FacePalm Friday
Welcome to this week’s edition of FacePalm Friday.
This is where your hosts will list their top picks for this week’s FacePalm moment—something they learned or read about this week that caused the FacePalm to happen (you know, the expression of embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, shock, disgust or mixed humor as depicted in our Rally FacePalm smiley).
We invite you to add your FacePalm of the week to our comments. Go ahead and add a link, tell a personal story, or share something that triggered the FacePalm on the subject of child welfare or adoption.
Your Host’s Selections:
(1) Tickets to a one-woman show about Chinese adoption
“Hi! My husband and I adopted our older daughter Athena (Fu Ni Ou) in Jan. 2007 from Fuzhou SWI in Jiangxi Province. I chronicled my daughter’s adoption in the Chicago Tribune from 2005-2007. Two years ago, I wrote a one-woman show “Double Happiness” about my experience that I’ve performed in Chicago and Orlando. I’m performing “Double Happiness” in New York City in mid-February/early March as part of the FRIGID New York Festival.
“Double Happiness: A Tale of Love, Loss and One Forever Family,” (directed by David Knoell) a one-woman show by former Chicago Tribune journalist Kelly Haramis, juggles fertility issues, an adoption wait and unexpected loss. Kelly Haramis takes audience members on her quest to have a baby. And introduces them to the world’s most fertile man. And Penn State parties. And takes them on her journey to China to adopt her daughter. Find out how her hands went from holding a dream to holding two miracles.
FRIGID NY performances:
8:40 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 20.
12:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 23
5:30 p.m. Wed., Feb. 26
8:25 p.m. Saturday, March 1
5:30 p.m. Tues., March 4
5:30 p.m.Thursday, March 6
*Performed at Under St. Marks Theater, 94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY.
Tickets: http://www.frigidnewyork.info/ Show/281 http://www.frigidnewyork.info/Show/281.”
(2) Support Adoption
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2014/02/10/harvard-and-bc-law-profs-urge-congress.html
“Half of the full-time professors at Boston College Law School have signed a letter with 34 professors from Harvard Law, together urging Congress to support federal legislation promoting domestic and international adoption worldwide.
In all, 24 full-time BC Law professors have signed the letter, said Paulo Barroza, an assistant professor at BC Law focused on international law, criminal law and legal theory. Barroza said he worked with Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet on the joint effort.”
“The bi-partisan legislation is being considered in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate and is known as CHIFF, or Children in Families First.”
Boy, they got rid of nasty comments right away!
I guess no one wants to give a positive comment to the story.
“On Wednesday, Feb. 5, the couple and their four biological children proudly presented their newest family members to the community that helped bring them home.
John Terry, 5, and Isaac, 7, got a huge welcome. Media, family and friends packed into the old Hanover Volunteer Fire and Rescue building for a massive pizza party.”
“The 5-year-olds are two months apart in age, Desiree noted, adding that “it’s like adopting a twin.””
‘Through yard sales, t-shirt sales, collecting change and other fundraisers, including selling sponsorships for each piece of a puzzle the Williams children assembled,
the family raised more than $17,000 toward the adoption, which will ultimately end up costing them more than $40,000 in legal fees and travel bills.’
“”The video was totally for ‘Dr. Phil’s’ team documenting the whole process,” Dunn said in a phone interview Wednesday.” and”I’m a gigantic believer in compromise” 
Oh good god. Who on earth approved this idiot to adopt a Bulgarian child?!?
Kendra Skaggs posted the following plea on behalf of her friend Tracey Jensen on Facebook.com/polinaspromise:
“Friends, there is a mother in Bulgaria right now headed to pick up her special needs daughter at the orphanage. Her luggage didn’t get out of the US. She has no clothes, shoes, jacket or diapers for her little girl and her bank account got hacked after using her ATM card at the airport during two days of flight cancellations and delays. If you are able to help, the mom has a paypal card and can access those funds for immediate needs. You can send funds directly via paypal to fivejensenboyz@gmail.com“.
Talk about irresponsible! What kind of idiot who spent 12+ months adopting a special needs child fails to:
1) carry US$500-1000 on her person in case of credit/debit card issues
2) bring a backup credit card
3) bring a backup debit card
4) pack a change of clothes in her carry-on
5) have no way to get money, a hotel room or diapers (!) without having somebody beg for money on her behalf.
