Inquisition? NOT!!!!

wow, the homestudy formerly known as 'inquisition' has been started.

It was CAKE!!! Such an easy experience. Our Social Worker (SW) is named Pamela and she was just the nicest person, the kind of person you'd want as your neighbor, the kind of person you hang out with while both of your husbands grilled food and drank beer.

She asked us tons of questions, who's going to be supportive, who won't be? What was your childhood like? What kind of parent do you want to be? what childcare arrangements have you considered? and so on. All in all about 2 hours worth.

Big Question: How will you deal with the reality of attachment disorders, very common with children adopted NOT as newborns...?

This was the topic of much of our discussion tonight as I've noticed many people who have no adoption experience don't understand what kind of attachment issues there are and how big a deal it is. She helped us understand how important it is to get our friends and family educated so they aren't surprised at how differently the early months will be once we bring our daughter home. We have much work to do on this and I know many of our friends and family will find it tough to take our word for it as no one in our lives has ever adopted and so it's VERY different from the norm, bring a baby home and everyone rushes in and spends time at the house. She even went so far as to recommend that for several weeks we limit visitors to close to no one. This will be tough for people to understand why and we hope our family and friends who are most important to us will learn what attachment disorders are present in adopted children who aren't newborns and how they can help (and not help) with the early months. This has always been my biggest concern, attachment disorders are not to be taken lightly... We can only hope that after all we've suffered, the people who matter most to us and who we matter most to will be willing to commit the time and energy to understand.

anyway, I got serious there for a second.

We had a blast with Pamela, talking about how we met, got married, our ilfe together, the early years, and the more recent years. It was VERY difficult to share some of the more personal things with her like how we resolve conflict, what our relationship is like, what brought us to adoption and so on!

But we had a good time talking about our experiences with children and of course the dogs were a never ending source of amusement! THe neighborhood must have thought we'd lost our minds... we never walk the dogs but we had visions of them terrorizing her and us winding up in dog behavior classes so we've been walking Zane 2 times per day lately to get her to wind down... it didn't work too well, she was a bit wound up!

Anyway, our last visit is this weekend and then the draft report will be done soon and it should take just a few weeks to finish up all but the dreaded wait for our FBI and state fingerprint clearance!

YEAH, the first homestudy visit is over. I have to admit it, when we last see Pamela I'm actually going to miss her :)