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Giving Back–What Our Family Can Handle

It’s a fine line between giving back to our children’s birth countries and getting bogged down in the misery we sometimes find there. It’s hard not to either deny reality or to overemphasize what makes our families different. Most of our kids will get sick of a constant emphasis on adoption and on their birth countries, and rightly so.

In our family, we have chosen to sponsor a child in a Third World country. Many agencies offer opportunities to do this. We decided not to adopt from this particular country because it seemed that adoptions there occurred mainly for financial reasons. We felt better about possibly helping a child remain with their family through the sponsorship agency’s assistance with basic needs and education.

Our daughters’ agency in their birth country also has a sponsorship program for those older children with special needs who live at the agency’s residential vocational school and who will probably never be adopted. As much as I admire the work of this agency and wish to give back, I haven’t had the heart to sponsor a child there. It just seems like it would bring up too many issues for the girls to be confronted so closely with their likely future if they hadn’t been adopted. And frankly, hard for me to contemplate the place without imagining my beloved daughters there. Perhaps that’s hypocritical—saying we should get involved and give back and then finding it hits a little too close to home. But that’s what I mean about the difficulty of balance.

A group of adoptive mothers is planning a trip to our daughters’ agency next spring. They will spend eight days volunteering at the vocational school, at the unwed mothers’ home, perhaps at the home for preschoolers not yet adopted. This is something I can see myself doing in a year or two, if my kids are in school and if my feet are healed. I know it would be difficult. I would probably come home unable to forget.

Would I take my kids with me? Probably not. I do plan to take them when they are older. Adoption tours meet with birthmothers at the unwed mothers’ home and tour the receiving home where many of our kids spent a few days or weeks before going to their foster families. But the preschool orphanage and the vocational home? I suppose we’d want to see it all. But hypocritical or not, I hope the kids are older before we have to deal with that.

Our family will be committed to giving to kids around the world. Maybe we’re right not to overemphasize our kids’ birth country, maybe we’re not. “Do what you can” is my motto. I can be gentle enough with myself to see that that means “Do what you can” emotionally, as well as physically and financially.

Please see these related blogs:

Not So Far Away

The Altruistic Child

Volunteering with Your Kids

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About Pam Connell

Pam Connell is a mother of three by both birth and adoption. She has worked in education, child care, social services, ministry and journalism. She resides near Seattle with her husband Charles and their three children. Pam is currently primarily a Stay-at-Home-Mom to Patrick, age 8, who was born to her; Meg, age 6, and Regina, age 3, who are biological half-sisters adopted from Korea. She also teaches preschoolers twice a week and does some writing. Her activities include volunteer work at school, church, Cub Scouts and a local Birth to Three Early Intervention Program. Her hobbies include reading, writing, travel, camping, walking in the woods, swimming and scrapbooking. Pam is a graduate of Seattle University and Gonzaga University. Her fields of study included journalism, religious education/pastoral ministry, political science and management. She served as a writer and editor of the college weekly newspaper and has been Program Coordinator of a Family Resource Center and Family Literacy Program, Volunteer Coordinator at a church, Religion Teacher, Preschool Teacher, Youth Ministry Coordinator, Camp Counselor and Nanny. Pam is an avid reader and continuing student in the areas of education, child development, adoption and public policy. She is eager to share her experiences as a mother by birth and by international adoption, as a mother of three kids of different learning styles and personalities, as a mother of kids of different races, and most of all as a mom of three wonderful kids!