Like Dandelion Dust...

Normally, I can watch a television movie and not be so emotionally affected by it that it changes my day, but this is not the case with the film, Like Dandelion Dust.  I held Katie a little closer when she woke up from her rest time/nap because it just further reinforced how much I love her and want nothing but the best for her.  The movie came on at some point in the last few days on Lifetime Movie Network and I DVR movies sometimes for later use.  It was a cold, snowy, movie kind of day.  So when Katie took a small nap today, I was able to watch this...and I cried....no, I bawled like a baby!!!

The film is about two adoptive parents and a son, living an idyllic lifestyle in a nice home with their son.  The birth mother in this, fictional story, based off several REAL events, had an abusive relationship with the child's birth father.  He went to prison for beating her and breaking her arm.  He had issues with alcoholism.  This isn't the best environment to raise a child and I think we can all agree to that.  In the movie, the birth mother forged the birth father's signature on the adoption papers because she wanted to give the baby up for adoption and nothing further was done.  Fast forward seven years and the child is six years old, birth father gets out of jail and birth mother and birth father reunite.  She tells him about the child she gave up and he vows to "make it right," and get the child back.  The movie details the fight and how NONE of the courts were on the adoptive parents' side, but they were ALL for the bio-parents (who, by the way, LIED in court in front of the judge about how the birth father's signature was forged).  They ultimately gave the child back to the bio-parents and gave three visits to "acclimate" him to the fact that he was going to lose the only parents he has ever known...and go to a different world, with strangers who called themselves his "parents."

The visits happen and on the second visit the child is returned to his adoptive parents with bruises indicative of child abuse.  He even told the adoptive parents how it happened in great detail.  They attempt to contact the authorities and no one listens....so they run! They took a "mission" trip with the adoptive mothers' sister and are eventually caught in Haiti.  In the end, the adoptive parents' DO get the child permanently BUT only because the birth mother realizes that the birth father isn't ready to be a parent.  She signs her rights and the social worker witnesses the birth father sign his rights away at that time.  

Okay, I don't know about you, but I see problems with this.  Firstly, how in the world can a document which terminates parental rights NOT be notarized?  I think we did that a zillion times with our adoption documents.  Next, aren't the courts and the social workers supposed to PROTECT the best interests of the child?  If so, then how in the world could they say ripping a little six-year old boy from the only parents he has ever known, the best interests of the child?  The mere fact that there were apparently some cases in Ohio that forced the judge's hand when adoption documents were forged, should not ALONE lead to a child being ripped and returned to the bio-parents.  

I am glad, in this respect, that we did an international adoption.  Given the geographic distance, the fact that our little girl was abandoned and there was no reportable address for the birth mother when the police went to look for her because she deserted our child at the hospital after giving birth pretty much insures that no one is going to come take her away.  But honestly, as we research and look into adopting again, I have to say this is the one thing that scares us the most....having a child in our home or even entering into a "situation," and losing that child either because the birth mother changes her mind or because she decides to parent.  I know it is a big decision to write a birth plan that is adoption, but it is scary to lose a child, no matter how you put it.