The Amazing Family

 

    This week in our class we talked about how the family is studied and some of the more controversial topics of the family. Now I am not going to talk about those controversial topics, but I really enjoyed talking and studying the family and what a family will look like, or how the family looks today. We talked about some of the different families like adopted families, foster families, single parent families’ mismatched or combined families, intact families, mixed racial families. Over many years I have worked with all these types of families. I worked with many of these families. Not only in my professional life but also in my personal life. I am the lucky recipient of 3 amazing, adopted cousins. My uncle and aunt were only able to have one biological child. after many years of just the three of them, my uncle, aunt, and biological child, they decided to become foster parents. After a couple of months, they had the opportunity to house a foster baby. 4 years of heartache and love they finally got to adopt their first foster child! she has been in our family for 11 years now and she has brought us so much joy. Long story short they have had about 5 forester children in their home and 3 of them graduated to becoming adopted and being a part of our forever family. We love those 3 children very much.

    They have had lots of struggles and tears for these children. because of the justice system and rights of the biological parents and family. All three had spent some time with the biological families during their stay with my uncle. I have a love-hate relationship with the justice system. For the first child that my uncle adopted it took them 4 and a half years to get approval for the adoption. When they got the notice for a baby that would be placed in their home, they were met with a newborn baby and they took care of this sweet baby who was struggling with some health issues into their home. They raised her from a baby. I remember the call when they said that she was potentially going back to her mother and grandmother. I was sad and their daughter was sad because she wanted a sibling. Once again long story short she was placed back with my uncle and family and just 4 long years later she was officially adopted and was a permanent member of our family.

    Not only my own personal experience with my family. When I was younger, I went to a day camp all summer long. There were tons of kids coming and going every week. Years later I looked back and saw lots of kids in single-parent homes where just mom was in the picture or just dad was in the picture. But no matter what I never knew who was a part of a normal family and who was not. After I was old enough to become a day camp counselor and work with parents, I got to see the side of the kids I never got to see before. I got to see some of the home life. I got to meet and know the parented on a personal level and get some more info from them. Those years at the day camp taught me how to accept families where they were. After years and years of working with children and families, I learned that my family is AMAZING and that I can learn a lot for other families not only mine.

    Long story short… families come in all shapes and sizes some are big, and some are small but all in all, family is where we can be safe and strong. We need to protect the family so that we keep the families together and have families all around the world.

This is my family this is an older picture but still my family. This picture was taken just a couple of months after my aunt and uncle adopted my sweet cousin( the little one in blue on my grandmothers lap)  this was their first growing family photo after the adoption!