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:
Nothing beats a free pitcher of these: 
…onto this week’s FacePalms…
(1) Hat tip to a reader who forwards on this Facebook disturbance:
“Famous” adoptive parents who openly share live medical updates about their children in mental health facilities.
Zip it! 
While not illegal in the US, try being ethical about disclosing details of your child’s issues. How would your child feel knowing that these details are being discussed with the world? Do you think this will help the child?
(2)WSJ Editorial on Guatemala-Try Googling before churning out this 
Guatemala’s Inhumane Adoption Law
[Wall Street Journal 2/4/13 by Mary Anastasia O’Grady]
The vast majority of children adopted from Guatemala were not in institutions so she sets up this false premise early on. She blames UNICEF. She claims CICIG has not made its case (Please read our CICIG post here for the real facts. One quote I want to point out is that “Among the many findings stated in the CICIG report, it is established that only 10% of Guatemalan children who were placed for adoption between 2007 and 2010 were in an orphaned or abandoned situation“) That is not a tiny problem.
She thinks that DNA tests prove that children weren’t stolen because she can’t fathom that DNA samples may have been taken from the birthfamily and still had children aken from them.
(3) “Unexpected” Problem in Nigeria really is not
This February 3, 2013 article has a number of FacePalms. The article claims that just now the Nigerian law says that nonNigerians can’t adopt when we documented this in September 2011 just as these people were deciding to adopt from a friend’s orphanage .
This AP had a “vision trip” to decide to adopt this girl.
They adopted in 2011 followed quickly by a surrogacy 
and then wanted to add this child.
Lastly, they already tried to have this Nigerian child bond with the other kids thru facetime before their case was embassy-approved. 
(4) Stuck Tour Bus
We have already lampooned Stuck and Both Ends Burning’ s Step Forward for Orphans March on May 17. Now they are touring the country and of course they need 
and a score of volunteers . See here.
PAPs that merrily set out to adopt a specific, illegally pre-selected Ukrainian boy that is illegally photolisted on RR and not yet legally available for international adoption (and has pics of them on their blog too). Why bother to respect the law if you really, truly believe you’ve got a supernatural being on your side?
“We are hopeful that Edik’s paperwork will be ready when our dossier is complete. We were originally told that his paperwork would not be ready until early Summer, but have since be told that it could be ready earlier. Our facilitation team will wait to submit our dossier until they are sure that our Edik’s paperwork is ready as well. Please pray with us that our baby boy’s paperwork will be done quickly and correctly.”
lightingoursteps.blogspot.com/2013/02/wonder-and-hope.html
This family has 9 special needs kids AND the two parents run a group home out of the house – all 1300 sq feet of it. 6 adopted (unrelated; 3 of which were simultaneously adopted last year) boys sleep together in 1 room, 3 (unrelated) girls in another:
theroaddownhome.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-we-make-room-our-house.html
Adoptive mommies who have it soooo tough raising children they claim have RAD.
The comments should be read, as the complaints are from mommies with
incredible amounts of outside assistance covered by Medicaid and insurance (75 hrs per week 1 on 1 in-home help, plus twice monthly respite, a special therapist just for a one family), who pulled their kids out of public school to avoid outside scrutiny, and generally behave like bossy, micromanaging dictators to teachers, doctors and helpful friends and are baffled as to why they have little support. There’s a collective belief that licensed medical professionals are incompetent at best and harmful at worst – but that its acceptable to send a child with severe mental health problems to an unlicensed facility for treatment.
http://ouralabamaadventure.blogspot.com/2013/02/no-words-well-some-actually.html?m=1
Name,
The interesting thing is, the February 6, 2013 entry claims that one of the trauma-mamas in her support group was murdered by her daughter with RAD a few days ago. However, when I Googled, I couldn’t any news stories on such an event.
The right wing blogosphere operates in its own little fact-free universe.
Misguided politician of the week award goes to Congressman Israel:
“At Tuesday’s State of the Union address, a New York congressman will host a couple whose plans to adopt an orphan were thwarted when the Russian parliament banned all American adoptions last December.
Dania and Nick Marvos, a couple from Little Neck, NY, were in the process of adopting a little boy from Russia when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law banning American adoptions of Russian children last December. The couple had traveled to Russia in December to meet their prospective child, a one-year-old boy named Ari, but now their hopes of bringing Ari to the United States are all but lost.
“Waiting for news to see if we will be allowed to bring our baby home has been one of the most trying times in our lives. Devastating does not capture the emotional roller coaster that we are enduring every day,” Dania Mavros said in a statement. “We try to keep our spirits up with the hope that our family will be united and our beautiful little boy does not have to grow up in an orphanage without the love of his Mommy and Daddy who are waiting for him in the United States.”
The couple will be the guests of Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), their congressman, who has been working both in public and private to help them finish the adoption process they began, despite the new law. The lawmaker and the couple held a press conference on the issue last month in Queens.
“President Putin is jeopardizing the future for thousands of Russian orphans and their adoptive parents here in the U.S. over a political disagreement with the administration,” Israel said in a press release. “The adoption process is difficult enough for any family without adding international politics to the mix. Children should never be used as political pawns, but in this case that is exactly what’s happening. ”
The anti-adoption law passed Russia’s upper house of parliament unanimously and was widely seen as retaliation for a new U.S. law that punishes Russian human rights violators by restricting their access to visas and their ability to do business in the United States. That bill, the Sergei Magnitsky Accountability and Rule of Law Act of 2012, was named after the Russian anti-corruption lawyer who died in prison, allegedly after being tortured by Russian officials.
State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in December that the Russian bill would needlessly result in the suffering of the most vulnerable Russian orphans, who bear no responsibility for the political feud between Moscow and Washington.
“Since 1992 American families have welcomed more than 60,000 Russian children into their homes, and it is misguided to link the fate of children to unrelated political considerations,” Ventrell said. “The welfare of children is simply too important to tie to the political aspects of our relationship.”
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/02/12/congressman_s_sotu_guests_are_parents_banned_from_russian_adoption
Not seeing the problem with Congressman Israel’s remarks. Russian-American IA needs to be reformed, not outlawed and more children will suffer in the overburdened Russian system if they cannot be adopted by American families. It will be wonderful when Russia can truly take care of all her own children, but getting there is a process and won’t benefit most of the children in the system now.