Liban and I are finally back in our apartment in Chennai, and it feels so good to be home!
Coming back has me filled with all the feelings about getting to be a mommy soon. I can't wait to have our apartment filled with a child's giggles and artwork, with toys strewn all over the floor (just not Legos).
Because India generally doesn't have closets, there are cupboards or shelves built into walls--or in our case, lining entire walls in bedrooms. Naturally, my first organization act of returning home was putting all my therapy/future child's toys, books, and hand-me-down clothes in her cupboards. Liban likes to roll his eyes at me/my eagerness, but I'm in total nesting mode and am loving it. Now to convince him to get a bench swing for inside our apartment, in lieu of a rocking chair. . .
Our big news this week is that we officially registered for adoption on Saturday!!!! We were not planning to until mid-way through our September trip in Italy, but both of us felt that there may be delays with paperwork and scheduling meetings/home studies/everything, so why not go ahead and do it now? This means we are here in the process:
Once we registered, we were able to see the actual numbers of available children. There are an estimated 26 million orphans in India (orphans being a loose term that doesn't always mean both parents are no longer alive), and a little under 2,000 children currently available for adoption. No matter how bad you are at math, it's obvious those numbers do NOT match. The latest statistic I saw for number of prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) who have applied for Indian adoption is 16,000.
[Begin Soapbox] As I looked through the stats, it's obvious where priorities lie. When I searched for typically developing children under age 2, there are over 2,500 parents on the waiting list. Change the search to children age 2-4, and the number drops to under 600. For children under age 2 with special needs, and the number drops to 16. A search for children age 2-4 with special needs: 8. Search for any of these criteria as siblings instead of individual children, and the numbers lessen even further--and the numbers for any criterion for children over age 4 are almost consistently "0." It's heart-breaking.
I know it's the Bible and was written in a worldly cultural context, but I hate the terminology used in Matthew 25:40:
Because India generally doesn't have closets, there are cupboards or shelves built into walls--or in our case, lining entire walls in bedrooms. Naturally, my first organization act of returning home was putting all my therapy/future child's toys, books, and hand-me-down clothes in her cupboards. Liban likes to roll his eyes at me/my eagerness, but I'm in total nesting mode and am loving it. Now to convince him to get a bench swing for inside our apartment, in lieu of a rocking chair. . .
Our big news this week is that we officially registered for adoption on Saturday!!!! We were not planning to until mid-way through our September trip in Italy, but both of us felt that there may be delays with paperwork and scheduling meetings/home studies/everything, so why not go ahead and do it now? This means we are here in the process:
Once we registered, we were able to see the actual numbers of available children. There are an estimated 26 million orphans in India (orphans being a loose term that doesn't always mean both parents are no longer alive), and a little under 2,000 children currently available for adoption. No matter how bad you are at math, it's obvious those numbers do NOT match. The latest statistic I saw for number of prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) who have applied for Indian adoption is 16,000.
[Begin Soapbox] As I looked through the stats, it's obvious where priorities lie. When I searched for typically developing children under age 2, there are over 2,500 parents on the waiting list. Change the search to children age 2-4, and the number drops to under 600. For children under age 2 with special needs, and the number drops to 16. A search for children age 2-4 with special needs: 8. Search for any of these criteria as siblings instead of individual children, and the numbers lessen even further--and the numbers for any criterion for children over age 4 are almost consistently "0." It's heart-breaking.
I know it's the Bible and was written in a worldly cultural context, but I hate the terminology used in Matthew 25:40:
"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'
My thoughts as an OT (a career specifically designed to facilitate independence and quality of life) just resound as WHO THE HECK SAYS THEY ARE THE LEAST? Well, the adoption statistics alone show what the world continues to think of as "the least,"and it's devastating. [End Soapbox]
