Our Journey with The Children’s Home
For us, The Children’s Home is quite literally the reason why we’ve been blessed to have the family we have. After a disrupted private adoption and the financial loss and emotional turmoil that followed, we were a bit lost about the future that we saw for ourselves. We were talking with a good family friend and he mentioned that his mom had volunteered with The Children’s Home and was wondering if we’d ever looked into the resources they offer. We were just beginning to think about foster care and we decided to reach out and speak to someone and try to learn more about it. When we found The Children’s Home, what struck us immediately was the compassion, the kindness, the patience, and the understanding that everyone we spoke with exuded. It was completely different from what we had been used to. Unlike an agency that deals solely in private adoption, The Children’s Home sees every component of what it means to bring a family together and to provide a permanent happy home for a child. They see the struggle and trauma of children in foster care, they see the heartbreak of families dealing with infertility and reevaluating how to start a family, they see the emotional ups and downs and the need for ongoing trauma-based care. The Children’s Home is not about business; it’s about family, and we cannot reiterate how much that meant to us. No matter how many cases we wanted to explore, no matter how many questions we had, we never felt pressured and it was always clear that the people we worked with were determined to stay by our side until the right match happened. We came into this process expecting to start our life with one infant child; in February of this year, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of adopting our three incredible siblings, aged 9, 10, and 11. It was a very quick process; we were matched on a Friday, the kids moved in on the next Wednesday, and they had been through a lot.
In addition, they had come from a home that had impressed very negative stereotypes and opinions of LGBTQ+ individuals, and so we were scared that the kids would never accept having two dads. Our social worker went out of her way to actually talk to the kids about all the great things about having two dads that really cared about them, and she made what could have been awkward and uncomfortable feel normal and natural. One thing that we will never forget about our adoption day was how our social worker showed up to the court house with a gift for each of the kids, and looking over and seeing tears in her eyes as the judge declared our adoption finalized. We didn’t feel like part of her job; we felt like part of her family. We were nervous, going from two guys to a family of five.
We doubted ourselves at times, but the people at The Children’s Home gave us the confidence and support we needed to keep this family strong and together. They reminded us that every parent will make mistakes and have moments when they second-guess their decisions, but if you are guided every day by the love you have for your kids, then you’re giving them exactly what they need. They answered all of our frantic emails with questions that in retrospect seem kind of silly, they coordinated their visits with the school and other agencies so as to have minimal disruption for the kids, they provided Christmas gifts and access to extracurricular activities to help the kids feel a sense of belonging and normalcy, and they helped us to get the kids set up with therapeutic services that they required to help with the adjustment to a new life. Even when a difficult discussion had to be had about the termination of parental rights and how adoption was going to be different from the years they spent in foster care, our social worker was there to navigate us through it together. And even after our children were adopted, The Children’s Home didn’t just cut us loose and stop being a part of our lives. We have gone to other activities that they’ve sponsored, and what’s so incredible is that our children get to see other families like theirs, to realize that they aren’t alone and that while our family is very unique, they still belong and have value. We could never summarize in just a short paragraph what exactly The Children’s Home means to us, but every single day, through the ups and downs, we watch these amazing children grow and we know that it’s because of The Children’s Home that we found each other and five lives were forever changed for the better.
Jason and Jarod