Home Study - Round 1

Our first official home study meeting last week went pretty darned well. Our meeting lasted for about an hour and wasn't as bad as I had imagined it. We mainly went over paperwork. I mean LOTS of paperwork. (Just imagine all the trees that could be saved if adoptions were paperless!) I know it's likely that we'll encounter much more personal and difficult home study visits down the road, but right now we are happy that we have one under our belts.

At this visit we mainly filled out lots of forms and started checking off things from our very long to-do list. Sign up for on-line parenting classes. Check. Give access to our personal information. Check. Give access for our photos to be taken at Lifelink events. Check. Begin our criminal history check. Apply for foster care licensing. Check. You get the idea.

It's a pretty daunting thing--meeting with someone who can determine if you should be approved for parenthood. They have access to something we want, which means the ball is in their court. I feel like I'm a puppy on display in a shop window. "Please pick me! I'll be good!"

We turned in this 16-page novella for our self-study where we share details of how we grew up, our parent's parenting styles, information about how we met and our marriage, and other stuff like that. Some of the questions felt invasive, like this one: "describe your sex life." Do they REALLY need to know about that?

Others were a bit tricky to answer because we are being judged by our answers. Take the question "where do you think you might need help in parenting?" If we say that we think we'll need help in learning to be patient, will they think we are angry mean ogres? While we answered all of the questions truthfully, we scrutinized each one, fearful that it could be taken out of context and give someone the wrong idea about us.

There were a few questions that J asked us that we hadn't thought about. She asked what our family name would be. My last name is hyphenated, using both my married and maiden name. It wasn't a huge question, but one that we really hadn't discussed. I guess there will likely be many more questions that we haven't previously discussed. Fortunately Scott and I are on the same page about most things and are good about discussing the things that we aren't.

We stopped the interview right before the questions started getting really deep. The next on her list (Scott has good eyes!) was "how do you think adoption will change your lives."

Hmm. More on that later.