I know it’s been a while since I have posted anything. And for that I apologize. I have been a bit on the busy side… and, to be completely honest, I’m also just not sure what to say at this point.
We have been asked to be a mentor family to a young girl who is freaked out by adoption. I discussed this possibility with the adoption recruiter over the phone, and in the brief discussion we had she mentioned something I hadn’t really thought would be quite as big of a problem as it is. She said that most of the older children are freaked out by adoption, it’s not at all uncommon, and so this girl’s response to being available for adoption is not surprising.
I knew there were kids who didn’t want to be adopted. I have mentioned my thoughts on that before; we had decided that we really would prefer to adopt a child who wanted to be part of a family. If the child doesn’t want to be adopted, we can’t convince her. But, what if there are no matches for us who are interested in actually joining a family? What if there are no children in foster care who meet our own criteria, who the case workers feel would be a good fit for us, and who actually wants a family? Is that possible? Is it possible mentoring is all we can really do for these children?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to mentoring children, and there is always that chance that we will be asked to mentor a child who will just naturally become a part of our family and will decide that she wants that to be permanent. In fact, it is what the social workers are hoping will happen… maybe if we get to know a child well, and we spend a lot of time with them, things will just naturally fall into place and pushing for adoption at that point would be a no-brainer. We can always cross our fingers and hope that will happen. But I have to admit, this isn’t going anything like we had hoped it would, and I am getting a little worried that we won’t find a match at all.