Ah, the oh-so-dreaded home study.  Prior to actively pursuing adoption, I had heard several negative things about a home study, and so had a decent amount of anxiety about completing it.   The home study is a catch-all term used to refer to your home assessment (checking to make sure you meet the basic safety needs), interviews by your case worker, as well as interviews completed by a third party. 

The home safety assessment is pretty straightforward and is the first basic hurdle to adoption.  For the most part, they want to make sure that you have a fire extinguisher and smoke detectors, locks on all cleaning products and medications, and all of the outlets covered.  If you have a pool or a trampoline things get a little more complicated regarding safety essentials.  This part is taken care of generally prior to moving forward with the interviews.

The caseworker interviews consist of surface level questions done in the home.  Basically, the caseworkers want to get a feel for what life is like in your home.  They may ask questions like, “What does your family do for fun?” or, “What is your support network like?” or, “Do you own any weapons and where are they stored?”.  You don’t need to stress about this too much, though.  Just be yourself, try to relax, and know that your caseworker is generally happy that you want to adopt one of the children from CPS.  Caseworkers do not want kids to stay under the care of the state indefinitely, but rather want to find them the ideal forever home.  Their goal is not to dismiss you, but to help you to find kids that will be the best fit for your family.  I know it is hard to believe that in the moment, but trust me – caseworkers are thrilled when a child receives a permanent placement. 

The final step is a little more involved and consists of an interview and inspection from a third party company.  Ours was scheduled in the afternoon on a day prior to me working that evening.  I naively assumed that it would take less than an hour, and it ended up taking 2-3 hours.  Thankfully, a coworker stayed late so that we could complete our interview without interruption.  A woman showed up at our house with her laptop for the assessment.  She spoke to us first together, then each of us individually, and then together again at the end.  She wrote down everything that we said for her report. 

The questions were much deeper and difficult to answer than those asked by our caseworker.  We were asked questions like:

·      What are the best and worst character traits of your mate and of yourself?
·      What is your biggest concern regarding adoption?
·      How would you handle discipline with your children?
·      How do you handle stress?
·      How did your parents discipline you as a child? 
·      What was the environment of your household     like when you were growing up and how did that affect you?
·      How do you handle arguments with your mate? 

These questions made us search deeper than we had initially planned.  This was an incredibly important step for the two of us as we began to truly count the cost of moving forward with adoption.   The questions forced us to have conversations that we did not even realize were necessary.  In the same way that premarital counseling allows couples to remove the rose-colored glasses, this home study made us truly examine our hearts and see some areas that still needed work. 

A Christian pastor once said, “When we are bumped, we spill what we are filled with.”  If the hurt of our childhood or our concerns about our mate are not dealt with early on, these will inevitably “spill” over onto our kids.  No amount of planning and preparation will ever make you a perfect adoptive parent, but dealing with the dark areas of our past will allow more of the love of Christ to shine through us to our children. 

Taking Care of Business

When we had the first home visit from CPS, I seriously freaked out in preparation.  I did all of those things that I never, ever normally do.  I scrubbed the grout in our kitchen floor, cleaned the windows, and dusted anything that would hold still.  My husband worked to install safety locks on the bathroom cabinets, put smoke detectors in every room, and locks for the medications.  We had to get a plumbing/gas inspection, buy a fire extinguisher, have that inspected, and create a fire escape plan to be posted in our house.  

Most of these things were relatively easy and cost very little.  Just as a side note to those going through the process- let the companies know why you need these inspections.  In our case, this simplified the inspection and one of the companies charged us nothing because they were so excited about what we were doing.  Don’t let this overwhelm you, just ask the other parents in your class how they did it.  Every class has that one family that is ahead of the game – find them and become friends with them.

One of the steps of the class was to make a “Life Book”, the style of which was left to our discretion.  The purpose of the book was to help the kids find out a little about their forever family before they moved in.  Most families did this like a scrapbook with a few captions on their pictures.   I chose to use a website called mypublisher.com and made a book that was the story of us. 

