Meet the Birth Grandparents

Yesterday we had our hour-long "interview" at LDS Family Services with the birth grandparents who are placing their 2 year old grandson for adoption. (Read the previous post first if you haven't already).

They will be meeting with four other potential adoptive couples throughout this week which is NOT the usual protocol for LDS Family Services. Normally, an adoptive couple meets a birthparent only AFTER a birthparent has selected them to adopt their child, but because of the unique nature of this case the grandparents want to make certain that the family they find is indeed the right family for their grandson.

How many people do you know who have to be interviewed and compared with other families in order to have a child join their family? It's a little bit awkward to say the least. We were nervous about the meeting, but the grandparents assured us that they were the ones who were nervous.

The grandparents were nice, humble people and very up front with any information they had about their late daughter, her husband, and their grandson. The grandmother was quite the talker but her husband was very quiet and hardly said more than ten words the whole time.

It is obvious that these grandparents want as open of an adoption as possible which is understandable considering that they have been their grandson's primary caregivers over the past year. Although we didn't go into too much detail about what Jared and I would be comfortable with in terms of openness (we would discuss that later in depth if they choose us) I did mention to them that the idea of an open adoption used to scare us, but that we are more open-minded to the idea now-especially when we take into account the most important person in the adoption triad: THE CHILD!

One thing that bothered us is that we haven't even seen a picture of this little boy- Don't you think that would be beneficial for us? I mean, even if someone adopts an animal they get to at least visit the shelter or pet store and get a "feel" for which puppies or cats they connect with. (Maybe that's a poor analogy, I know that children are not animals!) Families who adopt older children either get to go to an orphanage and meet them first or see their picture on a photolisting. The birth grandparent's caseworker assured us that this little boy is as "cute as a button" and the reason they didn't want to show us a picture of him is because if we saw him we would fall in love with him and then be heartbroken if we didn't end up being his family.

Like I said, it's not a typical situation. The birth grandparents met with two other couples besides us on Monday and they will be meeting with two other "candidates for the position" on Thursday. We won't know until sometime next week who they have chosen. But one thing we've gotten pretty used to is waiting.

If this situation had presented itself to us 3 or 4 years ago we would have been EXTEMELY ANXIOUS & walking on pins and needles and probably feel devastated if we were not chosen to be the parents of this little boy. We would have taken it personally, like "WHAT'S WRONG WITH US that nobody wants us to be parents to their children?!" But we believe that it is in the Lord's hands so we are trying to put our personal feelings, desires, and even pride aside and remind ourselves as we have with our foster children, that it's not so much about US as it is about what is best for a child.