Thursday, March 19, 2015

Adoption Stipends, your Child Support

       Have you adopted? Thought about adopting? Yes it is wonderful that you are considering or close to adopting. Depending on how you're about to do this and if you will receive a stipend, please make sure you are really aware and have an attorney standing by.
      Laws change all the time. As parents you will be responsible for all that you know and all that you don't know.  Such as, you ask ?  Here are a few examples concerned with adopting children from foster care. Lets start with the problems these children bring with them, in that invisible suitcase. Not the one you see packed with clothes, but the one you will know all about as they relax, as they get to know, how you too really are and how they will start to becomes their true selves, who they really are.
       Each child is so very different even though they may have the same diagnosis. Remember, gender, age and family background, personalities, cultures, religions and experiences are individual. So when a caseworker or an agency, or children and youth tell you,"oh you know, she's Bi-Polar, so you know how that goes" as an example. Bull.
     In some ways that isn't any different than your own children and parents say, well they were all treated the same. If true, that's sad. One child may love hugs and the other doesn't. One child may prefer cartoons and another would rather play with blocks. Get the point? Same home, same parents, different personalities.
    Back to adoption. As children move in, become used to you, familiar with how they will be treated, consequences and all, your soft spots, your nature, and your forgiving heart, they start to peel away their own outer layers, like an artichoke. Defiance takes another look, no longer just saying NO! Now it's Fuck You, I don't have to listen to you, you're not my real mom or dad! Damages start to happen. Others properties are destroyed out of jealousy. After property damages, it becomes personal. Therapy isn't helping. Other children live in fear and parents don't sleep. no one sleeps as they used to, all because you decided to give a child a permanent home. Now it's as if your children are on the outside looking in and maybe now it's them who need therapy. FAIR???  Hell No , it isn't fair !
       Now school issues are also apparent with calls every day until finally suspension and your child, your newly adopted child is only ten or eight or twelve. No one has any idea how to help this child. Mental illness,, along with anger and jealousy has taken over. Of course that child wonders why his own parents don't want him or her, can't, won't, or not able because they too have mental health problems. That's how it travels , from one generation to another and one opposite gender to another. To sum it all up, this has now come all added up in the child you just adopted, times six generations.
      Okay now it's just you, this child, your other children and your other adopted children, a husband and maybe grandma is living there too. One night, one lonely quiet night this child's mind works overtime. He finds, or she finds matches, or a gun, or a bat or maybe just a pillow. Think the worst. Chances are it has happened. If not someone has been severely hurt and this child has been removed. Police are called and now you start to learn. You have to pay for that call. This child has been sent to different places as he or he is very dangerous, a new diagnosis, and now you have to pay child support. FAIR ????  Not to me. Why ?
     Yes, you made the choice to make that child now yours, at a stipend so low that you can't  afford to pay child support, but the state says you have to. So you may be labeled deadbeat parents. BULL !  Who ever would think you have to pay support for a child who you adopted and is a psychotic insane criminal ? No one, not one person. So we wonder why adoption sites have children waiting for years. Those sites show bio's that are only a few nice things. This is not the reality of these poor kids. I think the laws have to change about adoption and natural parents. If they are not able, don't care, won't take care of their kids, a red flag needs to be placed on their social security numbers to help with any kind of support.  Twenty five percent of disability need to be taken to go to the adoptive parent as is done with other parents own children
    Adoptive parents save states millions in care and this is the thank you, the respect they get back? Someone else and genetics sadly messed up this child up and now who has to pay? The only parents who would take him or her into their home, adding insult to injury and there will be a lot of injury. More than you will ever imagine, there will be.

   Unless you adopt a baby, you are receiving an invisible suitcase, invisible baggage overflowing with  unseen, unfelt at times, horrors. This is a harsh reality. I know of parents who feel adoption is a mistake, not the child, but the FINALITY of adoption. Many adopted children are back in foster care. That stipend? It goes back to pay for care. Please be careful, get an attorney and ask for all records prior to learning the hard way, the hardest of ways, the UNSEEN BAGGAGE.

Good luck is not enough to say. Prayer helps, but having  Warren Buffet as a realtive may help a lot more.
     
     

No comments:

Post a Comment