You should stay at home as much as possible so you don’t miss any phone calls. If you must leave the house, do so only for short periods of time. Many social workers will go to the next name and phone number on their placement list, rather than leave you a message or try your alternate phone number. This is especially true if the potential placement happens to be an infant with very few special needs, whom they can easily place.

It is imperative for you to have a cell phone, and never turn it off. Give your home number and cell phone number to every adoption worker and protective service worker you know. Make sure your home answering machine message includes your cell phone number.

Refuse to go anywhere that is more than an hour from your house. That way, if protective service calls you with a placement, you won’t have to refuse because you will have time to get back home. Never take extended vacations out of your state or out of your country, because Murphy’s Law would indicate that this is when protective service would call you with the perfect placement.

Accept every child protective service offers you, and then they will know where you live and who you are. However, make sure you tell them each time what type of child you would really like placed with you.

Attend all trainings offered by your agency and attend all of their support group meetings. In fact, this can be your new weekly date night so you won’t have to decide what to do on dates anymore. This will show the workers how serious you are about adoption.

Exchange phone numbers with the other foster and adoptive parents in attendance at the meetings because these are your new friends. Be sure to tell all of them what type of child you are looking for, and then if they get a call for a child they aren’t interested in, they can refer the caller to you.

Wait patiently for 12 years for your “dreamed of” child. During this time parent at least 100 other children, most of whom moved on for various reasons. Finally come to the realization that your “dreamed of” child isn’t coming through foster care.

Now you are in your 40s and have 10 children through the blessing of foster care and older child adoption. Therefore, it is the perfect time to go ahead and pay thousands of dollars for a newborn through private adoption. Everyone you know now believes you are completely crazy, and your “dreamed of” infant is best friends with your grandchildren.

Suggested topics
Hoping to adopt?
Read more about foster care adoptions.
Read more about foster care.
Read more on older child adoption
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