Recently there has been a lot of talk in the adoption community about prospective parents receiving referrals (or being matched with a child) that are “less than perfect.”

Chafe at that term being applied to human beings?

Me too.

I think most of us who have adopted, particularly kids with some special needs that would make others label them a “bad referral,” find the terms and tones used by some people a bit hard to swallow.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully agree that no family should adopt a child with whom they do not feel comfortable.  I also understand that every family has parameters of what they think they can handle, and pushing them to adopt a child outside those parameters benefits no one.

What I find hard to digest is the tone, and it’s inherent assumptions, that seems to permeate many of these discussions.  The tone that says that other countries owe it to us to allow us to adopt their children.  The assumption that one can determine the underlying health of any child who has been living in an institution, that perspective parents can glean the potential of that child from attempting to interact with them for proscribed periods of time.

The pervasive sense of “testing” the child – can they color?  Stack cups?  Do they make good eye contact?

In one sense these tests seem logical – a way to potentially screen for serious medical and developmental delays.  In another sense they seem fruitless at best, cruel at worst.  After all, it’s well documented that even very young children in orphanages understand that when foreigners come, bearing candy and speaking strangely, they are coming to bring a child into their family.  Orphans have been known to crowd around these strangers, calling them “mama” and “papa” and asking to be taken home.

So when a child in this unspeakably vulnerable position is asked to perform a series of tasks to the satisfaction of these potential parents, how can they possibly not know they are being judged?  And worse, that the most vital and basic of all human needs, a family, is what’s at stake?  And if this child, already left parentless and struggling to survive in conditions that would bring most of us to our knees, fails to perform up to par?  If they are not chosen to live a life filled with love and care and opportunities, simply because the lack of those very things has left them unable to do “age appropriate” tasks or respond to social situations as expected?  I cannot imagine a more cruel irony.

Then there is the assumption, often unspoken but many times plainly stated, that a healthy child is a better child.  Prospective parents will say that they don’t think they can handle a child with problems, that they give credit to those who can but they are not cut out for such parenting.  That they know their limitations.

I challenge the assumption that any parent knows their limitations.

Whether children come through birth or adoption, foster or step parenting, they challenge us.  They are individuals, first and foremost, and our job as parents is to help them be the best that they can be.  I maintain that this is no more formidable a challenge for those of us with these so-called special needs children then for most parents.

Raising kids is hard.

It is also incomparably rewarding.  If your child has an added developmental or physical challenge, they are still a person, an individual, no more defined by their peanut allergy or limb difference or reading problems than the rest of us are by our challenges.  And parents of these children (which, by my casual observations of family and friends, have to be in the majority), we are not these perpetually self-sacrificing creatures, living some sad existence devoid of the joyous milestones of childhood.

No life of quiet servitude here.

We are soccer moms, room parents, scout troop leaders, birthday party planners.  We host sleepovers and stand in joyous ovation at dance recitals and school plays.  We belong to churches, temples, or other places of worship.  We take family vacations.  We enjoy pizza and movie nights, piled into our living rooms for a familiar cozy ritual. We create memories.  Whether we do things mindful of medication schedules or how to best navigate the zoo with a walker, what’s the difference?

We do them, and we do them with joy.