Adoptive Family Magazine articles, great adoption resource

I'm sure most of you APs out there have checked out Adoptive Family Magazine. I really love the magazine and it's thoughtful commentary on issues that are relevant to our family.

However, I just discovered the magazine's downloadable adoption handouts page and wow, what a great resource! The articles are PDFs that you can download (for free!) for future reference or to share with others. They cover topics such as adoption law, talking about adoption (broken down into age groups), dealing with teachers and schools, adoption advocacy, medicine, and more.

If you haven't already, check it out!

http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/clip.php

Adoption Books For Kids: We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo

We adopted you, Benjamin Koo by Linda Walvoord Girard

Wow. I love this book! It got everything just right. We are definitely adding it to our collection!

The story is told by a nine-year-old Korean adoptee named Benjamin. He talks about a lot of the aspects of adoption that are challenging for adopted kids such as not knowing why you were placed for adoption, what your birth family was like, and trying to figure out how you fit in to your new family. It also acknowledges issues specific to IA kids such as looking different than your family, integrating birth country culture/rituals, and being teased about your appearance.

The story is direct and straightforward. It's written simply and in a language that kids will connect to. It provides a lot of great topics for parents to discuss with kids, and ways that kids can learn to handle big feelings. Here's an example:

"I began to feel angry because other kids knew their biological families, and I never would. One time, when my mom made me obey a rule, I got mad. "I'm leaving!" I shouted. "I'm going back to Korea! I'll find my real mother, and she'll be nice to me!"

My mom stayed calm. "You have a real mom, and that's me," she said. "I know you're upset, but you have to mind my rules."

I started to run away. I really did. Then I realized I'd get to the end of the sidewalk, and I wouldn't know which way Korea was!

That night Dad hugged me and said he was glad I had decided to stay. But I still felt like I was on the sidewalk, not sure where to turn."

Another great example shows how the book can help kids deal with the outside world. I thought this part of the book would be super helpful in the future, although it's really heartbreaking to think that Little Man will be teased like this one day. I sort of hate introducing kids to the idea of racial slurs though. But realistically, I know a situation like this will probably happen and this story helps us prepare him to handle it:

"I do have one problem. It's the kids at school. Fourth grade can be tough. A few kids call me "Chink" when they tease. Some people don't want to know anything about me. They just think I'm from Afghanistan or Hawaii or Timbuktu.

"I don't like him," I heard a girl say. "He's Japanese."

"Yeah, but watch out---he probably knows karate," said the other kid.

I don't know karate, and I'm not Japanese. It hurts when kids tease me or talk about me like I"m an alien from the moon.

I can answer the teasers with a fact: I'm an American. Or else I can be friendly and say, "I was born in Korea. Where were you born?" Sometimes my best bet is to ignore people when they're being mean. And I've learned to concentrate on my good friends, the kids who like me the way I am."

As for the illustrations, they are fine. Appropriate for the older audience which is exactly who this book is directed at.

Right now, this book is WAY over Little Man's age, 2 1/2. But I think maybe about 4-5 years old he'll be at the right age to start reading it, even if he doesn't fully understand everything in it.

N-600: Citizenship for International Adoption & the USCIS text alert program

We are still on the hunt for our Certificate of Citizenship for Little Man. We sent the application in months ago and this week complied with the request to send in his green card (boy that was hard to give it up). Hope that means USCIS is getting close to completing the process and Little Man's citizenship will be completed!

For those of you playing at home with your international adoption, I figured out a handy feature that U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services has on their website to allow you to see where in the N-600 process your paperwork is.

After you have submitted the N-600, check updates on your case's status, go to: https://egov.uscis.gov/cris/Dashboard.do

Enter the receipt number that you will find on the I-797C, which should have been sent to you after the N-600 was received. Type it in, hit check status, and you can see easily what's going on with your case.

One thing that I've found super helpful is to register with USCIS (free) and create a customer account. They only need basic information to do this. You'll find the link on the left hand side of the page, "Sign up for case updates" (or just CLICK HERE).

Once you have created an account, you can click the link "add a case to your portfolio" at the bottom of the page. Enter the same receipt number and you will be able to log in easily and access the information.

But the coolest reason to do this is that USCIS now has an email and text alert program that will notify you of any updates with your case. The text alert program is a pilot one, and there might be text messaging fees based on your phone plan.

Certainly a nice feature by USCIS though, so us obsessive types don't have to keep logging in repeatedly. Not sure if you can also add other cases currently in the USCIS system to the same alert system. Someone try it out and let me know!

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UPDATE:  Well, it was a great idea, but I have to give the system a big fat 'F'. When I log in our status still says "initial review" which is the same thing it has said for months. Last week we received our COC via certified mail which means our process is complete. We never received a text message nor has our status ever changed from "initial review". Bummer. Maybe the system works better if you are processing something other than a COC?