Did Advertising Influence our Decsion to Adopt?

    For some time now I have been following the Twitter feed of AdoptUSKids and before that I would occasionally drift back to their website (www.adoptuskids.org) and page through the photo listings of the children who were available for adoption and who are just waiting for a family to call their own.  The state of Ohio (and most other states) has a similar list (http://www.adoptionphotolistingohio.org) that I also have spent time paging through.  In both of these lists I have been overcome by the sheer number of children.  When looking at photographs and biographies of these children I have just had to stop when I realized that there were 260 pages to look at, each with 15 photographs and some of those were sibling groups and not just one child.  To get my hands around these numbers I made regular use of the search tools to filter the search results using all sorts of criteria.  I’ve searched by state, by gender, by race, by age, and I would have searched using other criteria if could.  For obvious reasons of safety and privacy the general public cannot search using religion or other personal information.  Once our homestudy is complete and in our hands (which should be any day now), we can register with AdoptUSKids and gain access to additional information about the children we are interested in.  At this point, I am uncertain just how much information will be made available to us when that happens.

    This week Adopt US Kids tweeted this question, “Did a TV, radio or print ad influence our decision to adopt?” and asked folks to share their stories through www.humaninterestfilms.com.  As I explained in my blog post, Why Now?, we always thought we’d have more children but, for a variety of reasons, the time was never right, until now.  For some time, years in fact, whenever things would begin to look like our lives might be making a way for us to think about kids again, I would find myself returning to the photo listings and imagining what it would be like to add another child to our family or what sort of child would fit our already quirky collective.  When we finally made the decision to get serious about adopting again, we were still looking at the photo lists and each week when AdoptUSKids would tweet a new pair of featured children, I would click on the link and have a look.

    So did a TV, radio or print ad influence our decision to adopt?  Well, it probably wasn’t TV or radio, and we didn’t see too many ads in the newspaper, but the Internet had a lot to do with keeping us connected and sustaining our interest in adoption.  It hasn’t happened yet of course.  We expect to receive our completed homestudy in the next two weeks (and then get it revised after we move) and then we will see where the road takes us.   Whatever happens, the State of Ohio, AdoptUSKids, Twitter, and others have certainly had some influence on getting us to this place.

Countdown

    We are coming to the end of two separate countdowns.  First is our upcoming move.  With only five days left to pack before we leave for our church's Annual Conference and then moving day only two days after our return, we're trying to get everything done before Saturday.  So far we've taken three trailer loads of stuff to the new house and my wife has planted some tomato plants (at the new place).  My office is packed, and several rooms at home are completed (or nearly so).  This week is the final push and then when we return from conference we can finish up a (hopefully) few final details.

    The second countdown is toward finishing our homestudy.  Today Jennifer returned for her third (and possibly final) visit to our home  - despite the chaos and boxes everywhere - to meet our children and to interview them.  This was their big chance to speak their minds about how they felt about us inviting foster children into our home or if they had feelings about having a new, forever family, brother or sister.  Since I wasn't needed for this interview I stayed at work trying to wrap up details here.  From what I've heard so far, the only concern was that if we had more kids, we might not have enough money.  From our kids perspective, we're poor, because we won't buy them all the toys and gadgets that their friends have (and which, in their minds, we ought to have too).  In reality, although we're not rich, we are certainly not poor.  We have enough for what we need even though we know that getting kids through college in a few years is going to be more than a little challenging.

    It seems that we are on target to get our move done at the end of the month and also that on moving day we will take with us a completed homestudy.  At least that is our hope and that is what we are praying for.  At the risk of repeating myself, once we are settled into our new home, we will then contact Children's Services in our new county to update the homestudy and we should be ready to go wherever this crazy adventure is leading us.