For many months, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected and continues to affect every aspect of our lives. It affects how we work, where we eat, how we shop, where we might be able to travel, and how we interact with family and friends.
There seems to be no part of life that COVID-19 has not affected, and that includes families who are wanting to adopt children. Many families have been waiting for years to adopt and the pandemic has presented all sorts of challenges. Adopting a child can be a rewarding and emotional experience for families in the best of times, but a pandemic with stay-at-home orders, school closings, and even travel bans has made the last several months stressful for families wanting to adopt.
It’s estimated that there are well over 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system, who are looking to be loved. For those families wanting to adopt, even during the pandemic, there are many helpful adoption resources for parents and helpful tips to make the adoption process much easier:
Take Steps To Control Anxiety
For parents of newly adopted children in a pandemic, it’s important to remember that there are lots of ways that you and your child might feel anxious. After all, with so much changing all the time, it’s sometimes hard to know what to expect from one day to one day to the next.
As a parent, it’s important to remember that a child’s reaction to a pandemic can vary. With the normal structure of going to school or seeing familiar faces like teachers, kids can grow irritable or clingy. They may have trouble developing routines at home too. The best thing you can do is to be patient and to show empathy.
But it’s easy for parents to become overwhelmed too and thankfully there are many adoption resources for parents available. Helpful resources can give you tips for staying calm, such as limiting media exposure, and reducing your risk of anxiety by washing your hands, and getting enough sleep.
Get Your Home In Order
As a parent of a newly adopted child, there are any number of things you can do to make the most of the time you have a home with your little one.
If you’re welcoming a child into your home, there’s never been a better time to throw yourself into some home improvement projects. You don’t have to renovate your entire home, but with a little bit of know-how and elbow grease, you can transform your home into a welcome one where your new member of the family feels loved and comfortable.
So what do you need to do? It might be a good idea to have local home builders come by and do a home inspection. They can look at everything from your roof, to your foundation, to your basement, just to make sure you’re providing a comfortable home for your child.
It might also be a good idea to prepare your child his or her own room and bedroom. Depending on your ideas for bedroom design, there are many kinds of adjustable beds available to buy that will give your child a cozy place to lay their head at night. If your child’s room has a bathroom attached, you can do some easy bathroom renovation by painting the walls, updating the décor, or letting your child pick a theme to decorate the bathroom.
Allow For Social Interaction
During the pandemic we’ve all becoming familiar with terms like social distancing. But social distancing doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t mean, social isolation. Even if you and your newly adopted child are spending a lot of time together at home because of the pandemic, you should take steps to allow them chances to interact.
Children of all ages crave interaction and attention. If you’re looking for ways for your child to interact with other people, there are lots of helpful adoption resources for parents that can offer ways of doing just that. Your child can meet members of your extended family by writing letters, sending emails, and even doing online video chats on apps like Zoom.
If you have a young child and they’re tech-savvy, one way to keep them connected to family is through social media apps. Programs like Zoom are great for longer video chats, but apps like Facebook Messenger, Tik Tok, and even Snapchat are great ways to send fun, short messages back and forth.
Keep in mind too that interaction isn’t limited to just social interaction either. If you’re looking for ways to keep your child entertained and educated during the pandemic, there are a great many adoption resources for parents that allow for some creative interactions. Many museums around the world for example, offer virtual tours that offer a fun way for your child to learn about history and art. There are also many interactive learning sites that allow children to master basic concepts in math, reading, and science among other subjects.
Don’t Neglect Wellness Appointments
Trying to make and keep any kind of wellness appointments during the pandemic has proven challenging for some people. But if you’ve got a newly adopted child in the family, especially a younger child, it’s important that you try to make appointments for them and keep them.
Everyone wants to make sure their child is healthy and if you make wellness appointments, take the necessary steps to keep yourself and your child safe. Carry sanitizer with you and always remember to wear a mask. If you as the parent lead by example and wear a mask, your youngster will eager to follow your lead.
If you’re wondering where to start with wellness appointments, get your child into see a pediatrician for general wellness, and in to see a specialist in pediatric dentistry, to make sure your child’s teeth are clean. If you’re not feeling great about taking your child out in public for check-ups and appointments, you can always try telemedicine appointments. Still another option is to use adoption resources for parents to track their child’s health progress. You may not be a doctor, but these resources can give you tips on home remedies for sickness and signs to watch for if your child isn’t feeling well.
