Meet this Wisconsin Family!
You will love and be loved for the rest of your life.
Proud parents Mom and Dad describe their family as “loving, accepting, and fun.” Those qualities led them to undertake foster/adoptive parenting, and likely account for their successes.
Daughter Noel, now age 3, has been clearly benefiting from her parents’ attention, affection, and acceptance. She came to the family’s home as a newborn on a foster care basis, and she never left.
The couple was able to complete her adoption when Noel was 18 months old. Now a happy, kind preschooler, Noel has a special fondness for all sorts of music. The family currently also includes a toddler-aged foster daughter.
Mom and Dad have found the “Birth to Three” program their most useful post-adoption service. Noel has received physical, occupational, and speech therapies, along with Early Childhood Education, to address her developmental delays. The family is thankful for the Federal Adoption Tax Credit, which they used to provide private speech and dance lessons to support their daughter’s needs.
As a teacher, Mom was well aware of the need for safe loving homes for children entering the Child Welfare system. Therefore, when faced with fertility challenges, she and her husband easily turned to foster care and adoption to build their family.
The couple’s faith, their friends, and their church community all played important roles in encouraging and supporting them throughout the journey.
One challenge Mom and Dad have faced is due to the ignorance of others. They have encountered an occasional negative comment about adoption, such as, “You are not real parents because you didn’t create these children.”
They respond to such provocations with equanimity – sometimes using the opportunity to educate others, while also maintaining their privacy. The family knows that legally, emotionally, and spiritually, they are Noel’s mother and father. When asked what adoption means to them, they write, “We became a forever family.”
Asked if they have a suggestion to offer to policy makers for improvement, the family agrees, “We need more support for our legal system so that cases don’t linger and cause children to have delayed permanency and increased trauma. It is absolutely heartbreaking to hear that some children are in care for over three years.”
Mom and Dad encourage others to consider adoption from foster care. “It is a beautiful thing to give a child in need a loving family. Being a family means you will love and be loved for the rest of your life no matter what.”
*This family would like to remain anonymous. All names contained within this story are aliases designed to protect their identity.
