DISCLOSURE MEETING IS FINALLY SCHEDULED

We still have not had our disclosure meeting yet to learn more about “C”, but at least it is finally scheduled! We’re planning a meeting with everyone on the team in about a week, on October 28. Once that is completed, if we decide to proceed, they will tell C about us and he can decide if he wants to meet us. You never know, a 16 year old might not even want to be adopted, but from his social worker it sounds like he probably does. Anyway, if he wants to meet us we'll arrange a few visits and if all goes well he could be living with us in a few weeks.

We’re also hearing from our friends who we met in our training classes, and most of us are at some stage in the matching process. Some of us are waiting for our disclosure meetings, one couple has been visiting with the child they want to adopt, and another couple already has their child living with them. This is a really exciting time for everyone and I love hearing about the fun stuff but also the challenges and seeing some of the creative ways they are handling things as they come up. One of our friends is still waiting for a match, and she actually went through the training classes before us so she has been waiting for a while. She has come close in the past but things fell through, which is definitely frustrating. Chris and I know how that feels since we’ve had some disappointments too, so although we’re hoping that things will move ahead with C, we aren’t going to count this chicken until it’s hatched.

AN INFORMATIONAL MEETING

We did have our meeting last week regarding the 16 year old boy (“C”) who we were contacted about for matching. It was not a true disclosure meeting, which will come later and will be much more complete, but rather it was just a meeting with me and Chris, our social worker Gloria, and C’s social worker Tricia to give us a little more information to let us know more about him so we could decide if we want to proceed to disclosure. Usually they will only have a disclosure meeting if you are pretty sure you want to move ahead with a particular child. At disclosure you learn everything about the child including their medical and mental health history, family history, legal/custody issues, academic performance, and any behavioral concerns. If it turns out there are issues that you are not prepared to deal with, the disclosure meeting is your chance to back out before they inform the child of your existence (understandably they don’t want the child to know that someone changed their mind and decided they didn’t want them after all), so this is the time to ask ALL your questions.

The informational meeting we had went very well. We had been a little unsure about things because C is a little older than we were planning on, but Tricia helped to settle any doubts. He really does sound like a great match for our family! She described him as being a little shy, but is just now starting to come out of his shell. He’s an easy-going kid and not a typical rebellious teen (yet?), he’s respectful of adults including his teachers and his current foster parents, and he works hard at school. We also have a lot of the same interests as him, including singing, music, and cooking. It was funny because Tricia mentioned that C is interested in learning to decorate cakes and maybe doing it as a profession someday… and we told her about our website (www.troyandchris.com) where we posted a picture of a cake I decorated for a friend’s birthday. Oy! Such a perfect match! We could take classes together! But I think the best part of our meeting was seeing how much Tricia genuinely likes him. He’s a good kid and she really wants good things for him. She noted that there had been a match that had fallen through a while back, and she was hoping that it meant that he would be available for an even better match that would come along later. After our meeting we are all thinking that better match might be us.

MOVING AHEAD
So of course, we decided to move ahead with disclosure. It is going to involve coordinating the schedules of many busy people, and it always seems that at any given time one or two of these people are on vacation. But hopefully the disclosure meeting will happen this week or next. If all goes well with disclosure, the next step would be to meet C. We first would hang out for the day with him and Tricia and get to know each other. We would then have a few longer visits with just the three of us, maybe have him stay at our house for the weekend, and we can all decide if we want to make it permanent. If all goes well, we’re hoping that the process might be done by Thanksgiving, which would definitely give us a lot to be thankful for.