What you should know about Orphan Hosting (part two)

This picture is from the first hours we brought our host children home.  We weren't even trying to be all color-coordinated and cute... it was just good chemistry!

If you didn't read my "What you should know about Orphan Hosting (part one)" I would highly recommend reading that post first.  It is a view of hosting shared mostly from the eyes of the host family.  This post is going to be more about how hosting benefits the child or children that you are hosting.

There are some people who have very strong negative opinions about hosting orphans and their logic goes something like this, "It is cruel to bring these kids to America and then to send them back." There is one particular blog that makes me so IRATE every time I read it, that I can't help myself from bashing it here publicly.  The title of this particular blog post is, "Host an Orphan (and mess with a child's head) Program."  The article goes on to claim that one particular Orphan Hosting program brings these poor foreign orphans from other countries to affluent American towns to "showcase them." This particular blogger has no problems with a domestic child having the same opportunity "locally". He  states that he  thinks the foreign orphan trial period is tasteless and cruel, and that it helps facilitate foreign child trade.

He goes on to say, "The sheer brilliance of this promotional program is this:  hosting families are not obligated to agree to a purchase-plan -- all they have to do is showcase the kids, so others can look over the inventory, and decide if a foreign orphan would fit and feel right in the potential client's home.

It does not hurt if the showcase advertising hosting family already has an adopted orphan or two. ("I not only help support the big sellers in Adoptionland, I'm a paying member, and proud orphan owner, too.").

This just disgusts me.

I would bet my paycheck that this blogger has never experienced a day in the life of an orphan, and he is just looking to criticize those of us who are trying to do something positive. I would also venture to say that this author has also never lifted a finger to help what he refers to as "domestic orphans" and just needs to have something for his hands to do, as in typing critical things about something he knows little about.  I don't see this individual ever reaching out further than his computer keyboard to do anything beneficial to change what he sees as such an injustice. 

Here's a big newsflash to you, Mr. Cynical Blogger..... not all orphans even WANT to be adopted! That's right, this isn't quite like the cute musical "Little Orphan Annie". These kiddos don't sit around late at night singing about the family that left them and is coming back to get them someday or dreaming about rich Daddy Warbucks coming to save them from their poor, wretched little lives.  

Many of these kids are quite comfortable in the surroundings they are in. They don't know any different. They are comfortable with what they know.  Going to America where the culture is vastly different, where their native language is not readily spoken, where the food is not the same and where everything smells weird and different is not something they day dream about on a regular basis. Having parents who tell them what to do, how to do it, when to do it, is not exactly a wish come true for some of these kids who have basically raised themselves.

So, why then, is Orphan Hosting so important?

Well, for one, it gives children the opportunity to see what a loving home and family looks like. Many of these children have never lived in a home with a family. Others of them had it once upon a time, but it has been so many years, that they don't have clear memories of it.  They don't know if they want to be adopted or not, because they have NO idea what the concept even means, and it's scary. If they don't get adopted and they become adults without parental guidance, they will have some knowledge of what a healthy adult relationship is supposed to look like. Hopefully, this experience will lead to them being better partners and parents in their own lives, rather than repeating the same mistakes of the previous generation.

Another important aspect of hosting is that the children have a chance to connect with an adult mentor, or a Mother and Father figure  who say, "I love you. You are important."  Whether or not adoption is in the future, your relationship with this child can be life-long.  When Ukrainian orphans "age-out" of the system at the age of 16 many of them have no adult guidance in their lives.  Sadly, a good many of the girls turn to prostitution to survive. Many of the boys get involved in drug sales. A good number of them get swept up into human trafficking, and between 10-15% of these children commit suicide within two years of leaving the orphanage.  They are easy targets with little resources.  The statistics are sobering.

On a lighter note, getting away from their normal surroundings is a huge adventure!  They get to visit a new country, a different culture, and learn a new language. They get to eat new food and live life the way we do in America.  This is not just an American phenonemon.  Many of these kids get hosted in European countries for vacation as well, such as Italy. This picture is from our kids' first time to the beach!  We didn't know it was their first time, until we saw the utter shock on their faces that the water was salty!

