I thought I would take the time and educate a little bit on adoption in Ch!na ( I am not an expert by any means, I just play one on this blog ;) When you adopt from Ch!na there are basically a couple of ways you can go - traditional (a child with no known special need) or through the waiting child program (a child with a special need). Children from the traditional program usually tend to be adopted while they are still babies and the current wait for families to adopt is 6-10 years (maybe that should be called the waiting family program?). There are more people wanting to adopt than there are available children. Almost always the children are female.
Children from the waiting child program can be babies up to age 14 of either gender. The types of special needs vary - being an older child, birthmarks, missing fingers or limbs, Down's Syndrome, any type of heart defect, clefts and even eczema. This list goes on... Sometimes if the need is easily correctable, the need is repaired in Ch!na before the kids are placed with their families, but usually not. There is obviously a huge range in the level of needs and of course some children might have multiple needs. Shelby (hemangioma) and Robbie (asthma and eczema) might have been considered waiting children too, had they been born to families that were unable to care for their needs.
The process to adopt a waiting child averages anywhere from 1-2 years depending on how you start the process. There are many more waiting children than there are families able to adopt them. I wish the process was easier and faster with all the kids that spend another day or another year without parents. I understand that the process is there to protect the children, but it is still hard to fathom with so many millions ( estimates of 146 million around the world) of children waiting.
Kids in Ch!na become orphans for many many reasons. Sometimes it's due to the one child policy, maybe they are too poor, maybe parents can't afford medical treatment, or maybe for the same reasons it happens around the world. Poverty in Ch!na and around the world is much much more extreme than we know here. Birth parents in Ch!na must abandon their children to relinquish them without a trace of their identity (or face punishment) so often the reason is never known.
I am in a group on facebook with about 250 others parents who are all in somewhat similar places in our paperwork/waiting game. From what I can tell, we are all adopting kids from the waiting child program. These parents are from all around the world and I have never seen such a group of people more amped up for adoption, anxiously awaiting to bring their kids home. Many are adopting for the second or third time. It is just so cool to see the new lives and families that these kids have waiting here across the ocean. I hope they all learn in time how much they are already loved and were prayed for. How precious we see them and how utterly precious God sees them. How God indeed has a plan for them and part of that plan has always been to be a part of our families.