Keep in mind that Tracy is in Bulgaria, an EU country with plenty of banks, phones, ATMs, stores, taxis, Internet access, wifi, etc. She’s not stranded in a tiny Bhutanese village without phones or a three-day walk from civilization in the Gobi Desert.
Tracy is in a major European capital city! Helpless! And apparently unable to get her husband, parents or IRL friends to send her cash to buy diapers and whatnot until she can get her bank to fix her debit card!!
http://fromamomofboys.blogspot.com/2014/01/jensen-ohana-party-of-eight.html
special needs home) fails to: 1) pack a change of clothes in her carry on, 2) carry $500-1000 cash on her person in case of credit/debit card issues, 3) bring a backup credit card, 4) bring a backup debit card and 5) have no way of getting herself a hotel, change of clothes or diapers without the assistance of random strangers sending her cash, despite the fact she’s in a country that is a member of the EU, ie not in a remote part of Bhutan where there aren’t many phones and zero ATMs.
The fact that anybody this irresponsible has been approved to adopt a vulnerable child is flat-out terrifying!
Oh dear Jesus. Here we go with the “RT Logic”, it’s oh-so-fun. Let’s see.
1. Who would go to a foreign nation that isn’t Ukraine (bribery) with $500-$1000 in cash? (Answer: No one with a brain)
2. Not sure why she wouldn’t have a backup credit card…duly noted and agreed.
3. A back up debit card? Who even HAS one of those? Cause it’s always a great idea to have multiple debit cards floating around…um, NO.
4. I guess? I mean, like a change of clothes would have really made a gigantic difference, but okay…sure?
5. Duly noted, I have no clue what her circumstances were; it sounds like she traveled on a shoe string (not smart).
Tracy was in a major European capital city. Have you been there? I’d hardly call it civilized; especially when half the places you go you can’t even use regular old US credit cards with MASTERCARD and VISA logos on them. Don’t even pretend Bulgaria is “true” EU. This ain’t Germany. I mean, at least be accurate and logical in your criticisms; they are there, but half of these are pure crap.
In response, Name:
Bulgaria is not Germany, duh. Bulgaria is also not Bhutan. Or the Gobi Desert. I’ve been to Sofia and quite a few other towns in Bulgaria – finding a bank machine or shop that takes credit cards ain’t hard — if logos on the back of a credit card match, the bank machine will work; any guidebook will include the address for a storefront bank and an ATM or two (“search inside” any guidebook on Amazon, for free!); google “Credit Card Sofia”, which’ll give you the Amex/Visa/etc storefront in any European capital, etc; ask at the hotel’s front desk, ask at the city’s Tourist Office (you know, the building with gigantic “i” that can practically be seen from space).
Tracy is a grownup who had no means of coping with lost luggage (happens all the time!) and debit card that doesn’t work (happens all the time!) besides having a friend beg for cash on her behalf via the internet. Sane, responsible grownups generally aren’t stupid enough to get themselves into that sort of situation in the first place, but if they do, they tend to, say, call their husband or BFF and get them to Western Union them some cash til the plastic is working again.
It’s disturbing that a woman with next to no coping skills has been approved to adopt a kid who will likely require her to use LOTS and LOTS of coping skills in the days/years to come.
1) Any experienced traveler would have a few hundred dollars or euros on them in case their credit card had “issues” abroad (happens all the time, other countries’ bank machines can be persnickity about chip vs non-chip cards). An on-their-person emergency fund — what if there’s a power outage? what if her bank suspends her debit card when she tries to take cash out in a foreign country? (Happens all the time, takes until the next business day to get it fixed).
Carrying a few hundred dollars/euros on one’s person doesn’t automatically imply that person is going to use the money to pay a bribe. (You don’t even have to declare $500-1000 in cash at the border — declarations are typically for over $5-10k).
3. I’ve always traveled with a backup debit card – not 2 copies of the same debit, 2 separate debit cards from 2 separate banks. (Again, in case the “regular” one is stolen/compromised/broken).
Naame,
Once you’ve made the psychological leap of seeing your adopting a child as a charitable cause, then begging for money seems to become your go-to problem solving method.
