Answers to Common Adoption Questions

Part 1

As I sit down to write, my mind is flooded with the many questions we receive about adoption. Although adoption is becoming a more common approach to growing a family, there are still many people who are surprised by our decision to adopt. In our journey, we have also learned that many people simply have not had exposure to adoption or experience with adoptive families. We welcome the questions, the curiosity, and the opportunity to share more about both our story and the beauty of adoption as a whole.

While we encounter numerous questions, one of the questions we encounter the most is Why?. Although I have already written a brief post in response to this question, we have chosen to adopt because we are adopted by God. Check out our post Why? Why Adopt? to read more about our response. I will also be happy to share in further depth if you would like to chat. Just leave a comment below or send a message!

Other questions we receive are basic questions about the function and process of adoption. We would like to share our experience, the general process of adoption, and helpful tips to know in the adoption process. Although there are several kinds of adoption, our personal experience falls within international adoption. Even though our primary experience is in international adoption, we also have our foster license in North Carolina and have close friends adopting domestically. As a general guideline, families who would like to adopt begin with determining which type of adoption they would like to pursue.

Once the type of adoption has been determined, then the family researches and connects with local agencies who specialize in the family’s chosen type of adoption. Types of adoptions range from domestic infant adoption, domestic adoption from foster care, and international adoption. Families can choose to adopt infants or older children, as well as decide if they would like to adopt a single child or a sibling set. Families also determine the level of special needs they feel as though they can appropriately care for in a child. For us, we have chosen international adoption, and we have chosen to adopt an older sibling set. (Often, “older” children include any child six years old and older, but the definition of “older” varies by country and agency.)  

We feel that as a fairly young (twenty-something) and active couple with no other children, we can provide a suitable home for a sibling set of older children. We believe that any of these types of adoptions can bring a tremendous amount of joy to your family and prove to be an incredible journey. For us, we will continue on our adoption journey as we wait for the process to finalize so that we may bring our children home.

We look forward to sharing our stories, tips, and laughs with you along the journey.

Yours,

The Javier Fam