Many host families are able to connect with Optometrists and Dentists who are willing to see the orphans at no charge to host families! This is HUGE! Vitalik came to us with terrible tooth pain and we found a very generous dentist who did quite an amount of dental work on our children out of the goodness of her heart.  Friends of ours had a host daughter who couldn't see. They brought her to the local optometrist and she received a free eye exam and glasses, donated by the doctor. When the community becomes involved, amazing things happen! I have even heard a story of an Old Navy store closing it's doors, giving each of the children $50 gift cards and letting them shop for new clothes!

As sad as it is for the host family to see them leave, many of these kids are happy to go back to their home at the orphanage in Ukraine at the end of their stay.  They have missed their friends! They want to share their stories, pictures, and gifts with the children who were not chosen for hosting.  These children have very generous hearts and they shared every single thing we sent back with them, from toys, to games, to clothing.  It made them feel important to be able to do this,

My most important advice to anyone considering this, is to reasearch the hosting agency. Talk with people who have first hand experience with the program and the people who run it. Not all agencies are created equally.  

My second piece of advice for any of you who are willing to step out of your comfort zone for the benefit of a child is to reasearch  all you can about the child's culture and get in contact with families who have done this before. Talk to those who adopted the children and those who haven't (and ask why). Learn as much as you can about attachment parenting, parenting with connection, and just good old-fashioned behavior managment techniques that work with any child (without yelling and physical punishment).  There are no books for this experience, but there is certainly a wealth of information out there, if you are willing to look and listen.

What you should know about Orphan Hosting (part one)

Until today, writing this blog has been very easy; I am simply re-telling our family's love story. This post, however, is not flowing out the way my past blogs have.  I want to tell everyone how magical and wonderful adopting teens can be, but there is just no way to skirt around the fact that there is some really sad stuff that happened before we all met. I have so many fears in writing about this. My biggest fear is that it will upset my adopted children (even though they are the ones who sent me to my room to write my next blog post after nine hours at my "real job"). My second biggest fear is that I will not do the subject justice.  I am not an orphan hosting expert.  I am not an adoption expert.  I am far from a parenting expert.  The problem with this subject is that there are not enough "experts"! Most parents who are in the middle of the experience do not have time to sit down and write about it. My favorite saying through this whole experience has been, "There are no books for this!"  Sure, there are some great adoption books out there about connection, trauma, attachment, cocooning, red flags, issues, and how to deal with rude comments from the public, but there are NO books that talk about just the everyday "stuff", and certainly not about hosting.

Of course, as with everything, every experience is unique, with some commonalities. Most people can relate to how incredibly exhausting bringing a newborn baby home from the hospital is.  Hosting orphans is kind of like that with some pretty major exceptions.   

Exception #1:  THERE ARE NO NAPS. 

There was no "sleep when the baby sleeps" about this experience. The kids we hosted were active. (Far more active than their American counterparts!)  From our experience, and what we have heard from others, there are a few reasons for this.  The first is just obvious....there is a seven hour time difference between here and Ukraine. The other reasons are a little less obvious to those of us who are not "in the know".  When you are being raised in an institutionalized setting, going to sleep is not always a safe idea.  Sleeping brings on nightmares about things from the past. Sleep also makes you vulnerable; you can't protect yourself when you are asleep.  A coping mechanism that many of these children learn is how to self-stimulate to keep themselves awake ALL NIGHT LONG.  One long-term effect of this habit is that these children do not have the opportunity to grow properly.  That's because growth hormone is normally released during sleep. If someone consistently gets too little sleep (known as "sleep deprivation"), growth hormone is suppressed. Ukrainian orphans are typically two sizes smaller than their American counterparts, and this is one of the major reasons. Vitalik, our now 12 year old son, looked about two years younger than our younger, biological son. Here is a picture to demonstrate:

On the left is my biological son Colby, age 9.  On the right is my adopted son, Vitalik, then 11. The first few nights you host an older child, you might find something like this at 3:00am:

These kids don't cry like newborns to let you know they need something. They won't even come into your room to tell you they had a bad dream or that they are awake.They will stay very quiet and fend for themselves.  They will tell you to go back to bed, and that you don't need to stay awake with them. You will be exhausted and want to go back to bed, but if you stay awake, something magical happens. They start to trust you and bond with you.  Some of my most favorite first memories with Vitalik took place when the rest of the continent was asleep.  Not very different than with the son I gave birth to!