Each chapter (and I use that word loosely as each was 1-2 pages) was about a different aspect of our life.  Example – chapter 1 was about Phil and me as kids, chapter 2 was about our house, chapter 3 was about our pets, etc.  Each page had photos of our family, our neighborhood, our church, and activities we like to do.  I loved the idea of making it like a story and the last page talked about how our family was missing something important… them. I talked about how we prayed and waited for a really long time to be given just the right kids.  We were only required to make one Life Book, but we made three: one book for each child as well as one that we would keep nice, because like the last post states… kids destroy things.  To this day, my daughter will frequently grab this book to read as her bedtime story.  I love that she smiles when she hears about how much we went through to adopt them.

The last page of our Life Book

Oh yeah, I said one book for EACH child… as in we were planning to adopt two children.  I forgot to mention how during this time, our plans changed from one child to two children.  This was mostly my idea, but my wonderful husband went along with it.  Bless him. 

As a nurse I was required to take a Human Growth and Development class as a prerequisite course.  During the course, I remember studying Erikson’s Stages of Development and something that my instructor said stuck with me.  The first stage of development is “trust vs. mistrust” and she explained how as long as a child has someone that they can trust from an early age, it helps them to progress in their development.  This was the thought behind adopting siblings.  They will have someone that knows their life experiences and has been with them through everything.  In addition, the majority of children in CPS are a part of a sibling group.  Initially, CPS tries to adopt them all together, but if it seems unlikely, these siblings will be separated, sometimes forever, from the only connection that they have with their past.  We thank God that our children were able to stay together and see each other grow through the stages of life.

School Days

So, for the next year, we waited until things with Phil’s job became clearer.  It was a tough time in our lives, and I see why God did not want to place a child in our home in that time.  I had to deal with a lot of unforgiveness and hurt.  I would vacillate between being totally okay with the world and feeling like I had a gaping wound in my heart.  God was incredibly gracious to me and deepened some friendships in my life. 

Soon after that, I left my previous job and moved to a new job.  That adjustment was way more challenging than I could have imagined.  Even as I write about these things (in veiled and ambiguous ways--sorry), I can barely recall the hurt I went through, but trust me when I say many, many tears were shed and fervent prayers prayed.  All of this shows the healing and restoration that our kind heavenly Father demonstrated to me.    

In that time, we had a visit from my sister and her beautiful twins adopted from Africa.  Guys, I seriously love these kids.  They are hilarious and wonderful and a blast to hang around with.  We had so much fun and I began to truly picture what parenting might be like.  My husband felt the same way and we began to make plans to attend the CPS mandated classes in the summer of 2013.  We had to plan so far in advance because of work scheduling issues. 

The classes (called P.R.I.D.E. classes) were offered nearly every month and could either be taken as 4 full Saturdays or 10 weekly classes for a few hours each.  I’m not sure that there is a way to make these classes very action-packed.  We talked about discipline, coping, dealing with past experiences, and euphemisms for genitalia.  This all makes for quite the bonding experience. 

Something that we were not prepared for was that during the first class we had to schedule our initial home visit.  This seemingly daunting task was something I had filed away as something, “Way in the future.” I promise you, this is less in-depth than you can imagine.   My assurances will in no way prevent you from freaking out in the time leading up to said visit, however.  The worker does not care one bit about the dust on your furniture, but mostly that you have a fire extinguisher, child-proof cabinets, medications locked up, etc.  It is okay if you do not have everything completed at that point, as they will follow up later.

And just be prepared, every P.R.I.D.E. class has that person or few people that ask WAY too many specific questions.  One of my favorites was, "What if we have a room filled with crystal items?  Will the children break these?").  Seriously lady?  Kids ALWAYS break things, so just put those things away until your kids are at least 40.  

Everyone in our class soon learned who our person was.  The class is a good start to the preparation, but every parent learns that no amount of preparation can truly prepare you for the scenarios that you will face once you are in the trenches. Each of these children (even children from the same home) come into our homes with a different set of experiences, struggles, fears, insecurities, and biological predispositions.  Try to get past this, as these future parents will become a source of encouragement and a shoulder to lean on.   Each of them is compelled to be parents to these children, and that is truly a beautiful thing.