If you’re going to be scheduling wellness appointments, you need to make sure you have good health insurance. If that’s on your to-do list, check around your local area and talk to different health insurance brokers. Ultimately, you want a plan that works for you and your family, and ensures that your child can get the care they need when they need it. Health insurance brokers can present you with different plans, so that you can pick the one that works best for you.
Create Routines
One of the best ways that adoption resources for parents can come in handy is setting a routine for your child during the pandemic. With so much going on, especially if you’ve recently adopted a child, it can be hard to find a routine that works for everyone in the home. The best thing you can do is create a home environment that relies on routine, regulation, and reassurance.
No matter what age your child is, you need to reassure them that their new home is a safe, comfortable, place of love. By creating a routine—regular mealtimes, regular bedtimes, time each day for learning, and time each day for play—your child will become used to their new environment, and their trust in you will grow stronger. Children thrive on routine, so if you give them a regular routine, you’ll help stimulate their physical and mental growth.
Get Creative
As any parent will tell you, there’s no handbook that tells you about the perfect way to parent a child. That’s true of both biological and adopted children, and it’s especially true during a pandemic. The last several months have thrown countless families for a loop, and parents everywhere have had to adjust to having their kids at home for extended periods of time.
With so many helpful adoption resources for parents, one of the best things parents can do with their adopted child at home is to get creative. If you’re looking for ways to educate your child, look into online resources that teach your children all the essential subjects in fun and interactive ways. If you’re looking to get them away from the computer for a bit, try to find real world ways to apply the things they might be learning about in school.
Getting creative also means finding new and fun things to do outside of school work. It’s easy to plop down and play video games and watch Netflix with your child, but that can sometimes get old. So what can you do? Let your imagination go to work. If you have a young child, dress up in costumes and make up characters for yourselves. If you’re looking for bonding experiences, try building puzzles or playing board games. If you want your child to learn of their new extended family, pull out some photo albums and regale them with stories from your childhood, and about your relatives.
Any parent knows it’s hard to keep a child focused at times, and entertained at others. But if you’ve got a creative mind, there’s never been a better time to get the juices flowing.
Seek Legal Help
Of all the adoption resources for parents, one of the most helpful if you’re looking to adopt is an adoption attorney. From start to finish, the adoption process is guided by all kinds of regulations and guidelines, and everything must be done the right way.
It sounds stressful, but that’s what adoption attorneys are for. If adoption is something you’ve always wanted to do, an experienced attorney can guide you through the entire legal process. For all the complicated stuff, a family law attorney is there to help. If you’re looking to simplify the adoption process, some family lawyers can guide the entire process from start to finish. In this way, this is almost an independent adoption.
What else can an adoption attorney do? Since they’re well-versed in family law, they can almost be thought of as child custody attorneys when it comes to adoption. Many law firms that deal with adoption cases specialize in both independent adoptions as well as traditional adoptions by relatives. These attorneys can sometimes also provide services such as overseeing living expenses and helping a family locate a child’s birth parents. At the end of it, an adoption attorney will make sure no step is overlooked, and that custody of a child is firmly established by the adoption.
Don’t Be Afraid To Seek Help
If you’re considering adopting through an adoption service, one of the best adoption resources for parents are friends or acquaintances who have gone through the adoption process. They’ll be able to offer plenty of good advice and helpful tips you can use as you navigate the adoption process.
Even with so many adoption resources for parents, particularly online, you also should not be afraid to ask for help if you’re the parent of a newly adopted child. Pandemic or no pandemic, it can sometimes be difficult for a child to adjust to their new normal. If you notice that your child shows a pattern of emotional or behavioral concerns, don’t be afraid to seek out the services of a mental health professional. In most cases, you can do telehealth appointments, so that professionals can help you and your child become more comfortable and trusting.
Take It One Day At A Time
Adoption can be one of the most rewarding events in life that a family and a child experiences. While there isn’t a handbook with all the perfect answers, there are plenty of adoption resources for parents as they grow their new families.
By consulting with family lawyers through the adoption process, you’ll be sure that no stone goes unturned as you adopt your child. Once all the I’s have been dotted, you can take time to make changes to your home to accommodate a child and do all that you can to make them comfortable, loved, and excited to begin the next phase of life.