By Anonymous, mother to Meng from China with a small head circumference

Another Side of Disruption

I guess I have a different outlook on disruption. Its a subject that raises great emotion with a lot of families adopting but its one I feel extremely blessed by. You see its through a disruption In China, that we were able to adopt our daughter. She was 23 months old at adoption, and her special need in my opinion listed was a bogus one (small head circumference), that was done with the best intentions. We did know while we were reviewing her file that a disruption had taken place when she was 8 or 9 months old, which then lead to her having to be put on a special need list. We were later told by her SWI at the time of our adoption that they had to list her as special needs but they knew she didn’t have a special need at all. I will forever remember the words of the director when she spoke of the disrupting family as “a family with not a good heart”. It was clear the director loved our daughter and wanted her to have another chance at a family.

We reviewed her file carefully, had a leading international Doctor go over everything with a fine tooth comb and we never had one red flag raised.

We will never know the circumstances for sure of why our daughter was returned to her SWI In China after only a couple days, but what we do know with a 100 percent certainty is that she is our daughter. To this day, and she is 5, she has never been diagnosed with any special needs, no learning disabilities or any thing that would have caused a family to hesitate to adopt her, so I like to think of it as God’s way of making sure she was placed into our family because she couldn’t be any more my child if I had given birth to her.

I would like to encourage any family who is looking at a file of a child who may have been disrupted, to take in account it might have absolutely nothing to do with the child health that has caused the disruption, but maybe more about the family not being prepared to parent a child at the time. Many times I think people have this “Gerber baby” moment in their head and when they are handed a child who is clearly shut down and in shock they panic and feel unable to move ahead. It’s at this time I wish they had some resources in China available to assist them to take a few days to get to know the child, evaluate things and be absolutely sure they want to disrupt. Disruption for us has lead to the child of our dreams, but I know for the family who left her behind they must think and rethink their decision everyday. I do wish they could see her now. She is 5 now, as bright as can be and has a smile that lights a room. She is the most caring and giving of all my children. I have never second guessed a day of adopting her.