I actually really enjoyed our home study process. I had read my fair share of articles and blogs about what to expect with the home study and I was pleasantly surprised at home easy it really was! You don’t need to fix every little dent or nick in your wall or have a perfectly spotless kitchen, although having a tidy house and a light cleaning is never a bad idea when you’re having someone over – you do want to make a good impression on the person that will be deciding if you’re fit to be a parent to an adopted child, right?
The number one thing to keep in mind about the home study is that they WANT you to succeed! Why on earth would they WANT to fail you? There are so many children needing homes (are you catching this repeated theme through my blogs?), why would they want to stop someone from moving forward with an adoption if they truly want to help a child find their forever home? They don’t want that! The home study IS setup to make sure you’re suitable parents, not abusisve in any way towards others, no warning signs of misconduct, and to make sure your motivation to adopt is in the right mindset. But the social worker also wants to make sure you are totally aware of the path you at about to embark upon. He or she wants to help you through the adoption as a resource (they’ve seen a lot in their line of work!) and as if they were your friend – saying it like it is.
Our social worker, Lauren, was so great. She was the one that first asked about our motivation to adopt. For us, it was led by our miscarriages and not being able to have any mor children on our own. BUT, we aren’t going through adoption to fill a hole we have in our hearts from those experiences. We’re adopting because we felt led by God to take in an orphan and give her a stable home, family, and life that she needs. We know we can do that and that we have room in our hearts and home to make that happen. Lauren needed to hear that we weren’t doing it just to fill our void because otherwise, we would have been disappointed with our expectations of what this child should look or act like and when things didn’t go our way, we’d be in a very tough situation. It’s okay that we got to adoption the way we did but we needed to be sure our motivation wasn’t to hastily fill an emptiness we felt from our losses.
Something else that stood out from Lauren’s visits with us was her description of what long term effects some substance exposure in the womb may have on a child. I can’t remember specifics on which items were more extreme than another (those are all good to look up one by one or talk to your pediatrician about while working through the hardship list (add link)) but the overall point was not all children will show effects from te drugs right away. Some may not show up until the child is 7, 8, or 9 years old in the forms of what some may think is ADD, sudden slowing of developmental milestones, or a sudden wall they seem to have hit when in school and working on class work. Other children may never have any symptoms. It’s hard to say how their body will react to what they were exposed to while in utero. Not only was it an eye opener to hear that some reactions would be so delayed, but it was Lauren’s point that this is a life-long commitment to this child. When something all the sudden starts getting rough for your child, there is no “putting them back” or stepping out of the scene because you’re all the sudden overwhelmed. You need to be prepared for the worst and know what steps you’ll take and who to talk to if issues do arise years down the road.