PS MAPP Meeting 5 & 6

These 2 meetings were very similar in the information that we covered. It was helping children learn to manage behaviors and focusing on family structuring. #1. Be clear about expectations and rules inside and outside the home. #2. Helping children with birth family connections, keeping them with their culture and do not let them lose their identity. This was very overwhelming for me as we discussed this. How would you keep a child connected to their culture if they are a different race? Do you try and Make a Chinese, Russian, Haitian, or whatever race or color, do you try and make them white? I'm not in anyway trying to sound vulgar but I never thought about how we would handle any of it. We had a couple in our class that adopted 3 boys from Ethiopia and too keep them connected to their culture, every year they celebrate African holidays to keep them connected! What a great way to help them keep their identity and some connection to their culture and the country they were born in! The other memorable thing for us was the openness in the adoption. The level of openness is a parental decision based upon the needs of the child. Here are ways to help keep connections •providing children with information about their family origin. •letters and photos exchanged between parents and adoptive parents through the child placement agency. •giving children photos and letters from their parents and or extended family members. •sharing holidays with birth parents and or extended family. •regular or semi regular visits. Lamar and I have discussed in great length on an open adoption and feel, under a normal adoption that we will be fine with an open adoption. We don't consider it as a benefit to birth patents but for our future child. "your steadfast love. Oh Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God." psalm 36:5-6