actually provide education advocacy training and support to families about topics to meet the adoption experience that a group includes parents of adopted children of all ages and races domestically and internationally children placed wit here in our role in the community has really changed over the years obviously as child welfare and child protection has come under that umbrella of the state agency and so we still are mission it's a kind marilee what we do and it importance all of our programs if one of many programs at th joint agencies helps for further our adoption program that is kind of partnered with them as he said with a pretty rapid has also kind of changed over the years we used to be a domestic private if an adoption program for about fifteen years or so and then as of a couple years ago that program ended and now most of our work on going is with the department children and family support supporting d c s public adoptions across the state while also just remaining connected to the  across the state so that's a little bit of our kind of background of our age amity and lou two f fifteen and of itself started out as a parent run organization of adoptive families who wanted to connect with other adoptive families share experiences  they have kind of a presence across multiple states right now from pretty much all around massachusetts although we do have a list server that is very active that still has numbers that are international so we try to keep that going b adoption has become more prevalent and there are many families around the state who have been touched by adoption or adoptive families so has the increase of services that have been here towards adoptive families so we're one organization that provide services and we feel really fortunate that so before we move along we think it would be helpful so we came in talking with any to talk about how to have more typical adoption related conversations and part of that there we have spoken about this h to help kids answer questions about their own adoptions how to help families identify what their stories are to be what they're going to answer questions from others about their adoption experience but we want to talk about it that's what's most interesting to you  or have a direct family connection to adoption would you just let us know and if you're an educator ok so we're hoping to do a little bit of a mix of like foundational information just to kind of lead us into the terms of what our panelists have found have been helpful in terms of having difficulty that option conversations but they really want to hear from you guys in terms of other topics that might be helpful to you that we can use our reporting so again they did not make for having us talk about you know choosing a family and making a solitary now there's a lot of questions about whether or not it's actually voluntary because there's a lot of circumstances and women's lives i come up to kind of make them feel like they may have to do this either they don't have family but i can speak to the fact that he is much more complicated the rules are more about the kid you may have heard a lot of news over the past ten years or so about countries that are closing their doors to coming from other countries so they're kind of baseline in being removed from their culture and language their family all of those pieces and be locked into a totally different world basically and having to deal with not only the circumstances to parents often come to this process feel lost because they may have got her into a little trouble some haven't but many have and so there's a lot of them come from not being able to have a biological child and kind of the grief that adoption don't know as much it's kind of a good foundation to understand those topics and is the i think a lot of times if you don't have a lot of experience with adoption it's pretty easy to go oh no it's great that you were dropped and in fact family  the just important to remember that it's not always this kind of like happy life time we experience it can be a wonderful experience i feel it but but there's some of these other pieces that go along with that that make it a little bit more difficult the lack of a better term and we've seen other programs throughout the state closed well so that was surprising to me but that's remained steady kind of in the eighteen thousand and change range for about the last ten years  whereas i think for a long time there was this you know i keep referencing lifetime movies but this is like i believe you that like these kids were all going to come to your house and you know killing them you dog run away and all of that it's just not a case environment it does change in terms of prevalence and how many kids maybe like them in the school environment and other kids who may not know anything about the story thank you very helpful to recognizing that when i come to this with a professional lens and that's principal in the city schools and i'm definitely a million kids in care before but this was just an interesting perspective from the other side and we were just really speaking with her and we started talking about building our so we went to the disclosure meeting and social worker said you know these kids have been through a couple of transitions and i honestly don't think they can be good for another one that's not permit so we're not even going to let you sit yesterday you have to go home and think about it disclosure meeting is like the last meeting where they basically share everything about their record and so this is for sure everything that she knew about them and we're really fortunate they had a really great social worker who like bringing your traumatized toddler was the best thing for that and we wanted to do it and we were ready for it we knew what it was like the first year you bring a kid home and i know folks in the room have experienced this i know that some of us do it was first of all we did it we showed up for the social worker not us and said the government say read it six weeks before we had public option which was free but they were you know we would go six weeks without a phone call and the next morning i was in the papers for the meeting that i was running over and got a plane to go tell a rental car and by that evening i was in georgia in a hospital room  cited his birth mom it was a different kind of hard experience than the experience we have originally and she had her family there there was a social worker there there was no one and luckily i had been in d c s situation and this actually almost turned into a d c l situation because she wasn't sure what to do and when they took her home from the hospital they said to her you know we can't actually bring the baby back really tell the whole story everywhere and so people like me will look but just that we talk about our family and circumstances and straight forward with no shame i think that sort of thing that could to my head if we're talking the other person but our kids are watching us the family connections and share them with us so we actually met with the maternal grandmother ourselves that she's actually never met the kids and i don't know that would be a good idea but i think it's a nice connection we have that we can tell stories and their birth parents are not in a place to see them and we could find them if we wanted to but we're not but we did find there are two older sisters who are now twenty two year old twenty two or twenty i think and loving and just i think it's been as good for them as it is for our kids and we've connected them so we've reached out and we're pretty careful about it honestly i don't know our address we meet and places that i can be here for them we have their phone numbers and facebook  and we see them a few times a year and i think it's fantastic for both for all the kids that we want to support that connection until our kids are old enough to sort of commit those decisions for themselves but i think it's  and in the process at the time i was it wasn't it wasn't that it was a private adoption it was an agency that did international adoption and i wanted to at the time give back