Hey, there are Christian couples who fundraise the fees to adopt healthy newborns (and complain bitterly if the birthmother changes her mind decides to parent her own child).
I’m still awaiting the reaction of the ‘Stuck’ fanbase to the news that ‘Juno’ actress Ellen Page has just come out as gay.
The sane, sensible thing to do would be to provide some small amount of material support to allow this child to stay with the foster family that has raised him since birth. Allowing him to be purchased by an American family with 7-8 adopted SN kids already does not serve his best interests:
“LWB posted a picture of Ulyssis this weekend of him looking at our photo album we sent. Wow, what is going on in that little brain of his?! He looks sad. Keith says he looks like he is in shock. He is sad, he knows in his brain that he needs to come home with us in order to get medical treatment and go to school. He is living in serious poverty right now and his foster granparents are quite old. He has been with his foster family for so long…they are his family and it must be breaking his heart to know he is going to be leaving them. My heart is just breaking for him, it is just breaking. Please pray for him and for his breaking heart, pray for his transition and for his heart to heal. Please also pray that he stays physically healthy until we can get him home.”
http://drmommyandherpumpkins.blogspot.com/2014/02/sadness.html
Re: “…The sane, sensible thing to do would be to provide some small amount of material support to allow this child to stay with the foster family that has raised him since birth…”
For some reason this compassionate, genuinely Christian response is unknown in the world of the “Adoption Gospel”.
Mind you, according to the grant page linked in the blog there is medical reason why this Chinese kid who they’ve decided to unilaterally rename “Ulysses” needs to live closer to high quality medical care, but that doesn’t automatically equate to “He needs to come to the United States for treatment.”
According to the grant page, it’s not that the boy lives in China, it’s that he lives in a remote rural area within China. Funds could be raised to help him be adopted domestically by a couple living closer to a good hospital– or even to fund his foster parents relocating if they were willing. The $4,ooo U.S. dollars in his grant fund might be applied to that instead.
BTW, it’s weird that she includes “going to school” as a reason to adopt him, since the PAPs homeschool.
They don’t seem like bad people, they’re just caught in the meme that the world’s needy children must be saved by adoption to a western country. Never mind that it’s far more expensive than helping them in situ– not to mention the corruption this fuels, or the psychological trauma that losing their language, familiar caregivers and culture causes the “beneficiaries”.
Yet another Korean adoptee has been murdered, by his decorated military adad who works for NSA:
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Father-Charged-With-Adopted-Sons-Death–245972321.html
I just was posting this when you left the comment!
Terry Quinn’s adopted son Jacob died in October 2013 of a seizure/overdose (??) and adopted daughter Desi tried to kill herself via overdose of Wellbutrin earlier this week.
Both had a diagnosis of FASD, which Terri blames for their troubles:
http://parentingfasdkids.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/fasd-can-kill-yes-and-world-you-better-open-your-ears/
http://joyforjacob-gonetoosoon.blogspot.com/2013/12/leave-him-alone-he-is-my-baby.html
I worked with Jacob for many years when we were younger – he was neither adopted, nor did he have FASD. He died from a seizure, not an overdose.
Clarisa Polanco is possibly the most awful PAP ever — she’s not letting the fact that IAG literally purchased and kidnapped and sold Ethiopian babies keep her from the probably stolen Ethiopian baby she’s spent upwards of $35k on.
She’s convinced that Jesus is cool with her purchasing an Ethiopian child. Maybe Ethiopian adoptions will be shut down before she’s able to do so… have straw, will clutch, I guess.
Clarisa’s happy to pay extra to bring her trafficked babe home.
Barf.
“I have been trying to write this post since Tuesday afternoon when we were made aware of some very heartbreaking news. I don’t want to go into detail because just thinking about it hurts, but several employees of our adoption agency were arrested and indicted on charges of fraud. Plainly said, our agency is over and done with. Oh how your world can change in an instant. The first few hours after finding out the horrible news were very scary. What is going to happen to my son? How are we going to bring him home? All I wanted to do was get on an airplane and fly to Ethiopia. Obviously that wasn’t rational given the circumstances. All I can say is that my beautiful God has been holding me together since. I love knowing that Jesus is the same now as He was before all this mess happened. And that He loves my son more than I could ever love Him.
