approach to an international adoption. It gave us a bit of hope that maybe our adoption wont be very complicated, and that someday we can come and share our story to a training class to ease their minds about international adoption.
A majority of the afternoon was spent talking about openness in adoption. This is a subject in adoption that admittedly my husband and I are very scared of. We learned about the importance of keeping an open relationship (if possible) with the birth family of your child. Since we are adopting from another country and the likelihood of having information on our child's birth parents will be very slim, this topic didn't interest us much. We do know that someday our child may want to try and search for his birth parents. We will support him in any way we can to help him in his search if necessary. If he has a specific caregiver from China that he is attached to we will do anything we can to keep the communication open between them. At first by sending photos of him once he is home, and then possibly going back to visit where he lived once he is a little older. The openness that we will have will likely differ from most of the adoptions of our "classmates", as most of them will be hoping to adopt infants from Canada. In order to provide us with an example of an open adoption, a couple that finished their PRIDE Training course in 2013 came in to speak to us. They have just finalized their adoption of their now 10 month old, and they spoke of their relationship with the child's birth mother. They have ongoing contact with the birth mother and they have had two visits with her and the child already. They even talked about inviting her to the child's first birthday party. The concept of open adoption makes sense to me, and I can see the benefits for the child in the future by having open communication with the birth parents. But, I do know that it is not for me. At least not in the same way it is for our guest speakers. This is a difficult thing to admit because it is a selfish reason to adopt from another country but I am glad that I know and understand this about myself.
We have only one more Saturday left of PRIDE Training. I don't know how they are going to fit the remaining information into the final session because it seems like there is still a lot to cover. I guess we will see, stay tuned for an update after our last session.