Exception #2: THERE IS NO CUTE LAYETTE TO DRESS THEM IN

Chances are, even if you have the most supportive friends and family in the whole world, no one threw you a baby shower.  If you have friends that give you hand-me-downs their kids out-grew, and toys to play with, these are your BEST friends. They are the ones that "get it".  The children will arrive with exactly two outfits...the one they are wearing when they meet you and something to sleep in (I would not even venture to say "pajamas".)  The clothes they bring are not even their own clothes.  They are community clothes from the orphanage.  Someone has taken inventory, and these clothes BETTER make it back to Ukraine at the end of the trip, regardless of how worn out or inappropriate they may be.  (EVEN if they are underwear with a Play Boy Bunny logo and you want to burn them.) Additionally, even though you have been nesting with the best of the pregnant parents and having a blast, don't be shocked, hurt, or surprised if the kids don't like anything you bought them.  So, for fun times sake, here are some AMAZING outfits Shad and I picked out for Lera that she hated.

A newborn baby may vomit on or soil their cute new clothing, but your hosted teen child will most likely just tell you straight out, that it is not their "style" and/or make a face and say the one English word they know, "NO." If you are under the mistaken assumption that an orphan would love ANYTHING new, you need to take a trip to Ukraine and see how fashion conscious this culture is.  Cute little clothes from Justice were just not going to cut it. Colby's Gymboree hand-me-downs were not exactly Vitalik's style either. We were so ill-equipped for parenting tweens!  The truth is, we were so ill-equipped for parenting a newborn too. The biggest difference  here, is that the newborn couldn't tell you what a failure you were (and by God's grace, they forget all the stupid stuff you did!)

Exception #3: FEEDING IS MORE THAN FORMULA OR "BREAST IS BEST"
What on earth do you feed these kids?!?!?  One thing I know for absolute certain, is that you do NOT feed them McDonald's, or pizza, or hamburgers, or hot-dogs, or anything AMERICAN.  If the food is AMERICAN, it is going to make them fat.  The end.  The last thing on earth a child from Ukraine wants to be is FAT.  They are happy to tell you all about this in any words, translator app on your phone, or through charades.  "You" (they point) have BIG belly.  "Me" have six pack!"  This is a source of pride.  They know Americans are fat, and they are not going to go back to Ukraine in this condition.  Ice-cream, on the other hand was NOT American, and they could eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's and not lose any of their Ukrainian pride. Fortunately, our hosting agency, Marina's Kids had a very simple "cook book" so we had some idea those first few days. Over the three weeks that we had the kids, they did gain some much needed weight, and they also had a safe environment to sleep in. We had to keep them away from the bathroom scales, but while our kids were with us they had the proper combination of sleep and nutrition to grow. Even over a three week span of time, this was a huge gift!

Exception #4: THE KIDS DON'T SPEAK ENGLISH

Oh wait!! Our biological son didn't speak English either!  All he did was cry (we think it was in English, but he was born in Miami, so for all we knew, he was crying in Spanish).  To my husband and I, this is the most funny reason people give for not hosting.  The kids didn't speak English, but they could communicate FAR more than any newborn I have ever met.  We had a blast with this! The best part about hosting was NOT speaking a common language. It was a challenge!  We made our best effort to learn words from their language as we tried to teach them ours.  It was like a game. Vitalik laughed and laughed and laughed at some of my mis-pronunciations. Now, I say these same Russian phrases to him wrong "on purpose" because it makes for some funny memories.  He had some funny pronunciations that I will never forget too.  For example, the President of the United States was "Balack Oh Mama!" and the Christmas movie where the kid gets left behind for a Paris vacation is called, "Hone Aloma". 