Even though a lot of things are still unclear, and we are still waiting to hear on a course of action from the U.S. Department of State and the government of Ethiopia, we have seen some light and have spoken with people who are willing to help us. 🙂 We are in the process of confirming our baby’s status as a legitimate orphan; this is called an Orphan Status Verification or OSV. Once we have Tiago’s positive OSV we will hopefully be working with another agency to bring him home!
I wish I could whisper in my baby’s ear that everything is going to be OK, that he has a mom and a dad that adore him, that we will fight for him and never give up, that sooner or later HE IS COMING HOME! At nights, I ask God to please show him our faces in his dreams, to please make him feel the love we have for him.
We will never give up on our little one. We understand that our adoption will be harder, it will take longer and it will be much more expensive than we previously anticipated but bring it on! ”
http://babypolanco.blogspot.com/2014/02/suddenly.html
Sometimes adoptive families get what they deserve — like Christall. She happily purchased an Ethiopian girl, Ava, way back in 2009 with IAG (aka totally corrupt adoption agency) and has since kicked the girl to the curb.
She’s upset that everybody in her town knows about it — because buying humans is bad? Looking the other way so that you can get the kid home is bad? Ridding yourself of the child you purchased because she’s not quite what you wanted her to be is admirable??
This is a woman who chose to adopt from abroad because “domestic adoption options are not much better these days as fewer and fewer birth moms are giving up their child and worse, the majority of them are “open adoptions” Meaning the birth mother will always be a part of your child’s life . . . like it or not. That is if you are lucky enough to be chosen by a birth mom looking for a family for her child”
OMG! A woman giving up her baby has a SAY in who adopts that baby! The baby has a right to know where she came from! Awful people like Christall are less likely to be picked by a pregnant woman!
http://christalljasongrace.blogspot.com/2014/02/thursday-february-4-2010-for-my-next-act.html
Christall continues “Judgement, entitlement, and shame…
Ava was living with a relative at that time and my guess is that about 8.7 minutes after that decision was made, most of Oak Harbor probably knew about it. Not only did they know about it, but they had an opinion about it.”
Well, it IS shameful to dispose of your adopted kid. If you do not want people to have an opinion about you doing awful things, not, well, doing horrible things would be an excellent place to start!!!
http://christalljasongrace.blogspot.com/2014/02/shame-shame-i-know-your-name_18.html
I placed this comment on her blog:
“…Actually, there never WAS a “Global Orphan crisis”. The Unicef number reflected “orphaned AND VULNERABLE children”, not “available for adoption children”. 90% of them had a living parent, and most of the rest had extended families willing to take them in.
The majority of the kids in orphanages are NOT available for adoption, but were placed there by poor parents who temporarily couldn’t care for them. This was also the case when America had orphanages, too. Parents used them for child care when they were out of work and/or couldn’t find work that paid enough to provide for them and their children, too. They’re a combination of free boarding school/charitable relief.
The kids who were available for adoption were usually over 5 and had special needs. But in the hysteria created by the hawking of the so-called “global orphan crisis”, suddenly there was a demand for “orphans”– and preferably young and healthy ones, since most prospective adoptive parents who answered the call to “adoption ministry” didn’t feel up to the challenge of older, disabled kids.
When there’s a demand for a product– and plenty of money to be made from filling it– there will be plenty of entrepreneurs eager to get in on the action. When the “product” is children, it’s a given that anyone willing to engage in such trade is corrupt. Children were kidnapped for the adoption trade, or “recruited” by means we’d call kidnapping if the victims of such frauds were American citizens.
IOW, Jim Harding isn’t lying now when he says there aren’t enough orphans who need families to meet the demand– he was lying when he claimed there weren’t enough adoptive families for all the “orphans”! And since the corruption and child trafficking has raised a lot more scrutiny than in the past, he’s moved over to a new way to separate infertile couples from their money by exploiting the desperate– yet fertile– poor. Surrogacy.