something to and so that was my son and he was in an orphanage in india and up to him when he was four and a half years old so it was hard in the sense because as you can imagine a child who has been taken from his home is  an orphanage for that amount of time he had a lot of developmental issues  english there were really a lot of difficulties and also india is just a very it's kind of a difficult country in the sense that all his medical records were wrong things is medical records like they would tell me while he has good and the big brewer was basically saying things like he was left at the school six months or nine months and so there was like no information or all of the name of the and other doctors parents and hearing what they were going through and so i have to say i thought it was so helpful to just happen to have for me and it was and helped me more than i think and they know i think all the we like you said you were families in new york city also one thing that i have kind of struggled with is that i am kind of a more open person like i like to share stuff and everything and my son hates share anything about adoption experience he wouldn't  like you know america it's you know some of it and i think what i've learned over the years is that a lot of times when people do they are crazy questions that they are coming usually from place of curiosity they don't know a lot of adoption they hear all these m and these are conspirators on t v in other ways and they want to you know try to get more sensitive and learn about it you know so so i tried now before i think i was i was really turned up by people question your mother actually but now i feel like i'm more like well if they're coming from place for the mom learned about it then more willing to like you know talk about it share except when i'm with my son so we've talked a lot in my son about it like you know since we're totally different way to have these conversations with kids i think it's very specific to the family it's very specific to the kid how to how difficult conversations one adoption can have any kind of conversation about adoption and so one of the things that we do and they do here that got these guys mention the support groups which is a lot of what we do we try not to trainings as well in the why is that training is really adapted from the center for adoption support and education the case institute and it's it stands for you know the wise up does stand for the four techniques that kids information with them or do i want to keep this private like who are you to us like you have to make these kind of split second choices all the time about what you want to how you want to answer questions that may be very benign people are just curiosity maybe hurtful but because this person can handle me and this person could handle me and this person could handle me and so are you gonna do the same thing and i don't think i was conscious i guess because of the name and so throughout the hero psych we've had lots of times where things about how they were just trying to help but i think in terms of communicating i've found that when the emotion is not it's actually not a good time to communicate so we don't ever process in that moment and i actually try to say as little as possible and there are even times where i know something has happened that's going to cause an explosion and so we won't talk about it for bully and i it i know you're really upset right now i know that because this is blah blah blah blah you know it's i want to help you but you can't do these three things or ever here's another idea or write me back and that actually happened i was wondering what do you remember you were thinking when that happened like yours that i was thinking or just trying to find a calmer moment it's not always successful for sure we make mistakes all the time but not doing it in the moment and crossing  all come out i try i really agree with both you guys that you know it's that moment you know because my son because of watching her you know as well i think and i don't know if it's like we're turning at this other complicating factor and so not only do they have more things to lay on you when they are going through a typical teenage developmental and heat you you're not my real mom that's another layer that they get to add on to the other kids don't is that about their adoption or is that about them a graph that goes through each stages of the development of a child with an add on the adoption pieces things to consider in turn that time as well because it's so hard to pick apart which which it is and what is it do they need to be needed tension to this specific issue that may be bringing up concept it's a lost it's not like debra somebody who says you know god hates this lot of these other people for a family who are out there somewhere in the world that they may or may not have a connection to or may or may not have a connection with and so i think with some of these kids actually said you know it's hard to kind of frame differentiate whether it's the adoption piece for the just kind of normal development he's but there is this kind of other just like anger of the world are kind of like actions and i think another layer and bubbling up at times you can either dissipate can't you know you know something you know to be the triggers for certain children what are going to be the topics what are going to be the things that maybe bring up feelings for get the offshoot of it because kids like to do their parents but and you mention that you know that you are a safe person for her and i think that that's a strange yes that you that kids that have to feel pressured to conform to or not and then feel different if they don't and especially with labels which can be so hard for kids especially it's more adopted him to come into their adoptive families later in life to ha and so for example will has a lot of shame about being called out but the way that that shows i'm going to reject you before you reject me and so will not say like oh i'm so sorry i was doing that and that she thinks that the government son to see that you know kind of really believing in the children even if they are some kind of you know disability and you know i was in the boston public schools and she was unique i think so many people don't have you know anybody level and i think there's kind of a lack of understanding across the board if you don't have any experience of adoption or you know anybody that you know that was adopted or adopted you know i think that there's just a lack of knowing what you don't know and this thesis and so they just don't even realize that it could be you should never be an issue that comes out by being proactive and have just made sure that if they're and but i think it is his coming around to that because we were sitting with a friend it wasn't me saying anything but we came back to that story that you know he was up at school  you're his friend but my friend told him that you know she said all that means they really care about you because that's a safe haven and then i started listening to that and he was like it really meant something  so i can imagine but you know we feel like we do like something every year we have like evidence like she really cared about you she tried she can't sign up for different programs and she kept trying to do with the children zoom and you know that it's just and like cared for and to us but they couldn't tell us some of the stories out there for parents really care about them but also that they are kind of more angry with her parents it's kind of good for them from younger kids to see that look and i also try to be as honest as i as i can you know like and try to answer his questions as best as i can but also say when i don't know like i just don't know you know i'm trying to support him but he does plan to because he does there that might just i just signal the fact that this is an open the conversation that they can pursue when they want to do that you know this is not what you said he buys them for but those little nuggets feel more manageable and thinking about how to have a bigger heavier more involved