A Child’s View of the China Adoption Process
Adoption is truly a family process. When a family goes through an adoption, we often see that those who have children in the home many times find that their children become very interested in learning more about how adoption works. Parents often comment that it is fun to see their unique perspectives based on what they observe from their parents as they walk through each adoption stage.
Matt and Kristen Trantham, who have adopted through our China program previously and just completed a second adoption from China earlier this year, shared this cute story below with our staff. While it may be slightly humorous, it does share a bit of truth in adoption, based upon a child’s perception of the adoption process. Kristen shares:
I was working on school work with one of my boys and my daughters were playing nearby. They had a desk set up and a phone, pens, clipboard, etc. Paige (our daughter from China) approached her sister at the desk and said, “Hi, I’m here to file my adoption papers.” Morgan responded, “Oh good, I can help you.” Paige said, “I have ten to file, how many dollars will that be?” Morgan, “That will be $1,000. You’ll need to take this ticket and go to the bank to get the money, but they probably won’t be open because they are busy moving some people. After you get the money come back and then you can wait in line to file your papers. It’s still a long time before the baby comes.”
Kristen said, “I almost laughed out loud—they have the whole thing pretty well figured out—papers, money, lots of waiting…..and still a long time before the baby comes!”
While we may smile at this cute story from the Trantham family, adoption is full of many moments of waiting and there are fees involved, but the end result to those days of waiting can hardly compare to the joy of holding a new son or daughter. If your family has been hesitant to start the adoption process due to your fear of adoption costs, we encourage you to visit our financing your adoption resource page. There are many wonderful grant organizations just waiting to fund adoptions and a large percentage of families we work with apply for adoption grants. You can learn more about how to fund your adoption on our Financing Adoption page. We have seen God prove Himself faithful time and again when a family answers the call to adopt.
While wait times can certainly be a part of any adoption process, we would like to remind families that wait times for boys are shorter in our China program than the wait times for girls, as there are fewer families interested in adopting a boy. Wait times for children (both boys and girls of all ages) with moderate or more involved medical needs also tend to be shorter as there are currently many children in these categories who are still waiting and have not yet been matched. You can learn more about some of the children who still wait, by viewing our China Waiting Children photolistings pages.
If your family would like to learn more about our China adoption program, please contact us at 800-429-3369 or email us at China@awaa.org. Our team would love to serve your family on your journey of adoption from China.