Same song, same band, different verse…”
I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but I have an intractable desire to educate people! ;-D
A dual Ukrainian-Canadian citizen lied in order to adopt 2 healthy young Ukrainian kids and cannot bring them to Canada as a result:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/12/regina-doctor-who-lied-to-ukrainian-authorities-on-adoption-papers-cant-raise-children-in-canada-court-rules/
Mary McBride/Findingmagnolia.com a homeschooling adoptive mommy to 2 Ethiopian girls (encountered fraud with the first adoption, went ahead and adopted a 2nd ET girl) has some views on socializing homeschoolers:
“Elvie switched to oral Tylenol, took it with only a small gag (the dose was big, so kind of expected since she’s a reformed medicine vomiter), and is sleeping. Meanwhile, I am reflecting on socialization. I still intend to write about this on the blog, but here’s a thought for now. In one article I’m reading, Carolyn R. Tomlin writes regarding socialization, “Stated simply, it is the process whereby individuals, especially children, become functioning members of a particular group and take on the values, behaviors, and beliefs of the group’s other members.”
With that in mind, doesn’t it make sense that we would want our children socialized with children whose behaviors are guided by similar principles to those we are teaching them ourselves?”
Mary homeschools because she can’t be bothered to get her almost 7 yo daughter up and out of the house every morning AND her daughter Zinashi doesn’t yet know all the letters of the alphabet yet (“because she’s only been speaking English for three years”)… and wants her girls socialized with people like herself and her husband.
Mary McBride thus keeps her darling girls away from all those pesky mandated reporters AND mandatory school testing that would demonstrate her older daughter clearly isn’t learning much (bad teaching? dyslexia? who knows? Mary doesn’t care!!). And other children who have sane parents that might just point out the error of her ways!
According to her blog, Zinashi attends some sort of class taught by a licensed therapist who is a mandated reporter, and a charter school teacher consults on her educational progress.
http://www.findingmagnolia.com/2013/12/answering-questions-and-critics.html
Consciousness raising takes time. The belief in the unquestioned goodness of adoption is deeply entrenched. Mary McBride is aware that staying with a loving, non-abusive birthfamily is better than translocation to another country, and talks about Ethiopia needing to do more for its children. She’s also aware that the profits to be made from international adoption are a powerful motivator of child trafficking and corruption.
http://www.findingmagnolia.com/2014/01/thoughts-on-possibility-of-ethiopia.html
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her yet that the money “fundraised” by Americans to adopt Ethiopian children could do a lot to support family preservation and provide food and medical care in Ethiopia, but maybe that will come in time.
I don’t think it’s helpful in winning hearts and minds to attack people who are beginning to come around. Just sayin’.
The problem is this business of coming around AFTER having completed an adoption, or in Mary’s case, a SECOND adoption.
Mary encountered fraud adopting Zinashi, hired an investigator, was relieved to find the fraud minor (to her) and turned right around to adopt Elvie just over a year later. She let none of the pesky, evil corruption stop her!
Once Mary had all the ET kids she wanted, she’s all of a sudden about adoption ethics. She writes movingly about ethics… but would not have adopted Elvie had she truly care about ethics. Heck, she wouldn’t even have adopted Zinashi in 2010 if she TRULY cared about adoption ethics. (She’s also admitted to a 7 yo who doesn’t yet know her letters and doesn’t have a learning disability that would explain WHY a seemingly smart kid doesn’t know the alphabet).
She explains in her blog how and why her thinking has evolved. As I said before, consciousness raising is usually a gradual process, because the myth of the benign transformative power of adoption has a very powerful hold on our culture.
The point is, it doesn’t help bring former proponents of Rescue Adoption to the ‘Adoption needs major reform’ camp if when they DO express pro-reform sentiments, we excoriate them for not having ALWAYS believed in reform.
BTW, as far as I know, it hasn’t been definitively established that Zinashi DOESN’T have some sort of learning disability. It is true that some instructional methods don’t teach letter names before kids have learned the sounds letters represent– like the well-regarded Montessori method for one.
Little Daniel Eli Brown a 2 yo Ukrainian boy was adopted by a US family in 2012, disrupted a year later and died with his second US forever family in February 2014:
http://m.magicvalley.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/eli-daniel-brown/article_c4a62f73-04bf-5f6b-9d1d-7c15c1eebac4.html?mobile_touch=true