Exception #5: YOU DON'T GET TO KEEP THEM

This is the most difficult part about the hosting experience. You fall in love with these kids, you think they may love you too, and then you have to send them back without knowing what the future has in store.  I have had many people say, "I could never do that! I would get too attached!" or "I don't think I could ever put my son (or daughter) through that!"  Well, friends, my best reply to this is, "There are no certainties in life." The only method that I am aware of for avoiding bad feelings is to never be born in the first place.  People leave, or let you down, get sick, or pass away every single day. I have not yet figured a way around this fact of life.  In fact, in my experience, the people who handle the uncertainties of this process the best ARE the people who have experienced major loss in their life. It takes a major loss to appreciate the time you have with these children, it takes a major loss to empathatize properly with a child who has been through a traumatic past, and it also takes an understanding that we don't *really* have control over anything.  I don't believe in living life recklessly, however, I do believe that God helps those that help themselves.  I believe that big risks equal big rewards. I believe in "Go Big or Go Home".  

I believe in Orphan Hosting.  

How Ukraine Chose Us

So, as I mentioned in a previous post, the idea of hosting a Ukrainian orphan just sounded nuts.  I truly had no interest in it.  Regardless, I had four separate people who didn't even know each other bring me information about hosting children.  I listened politely and responded with something like, "Thank you, but we are currently working with the Foster Care System. " Similar to how I was taught to respond to a Jehovah's Witness who came knocking on the door, "Thank you for stopping by, but I am Catholic."  This way, you aren't exactly saying, "No, you people are crazy." It's more like, "Gosh, I would really like to, but I was born into this Catholic religion.(insert small frown here)" Then follow the next four important steps... 1. Take pamphlet 2. Say, "God Bless you for being out there in the cold!", 3. smile and 4. gently shut the door.

My line about the Foster Care System was true.  We had been working with them, but I am not entirely sure they were working with us. We spent two years giving papers to Children's Home Society, an adoption agency that assists with adopting children from the Foster Care system. Two years, four case workers, 235,324 documents, and 454 background checks later we still had not been matched with one child. Not ONE.  OK, OK, admittedly some of those numbers may be a bit inaccurate, but the part about two years, 4 caseworkers and not one child to meet is absolutely 1000% true.

Our First Meeting with Marina's Kids
A very nice family, the Kaiser's, invited us to an informational meeing about Marina's Kids and hosting. I didn't want to go.  My husband felt we should go and just listen becasue Allison was a co-worker of his, and it was the polite thing to do.  So we went to this meeting to "be polite".

I wish I could say that I remember all the details of that meeting, but what I can remember for certain is that this meeting forever changed my life. When I learned about hosting and all the opportunities it brings these children, I was so choked up that I couldn't even speak to introduce myself.  I just knew that this was something I wanted to be involved in.  Marina's Kids is not about adoption. Marina's Kids works with children in orphanages, helps to improve the living conditions for these children, helps to buy them shoes and clothing, and Marina's Kids also has an orphan hosting program.  It was at this meeting that my feelings about adding to our family were completely transformed.  I realized that adoption or not, there were kids that needed love and help. We could be one of the families who helped these precious children!  When the meeting ended, I was scared to talk with Shad about my feelings.  I wasn't sure he would understand that I wanted to be involved in this ...even if it meant not being able to ever adopt. I wanted to work with this orphanage. I wanted to host one of the children, but beyond that, I wanted to do something for ALL of the children at that orphanage.  We didn't have to be their parents, but we could do SOMETHING to make life better for them all.

I would like to tell you all that we went home or to church and prayed together about it, and God said, "Go for it!". The truth of this story was that it was a Saturday night and our only child had a sleepover to attend.  So, like all good parents without children for a night do, we went to Tyler's Taproom and drank wine over it.  Amazingly, Shad and I had come to the same conclusion. We were willing to relinquish our well-earned Foster Care license to take a risk.  We both agreed that our hearts were led to do this. Perhaps we would never adopt, but we could touch the lives of multiple children through hosting.  I would also like to tell you that all of our friends and family were immediately on board ready to offer all the assistance and support they could, but let's just keep this real.  They thought we were crazy.  Some of them were nice enough to keep their comments to themselves, but it wasn't a popular decision.  Despite this, in a way that still amazes me to this day, we never waivered about this decision. Not once.  We had chosen a path and we were excited! Now to pick a child!

