Adoption Education Archives

What to Know About Parenting Transracial Adoptees

BPetersonDesign2022-06-13T11:25:15-07:00August 9, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt, Transracial Adoption (Learn)|

This guest blog post is written by Torie DiMartile about her own experience as a transracial adoptee.

Last week, in national news, a white supremacist opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The same week, in my little university town of Bloomington IN, the farmers market endured its second week of cancelled activity due to white supremacist threats. If you ask my mom, she’ll readily tell you that 26 years ago these terrifying racial headlines would have flickered across her screen with a pang of sympathy, but they would not have drastically impacted her daily life. Of course, she knew racism and violence existed, but it existed outside her own experience. Today, as the mother of a 26-year old transracial adoptee those headlines probably keep her up at night. To read more, click here.

The Adoption Profile and How it is Used in the Adoption Process

BPetersonDesign2022-04-05T07:40:02-07:00July 30, 2019|Adoption Advisor, Adoption Education, Adoption Outreach, Adoption Process, Adoption Profile, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt|

Recently, I watched the Red Table Talk where Jada Pinkett Smith and her mother, Adrienne Banfield Norris, hosted former Sex and the City star Kristin Davis for a talk about transracial adoption. I really enjoyed this podcast and think it can help many families considering transracial adoption (I look forward to including a post just about transracial adoption soon). However, one thing I found really interesting about this podcast was that both Jada and her mom were very surprised that the birth mothers for Kristin’s two African American children had actually chosen Kristin to raise their babies. That made me realize that there are probably many other people that don’t understand the domestic adoption process, and that it might help to educate about how adoptive parents are typically chosen - usually through the use of an adoption profile. To read more, click here.

Parenting A Biological Child and a Child Through Adoption

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T17:00:44-07:00July 24, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt|

These are a few of the signs that hang in my daughters’ room. Both speak to where each of our girls come from, and what we believe…

I know that parenting a biological child along with a child through adoption presents different challenges than parenting two children who were adopted, or even two biological children. I am sure it is very different for an adoptee to grow up with siblings who look like their parents or a sibling that shares an adoption connection…

Adopted is Another Word for Wanted

BPetersonDesign2022-04-05T13:35:42-07:00July 15, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt|

This blog post is written by an adoptee, psychologist and prospective adoptive mother.

When I came home that first day, my parents could hardly believe I was real. They had grieved their dreams of parenthood, settling on a baby bulldog. My mom had multiple miscarriages due to endometriosis, and was told by her doctor that she couldn’t have a baby. She learned this news while working as a counselor for women with unplanned pregnancies. She never disclosed her personal struggle to become a mom until one night a phone call from a co-worker from the adoption agency would change the course of all of our lives.

The Beautiful Challenge of Adoption

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T17:01:31-07:00June 25, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt, Open Adoption (Learn)|

This blog post is written by a guest blogger and is a perspective we don’t get to hear very often, the perspective of a dad through adoption.

I’ve always had a favorable view of adoption. I have a niece who was adopted by my sister and her husband. Although I’m quite sure there have been tough times, I always saw a well adjusted family with love in their hearts. Because this was my experience, when my wife and I began looking into adoption to grow our family, I was not skeptical. I was completely optimistic.

Immediately upon beginning the adoption process you are presented with life changing questions…

Anxiety and a Child Through Adoption

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T17:01:53-07:00June 11, 2019|Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption|

A guest writer shares her experiences with anxiety in her pre-teen son through adoption.

Anxiety and the adopted child often times go hand-in-hand. The hard part about diving into adoption is you have no idea the issues you will experience with your child as they grow and face the realities of their story. Every adoptee has to face their story in different stages of life. I can only speak to walking with my child on his adoption story for the last 10 years, but one of the themes I have experienced with my son is that anxiety and adoption tend to go together.

My Journey to An Open Adoption

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T17:02:45-07:00June 7, 2019|Adoption Advisor, Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Hoping to Adopt, Open Adoption (Learn)|

When my husband Ray and I started the adoption process, the thing we were scared about most was “open adoption”. We learned quickly that most domestic adoptions were “open”, but that had many different meanings. We pictured open adoption as a co-parenting situation, and had fears that our child wouldn’t bond with us or feel like we were her “real parents” if we had an open adoption with our child’s birth family (and yes I cringe too that I even wrote “real parent” in my blog as something I thought and possibly even said out loud)! Luckily we learned a lot over the course of our adoption journey.

A Love-Hate Relationship with Mother’s Day

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T17:03:07-07:00May 9, 2019|Adoption Advisor, Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Domestic infant adoption, Hoping to Adopt, Infertility|

Oh Mother's Day ... you can bring so much joy and so much pain to so many. When I was single and in my mid-30s, I often wondered if I'd ever be a mother. Mother's Day seemed to be the day where someone stuck a knife in my heart a little and twisted it around, as I watched my friends and family celebrate a role I desperately wanted. When I finally met my husband, got married and started trying for a family, we went through a round of IVF that failed right before Mother's Day. Probably due in part to all the hormones I still had flowing through my body, I remember bursting into tears during our Pastor’s message at church, ultimately leaving early and ignoring the holiday altogether the rest of the day.

Infertility – A Lonely Battle

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T17:15:44-07:00April 24, 2019|Adoption Advisor, Adoption Education, Adoption is Hard, Adoption Perspectives, Hoping to Adopt, Infertility|

This week is Infertility Awareness Week. Infertility sucks - there’s really no other way to put it. Actually, I can think of a lot of words I’d use to describe infertility, but most of them would need to be censored.

The Adoption Tax Credit

BPetersonDesign2022-04-01T17:16:50-07:00April 15, 2019|Adoption Advisor, Adoption Education, Funding Your Adoption|

Happy Tax Day! If you’re a prospective adoptive family, you might be interested in learning more about the Adoption Tax Credit and how you might benefit from it if/when you incur expenses relating to the adoption of a child. The credit, which has been part of federal tax law since 1997, allows adoptive families to defray some of the costs incurred when they grow their families through adoption. It has helped bring together hundreds of thousands of families, many of whom would not have been able to grow their families through adoption without it.

Adoption Education

Call us: (602) 842-4955

Where To Next?

Receive News & Updates