Author Colorado Christian Services

Adoptive Parent Profiles

by Colorado Christian Services
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Adoptive parent profiles are crucial to the success of any adoption. It’s the first glimpse of your family that birth parents will get to see. So, it’s important that you put your best foot forward.

 

One of the keys to making a great adoption profile is authenticity. You will be building forever relationships with the birth family, so be yourselves! Include photos of you doing everyday activities like watering the flowers, reading a book, or feeding the chickens. These types of activities may seem trivial to you, but it helps the birth family genuinely understand who you are as a person or family. Often times, the most mundane things will be the ones that connect an expecting mother’s heart with yours.

 

When creating an adoption profile, you should also be mindful of what’s going on in the background of photos. Birth families quickly pick up on subtle details like body language, items on shelves, or signs in the background. Although these things might seem insignificant to us, they tell the reader so much about your family.

 

At Colorado Christian Services, we partner with Parentfinder for professional guidance and profile creation services. Their team of adoption professionals will guide you in creating an adoption profile that tells your family story in an elegant, authentic way.

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How early should we tell our child that he is adopted?

by Colorado Christian Services
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Every human grapples with the same question, “Who am I?” We also tend to wonder, “Where did I come from?” One of the keys to developing our individual identities is understanding our background, our history and why we are the way we are.

 

For non-adoptees, this curiosity usually manifests through an understanding of our family story or researching our lineage; how often do we get pulled into the mysteries of completing our family tree? But for adoptees, developing an identity can be much more challenging.

 

For many years, researchers and social workers believe that adoptees would benefit the most when told of their adoption between the ages of 4-13. However, the most recent research has shown quite the opposite. Instead, we’ve learned that children who were told of their adoption after the age of three experienced more emotional discomfort and overall lower satisfaction with life, compared to those who learned of their adoption earlier in life.

 

At CCS we often get the question, “How early should we tell our child that he is adopted?” Our response: “On the way home from the hospital.”

 

Adopted children should never be able to point to a time when they remember first learning they were adopted. Instead, their adoption story should be a natural, omnipresent fact in their life.

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Growing Your Family Through Adoption

by Colorado Christian Services
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When it comes to growing your family through adoption, it’s essential that everyone involved feel ready and confident to begin this new stage in life. One way in which adoption organizations help prepare parents for this journey is through training classes.

 

The State of Colorado requires that all prospective adoptive families participate in 16 hours of face-to-face CORE training. At Colorado Christian Services, we conduct our own training course which not only covers the State’s requirements but also gets into the nuts and bolts of our adoption program.

 

Adoptive families who graduate from our CORE training program leave more fully prepared for their adoption journey. They better understand the family assessment process, adoption profile creation and how to handle the waiting phase. They also learn about how connections with birth parents are made and how continued contact with birth parents after placement occurs.

 

We understand that a 16-hour training might feel daunting to some. However, once completed, our clients often feel more excited about the adoption process as a whole.

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