!

Let the nesting begin!  We didn't know who would be in these rooms or for how long, but the Foster Care System requires that you have a bedroom ready.  We were READY!  Now send us some pictures of a child!

So, why did you pick Ukraine?

One of these days when I am feeling brave (or have had too much wine) I am going to look the questioner straight in the  eyes and respond with, "Because we wanted WHITE children." I don't think I could ever bring myself to do this in real life, but in my imagination, it would be pretty hilarious. I honestly wonder if this is what some people think when they ask this question.

The most honest answer I can give to this question is this: Ukraine chose us.

Prior to Ukraine finding us, we had visited an adoption agency in Maine. The lady we talked to was painfully honest and told us that they hadn't placed a baby with a family in 8 years.  Her best advice was to get on social media and try to find a birth mom.  I wasn't even on Facebook yet, so I just couldn't imagine doing what she was suggesting. She had some other helpful advice that included marketing ourselves to high school guidance counselors.  If we did this, she said, we might be able to find a good teenage mother.  WHAT???  "Hi! We are the Roach Family. We really want a baby. Will you give us yours?"  I now know more about what she was advising us to do. There are plenty of people who are matched with their Forever Child in this way, but it sounded it bit crazy at the time......and (get this!).... it seemed like Too. Much. Work. Hahahahahahahaha.....we were so naive! Too much work!  I have no idea what I thought the adoption process was like, but we obviously had a bit more education in our future.

Our next thought was to research International Adoption.  We contacted multiple out of state adoption agencies and had them send us their information.  We may have over-done it, but I remember the next few weeks receiving all these beautiful, colorful books in the mail with pictures of happy families and babies. OH THE BABIES!  Beautiful, beautiful babies!  Stacks and stacks of "baby catalogs" to dream over.  I obsessed over these baby pictures and researched all I could about the requirements for adopting children in different countries. We had set our minds that our future family would most likely include a child of a different ethnicity than our own and we were ready to embrace this.  Something that was important to us, however, was that we wanted to raise our next child in an area that had more diversity than where we were currently living.  We wanted to be in an area where we might even be able to make friends with people from the same country/culture as this future child.

So we moved.  
Without selling our house.
Without jobs.
Without our friends and most of our family...
We left small-town Maine and landed in the Raleigh, NC area.

Some would say this was crazy, but I say it was just good preparation for what we were in for down the road! It was also where we were meant to be because no one in Maine had ever mentioned hosting an orphan from Ukraine before. But here, this was a "thing".  There were actually people who did this! 

And here is where I must end my writing for the day.  I haven't even come close to explaining how Ukraine chose us yet, but one of my beautifully, generous, Ukrainian children has shared a case of influenza with me.  We are currently cohabitating in the big bed coughing and passing the thermometer back and forth admiring each other's scores.  It took me a decade to get to the point where I could be sick in bed with more than one child, so now I need to put on my sick uniform and fully indulge myself in a day of Sponge Bob and Kleenex.  This is a big family milestone to be celebrated with shots of Nyquil!

Why Adoption?

To tell this story better, I suppose it is important to share that my husband Shad and I never anticipated having only one child.  According to my Mother, I have wanted to have a baby since the day my sister was born (I was the ripe, old, age of two).  Far more than any career aspiration, being a Mother was what I looked forward to the most in life. I always imagined having 3-4 kids. I wanted a big family.  My husband was envisioning something more like two kids. Whatever! I knew he wanted kids so, he passed the first big interview question of my Husband Test. Surely, during the future years of our marriage, I could manipulate him into seeing things my way! No big deal.

