7/19/11

Being Reminded

When you adopt you can sometimes forget your child is adopted, happens all the time.  It can happen when you are at the doctor's office and asked does he/she have a family history of...

It is a knee jerk reaction to answer, uh yes my mother had...  Then you stop yourself and say never mind he/she is adopted.  We do not know of a family history or we do not have a family  history.

Last night we got another reminder.  We have been busy planning our Griswold family road trip and making reservations for stops along the road.  Suddenly, I remember we have not notified the agency.

Yep, we have to notify the agency if we go on vacation.  Actually, it is an informal process but still serves as a reminder.

When your family is formed through adoption we continue to have hoops to jump through even after our sweet children come home.  Of course we all know we have post placement visits and a court finalization hearing, but here is another one.

Our children are not technically our children until the finalization hearing.  When adopting through an agency (which is the only experience we have so I claim no knowledge otherwise) our child's legal guardian is the agency. If we want to leave the state...we have to notify the agency.  We have to get their permission.

Of course, this really is not a big deal.  It is not a formal process.  Our agency has always said have a safe trip.

So I sent an email to our wonderful social worker and told her our plans.  Of course she said go and have a good time but I am also fairly certain she has to document our travel.  A note to our file.  She probably printed my email and added it to Avenn's adoption file.

Just another additional step, a little difference between our family and those formed biologically.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I forget lots of times too. I made a comment once about one of the girls quirks and Mike's said, "She didn't get that from my side of the family." My first response was to feel a little insulted. "Is he saying my family is ...? Oh wait! Ha, ha, Honey!"

A blog friend used to have posted, "We have five kids, some are adopted some are not. We keep forgetting which ones." I love that!

Katie (From Mike and Katie's)

Amy said...

Oh! Now I understand why the social worker has asked us in our post-placement meetings if we are going away on vacation this summer. I thought she was just making conversation. Ha Ha!

I will never forget filling out the forms at the doctor's for the baby's first visit. As I was reading down the list of family illnesses, I saw asthma and almost checked it off before realizing that my brother and nephew's medical histories were not what they had in mind. ;-)