Much needed adoption training!

Three days of sitting all day for training can make a person so tired! Seems strange, though, since you are are sitting all day long! At the end of each day, we were exhausted! Jon and I went through PAT training, which is the training that is required for all parents adopting children out of the foster care system. I felt that we needed to keep all avenues open for the child or children that God has planned for our family. If our child is in the foster care system, then I wanted us to be ready to go! I believe that this training would be very helpful for anyone adopting, though. It was very informative in all areas of raising a child. Jon and I both thought that we would have loved to have had this training before we adopted Nicholas, but now that we have had the training we will hopefully be able to apply it to raising him now. The training answered a lot questions about Nick's behaviors, too! It's hard to believe that even though he was taken from his home at 2 months of age, he still has long lasting affects to the neglect and trauma of his reason for removal even now. We also realized that his strong will and effort to be in control here with Jon and I had a lot do with his time with my mother. I'm not saying my mother wasn't an amazing foster mom, because she was, but let's be honest....Nick was always in control at her house and probably never felt secure because of her constant visits to the hospital. We struggle a lot with him wanting to be in control of every situation, but now that we see this, we can now guide him through the healing process and hopefully bring Nick to his fullest potential. One other thing we learned, which we kind of knew all along, but didn't have anything to back it up is the fact that we have a nine year old child with the emotional age of a 6 year old. This is very common with children in the foster care system, b/c at different points in their development they did not receive the needs they required for that stage in their life.

We are so thankful that Amy Curtis, our social worker, recommended these classes for us and that Gladney Adoptions were so gracious to let us take their classes, even though we are not a Gladney family. I would strongly recommend this training for anyone considering adoption of any kind!

Oh...and by the way....our letters have been sent out for our grant matching program! Well, most of them...I need to make more copies and then I will get the rest in the mail on Monday!