Perhaps I will post someday about the infertility rollercoaster, but for the purposes of this blog post, let's just fast-forward to 2003 when I gave birth to my miracle baby, Colby.  I will be the first to admit that I didn't fully appreciate what a blessing this colicky, incessantly crying child was.  We had been told by "the experts" that according to our test results, we had a less than 5% chance of conceiving without medical intervention.  I got this news shortly before my 31st birthday, and I didn't take it well.  Despite the enoromous amount of self-pity I chose to indulge in those next few months, I had the surprise of my life when on Valentine's Day, 2003, I discovered I was pregnant! Somehow this was accomplished without any help from the medical profession. Clearly, those rich bastards at the fertility clinic just wanted our money!  What a bunch of crooks!  We were about to spend tens of thousands of dollars at their clinic in MARCH, and we did it on our own in JANUARY!   According to the general population, the "reason" we were finally able to get pregnant was beceause we had finally just RELAXED and STOPPED THINKING ABOUT IT.  Make no mistake about it, there was nothing relaxing about this!  We were about to drop tens of thousands of dollars, folks~!!!  We used every trick I could find on the Babycenter.com TTC board (that's Trying To Conceive, for all you fertile types who never had to give this a second thought.)  I actually have a magic baby recipe that involves drinking Robutussin and a few other steps that I would blush to write about publicly.  I wrote the recipe down for a friend of mine once, and when it worked, I insisted she name the baby after me. (She didn't.)  Unfortunately, that magic recipe only worked for me twice.  

One miscarriage and 10 years later we still were the parents of one child.  Do not get me wrong, we were the parents of one special child!  Someone once told me that Colby was worth 10 children, and of course, I believe this to be true!  He is an amazing kid! He is happy, smart, well-behaved, eager to please and loving. It's not as though we felt short-changed.  He was "enough" and after some time, we were ready to resign to the fact that Colby was going to be an only child. We started imagining all the money we could save, all the vacations we would take, all the opportunities we could provide our child because we only had one. Colby, on the other hand, was not about to give up.  Some children are perfectly happy being the center of the Universe in the eyes of their parents.  Not our child.  Our child sat his diapered,  little, three year old butt in his car seat one day and cried and cried and full-on sobbed because (in his words), "EVERYONE has a baby except us!!!!"  Colby didn't care about fancy vacations and more tuition money. He wanted a baby.

So, back to the infertility specialists we went.....

I'll spare you all the ugly details of the fun that entailed, but the main idea of this story is that we could again drop lots of money on medical assistance, but at that point, I was old (not me, my ovaries). We didn't qualify for their special money saving LOW RISK program.....The highly advertised "Pay One HUGE Price and Get THREE Chances!!!!" (unless your test results suck, then you need to read the fine print.)

Sorry, old, infertile people! Here's the number to the local Humane Society, perhaps you could get a pet instead!  Or, if you are really a sucker for punishment, you MIGHT be able to adopt a baby. Good luck with that, and thank you for the all the money you spent to get this fancy folder about all the procedures we can't even offer you unless you have endless amounts of money to waste on a "Maybe Baby".)

Time to research adoption......

Ukraine in the Membrane! Our First Thoughts on Orphan Hosting

When the idea of hosting an orphan was first presented to me, I have to admit the whole thing sounded completely and totally insane.

*DJ...Cue Insane in the Membrane by Cypress Hill*
for those of you who are not fine connoisseurs of 90's rap... it can be found on youtube.com (but only if you are over the age of 18, because it comes with a parental advisory.  Thanks, Tipper Gore!)




The conversation in my head went a little something like this:

"So, let me get this straight....somebody takes a bunch of kids who don't speak English, have little to no experience living with a family, brings them to the US and drops them at someone's house to live?"

"for weeks???"

"with NO chaperone or translator around the clock?"

"and then you have to send them back?   To the ORPHANAGE?!?!"

" and when this all goes smoothly and you fall madly in love with each other there is absolutely no guarantee that you can adopt the children and live happily ever after?"

"and it costs HOW MUCH MONEY?"

"OH MY GOD!! Please, please, please sign me up!!!!"

"What kind of crazy people would EVER do this?"



Most of you who are reading this blog, already know the answer to that question.

So, the real question is how did we get from "there"  to adopting a sibling set from Ukraine? 

It's a beautiful story that begins with these two pictures.  

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