Kids in the River

Imagine that you and I are walking along a river on a lovely warm and sunny spring day. We are admiring the view over the river. Suddenly, we see something moving in the water and are horrified to realize that it appears to be a baby or a young child. We throw off shoes and jackets and plunge into the water to pull the child out or – if we are physically incapable of doing that – we shout and wave for help and call frantically on our cell phones.

The baby is pulled from the water and is, thankfully, alive. We comfort the child, hold him close to warm him, speak soothingly to him. By now, quite a crowd has gathered due to the commotion and we make way for the emergency medical team, which arrives and begins tending to the child.

Suddenly someone in the crowd shouts and points toward the water. We all look and can’t believe our eyes as we see four more – no – five children being carried along by the current! More people go into the river to pull them out. More cell phones call 911. More emergency vehicles arrive. But even as we pull children to the shore, we glimpse more coming down the river—and more and more.

After awhile, a couple of us, maybe it’s you and I, detach from the crowd on the riverbank and begin walking quickly upstream to try and learn what catastrophe could have occurred up there to cause so many beautiful children to be in the river and in such great peril. We think that maybe we can help. Maybe we can stop kids from falling in the water.

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This is obviously an analogy for our child welfare system. Some of us working in the system are posted on the riverbank to pull the kids out and to safety. These are the child protective services and foster care and adoption caseworkers. Others of us have gone upstream to try and stem the flow of children and keep as many as we can out of the river entirely. These are the administrators and program managers and policy people.

But some children end up in the river anyway and then we all try to do out best to ameliorate their experience while in the water – to see that their time in the water be as brief as possible – to get them into a permanent loving family as soon as possible – the place they will stay in and grow up. This family will know that the trauma of having been adrift in the river took a toll on the child. This family will know they have to spend a lot of time warming and soothing and holding the child so that maybe, one day, he will be able to feel safe again and believe that he is secure.

Not one of us, as we see the children in the river and begin pulling them toward shore, would stop and ask the child his age and inquire whether or not he wanted to be pulled out of the water. Not one of us, upon seeing that the child was a young teenager, would loosen our grip on him and let him float on saying to ourselves, “He’s really too old. He’s been in the water a long time already.”

We presume that this river of ours crosses many state and country boundaries on its travels. Not one of us would stop and inquire which state or country the child was from before bringing him to safety. We would just understand the crisis and jump in. No divisions or barriers or hurdles – very simple: child in the river; pull child to safety!

We who are adoptive parents often speak of our belief that this child who became mine was meant to do so. It seems like such a miracle to us that out of all the children out there waiting for parents and out of all the parents waiting for children, this particular child and I found each other and became a family! We know there is luck involved and timing and a lot of other amorphous factors but it still amazes us how it all came together to make us a family.

We who are adoptive parents know that the children who are waiting for families right now could have been our children so we cannot turn away or write them off. We can’t leave them in the river to just float on by. After all, our kids were there once and we know what that’s like. We also know that we can’t adopt all of them! But we sure can make a commotion and get others to the riverbank to become involved. We know that these kids could have been our children and so we accept the responsibility to see that they become somebody’s children.

AdoptUSKids is up there at the head of the river. We trust others to do the job of keeping as many kids out of the river as possible. We focus on the ones already in the water and waiting for a hand to pull them to shore. There are currently 130,000 American kids waiting. The children need good, dedicated and savvy caseworkers standing on the riverbank to pull them out of the water and then they need educated and wise foster and adoptive families to receive the child from his or her caseworker, take his or her hand and walk him or her home – away from the river for good.

Barbara Holtan Reprinted from Fostering Families Today - Spring 2003

Barbara Holtan is the Executive Director of The Adoption Exchange Association and the Project Director for The Collaboration to AdoptUSKids