When a long-waiting couple opened their hearts to a boy, their assignment from Holt International came quickly.
Excerpts from the blog of Lisa Ronda
We started out our adoption process only open to a girl, as young and healthy as possible. So to end our adoption with a boy who was 2 1/2 years old with a minor sp
ecial need was sort of our “surprise” ending.
We were just over two years into our adoption when we decided to talk with Kris Bales, our Holt social worker, and just learn a little more about adopting a child with minor healthcare conditions, now known as the China Child of Promise Option. We figured asking a few questions couldn’t hurt anything.
Kris mentioned that if we were open to a boy, we might be matched more quickly, as most families in the program were not open to boy adoptions. We knew that we would be adopting a second child from China as soon as we finished our first adoption. So we decided if we were matched with a boy this time, we could always request a match with a girl next time.
We opened up the age range to include 2 years and under, boy or girl with minor healthcare needs. Within several weeks we were presented with Zhao Jian Hui, now named Aaron. His healthcare need was unfamiliar to us, but after discussing his medical records with our pediatrician, we felt that it was within the scope of what we were able to take care of.
Aaron’s medical condition was completely corrected with a minor surgery. He is wonderful and very healthy. We feel so blessed to have been matched with him and are so thankful that God placed it in our hearts to open our match criteria when He did, so that Aaron could be brought into our family!
Aaron is our second son, and Josiah, who is biological, is older. Their bond was slow to develop; but after they had a little time to work through some “turf” issues, they have become the best of friends. They are 12 months apart and share June birthdays.
Curiosity About Boys
We get a lot of interesting comments from friends, family and strangers about adopting a boy from China. We hear things like, “It must be hard to get a boy from China!” “How did you get a boy out of China?” “I didn’t know you could adopt a boy from China.” “You’re really lucky to get a boy from China.”
To that I say, “Yes, we were!”
Because families adopting from China have so little background informatio
n on their children, it’s hard to put a story together for their child about how he or she came to be a part of the family.
I suppose it’s a little easier to explain to a girl from China about the family planning policies and the economic situation elderly parents are in if they don’t have a son to care for them, etc. You can create some “pat answers” based on Chinese culture and customs and guess why parents who loved their baby enough to choose life for them, were faced with such a painful decision to find parents for a child that they were unable to raise in a system that doesn’t allow them to make an adoption plan legally. I struggled with how we would handle those types of questions someday for a boy who was adopted from China since there is such a strong stereotype about Chinese boys being wanted with the girls being unwanted.
I still don’t have any really easy answers to those tough questions that might come someday, but I know that Aaron’s birth mother loved him enough to choose birth over abortion. She left a sweet note with him that read, “Poor son was born on June 17, 2005. We can’t afford to raise him. We hope some kind-hearted people could adopt him. Thanks a lot!”
She also chose a very safe, beautiful place for him to be found so that he could be placed into an adopted family. These are all things we are thankful for even though there are so many pieces to his story that will remain unknown.
He was found in the brushwood near a pavilion in a beautiful park on West Lake. Because he was found in the grasses of a park on the water, we immediately thought of baby Moses, who was adopted into a family of another culture and used mightily by God. It is our prayer that Aaron will identify not only with his Chinese past and our family, but also with God’s forever family.
Thanks for sharing your story! We can relate since we are adopting a little boy from India…also not the norm. May the Lord continue to bless your family.
Candice
thanks we now have 6 boys and the last 2 we adopted from China. We also have 2 Chinese daughters who joined our bio daughter. All ours from China had special needs. Boys are great , little louder, more dirt involved, and noisy sometime. However I find them easier then my girls somedays! Probably why I have 6 of them!
We too are “lucky to get a boy home from China” who joined us in 2005. He was our first child, so we figured, why not a boy. We were open to either gender, but assumed that we would be bringing home a daughter from China. He was born with a minor and correctable special need and has been such blessing to us. Thank you for sharing your story and I hope that more families will open their hearts to the PURE JOY that raising a son brings.
Our lives have been blessed with 4 beautiful children from China. We have two girls and TWO BOYS!!! We too get the questions as to how did you get a boy…. Our boys came to us at ages 3 and 3 1/2 years old. I cannot tell you how fast they adapted to being in a large family. Our home is full of love. We would encourage all couples to consider not only a boy, but an older child!!
Thank you for this beautiful story. We have been matched with a 5 yr old son with minor special needs from China. for us it wasn’t a question of boy or girl, just as long as the child was over 2 yrs and needed us. He should join our family of 4 boys and 2 girls this summer. We are very excited. Good luck to you, and congratulations. It takes special people to open their hearts to special children.
Thank you for your beautiful story. We currently have two bio. girls and adoption has recently been a God-given desire of ours. I feel we are being led to a boy, not sure where yet, but it scares me a little because I wonder, after two girls, if I could handle raising a boy. Your story and the other readers comments remind me that if God says I can, than I know I can.
Hi,
I do find it strange that you would focus on how “lucky” you were to get a boy from china, considering how they treat girls. I think we all need to have a little more heart towards what is happening to girls. I think there are sometimes cultural preferences towards boys for wanting them for reasons of financial and economic reasons, but also we have to consider that focusing on sons is just another part of the total pattern of male domination. Women are the ones who bring life into this world!! And men cannot compete with that, so especially in patriarchal societies, they are abusive to women giving birth to girls. The only way men can make childbirth about THEM is to focus on the gender of the child. If they couldn’t focus on gender they would simply have to honor woman as life-givers. Some men feel inferior to women because women play a larger role in continuing the life cycle, and compensate by focusing on the product rather than the process of life-giving, where they play a lesser role in procreation.
With that said, most adoptions are of girls nowdays, and many cultures such as Japan now have a girl preference. I think women are just becoming more vocal about what they want, especially if THEY are the ones bringing the life into the world. They deserve that respect.
But please be cautious about how we speak about baby girls and with more empathy. There are many women (and men) out there who feel they would be so “lucky” to have a girl.