Online education

Our agency requires that we each have 10 hours of adoption-related education despite the fact that E-Country is not a Hague country. These can be accomplished by signing up for courses online and it involves reading and taking quizzes to get certificates to satisfy the education requirement. The subjects range from country-specific information to information on attachment & bonding, fetal alcohol syndrome, early childhood stress, etc. I, personally, have spent much time reading over the last year and have completed whole text books on the subjects in far more depth, but I have no certificates for that work, so I have to do this as well. If ever you do this, don't sign up, skim the materials, reading new information in detail and take all the tests in an hour or so....the online course computer red-flags you and your legitimate participation is questioned. I did respond with information that seemed to satisfy the questioner, but I would definitely just wait so that there's no question about the legitimacy of your studies. Now, the challenge is to get my husband through all of the material; it really is important for both parents to be aware of possible issues. He'll be out of town from Friday through Monday, so I don't think much will get done then and we should have this done prior to submitting our dossier in case they will not process without it.

Say a prayer that the rest of our psych evaluation process goes well. I do not have warm fuzzy feelings about the psychologist writing the letter verbatim, etc. It's a bit reminiscent of my medical certification letter - I am hoping not. I was a bit offended by the psychologist when within the first 10 minutes of meeting us he basically said you don't want to adopt an older child because they've been abused and molested, then come over here and do the same thing to others because they don't know any different. So much for picking the "Christian" psych clinic. Luckily we didn't have to get into it with him since we were seeking to adopt younger children. And no, I'm not naiive, I do understand that such issues are possible, but writing all older children off.....and this is a psychologist? a Christian?

We have all dossier docs in hand and will be sending copies via fax to our agency to give feedback on any changes that need to be made - something we can do while we wait to complete the psych process.