Scott Walters Exploring Stuff

Here’s an interesting debate piece on Celebrity Adoption (Madonna again) from the NY Times.

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/celebrity-adoptions-and-the-real-world/?ref=world

Always interesting to read what others think of adoption, have a look at the comments and you’ll see the typical stuff about the kids should stay in their own culture, only children who have no living relatives should be adopted overseas etc.

From my perspective, with 3 children who joined my family through international adoption, I am so grateful that God saw fit to put my kids with my wife and myself.

Thirty-five years ago there were almost 10,000 adoptions in Australia. Last year there were just 568.

The vast majority of children adopted last financial year – 71 per cent – came from overseas. Most were Asian – 31 per cent came from China, 20 per cent from South Korea and 11 per cent from the Philippines.

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/adoption-rate-in-free-fall-20090407-9ytr.html

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• The adoption travel experience (gadling.com)

Here’s a great article from Canada on international adoption, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090317.wlAdoption0317/BNStory/lifeFamily and in particular sibling group adoption which my wife and I are currently working through.

Even more interesting is to read people response to the article. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090317.wlAdoption0317/CommentStory/lifeFamily#comments where you get to see how the “politically correct” people think they have the right to tell parents how to raise their adopted kids.

We’re about to embark on another road trip with my 5 and a half year old daughter and the usual issue is how do you keep us all interested in a 12 hour trip from Sydney to Queensland. Searching around the net I found a very interesting website http://www.kiddierecords.com/ which has some historical dramatic audio plays for kids. For us, things like 12 dancing princesses, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella etc are extremely good for a long trip as even we poor unimaginative adults can get into the stories.

Anyhow, worthy of a checkout.

Another that I haven’t had a close look at yet but looks promising is http://www.artsreformation.com/records/ which is vinyl records for kids from the 50’s and 60’s.

By DAVID CRARY Associated Press Published on: 12/07/07

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/living/stories/2007/12/07/adoptions_1208.html

Apparently adoption rates in the US are in decline. See article.

Figures for the 2007 fiscal year, recently released by the State Department, showed that adoptions from abroad have fallen to 19,411, down about 15 percent in just the past two years.

It’s a dramatic change. The number of foreign adoptions had more than tripled since the early 1990s, reaching a peak of 22,884 in 2004 before dipping slightly in 2005, then falling to 20,679 in 2006.

http://ninemsn.video.msn.com/v/en-au/v.htm?g=c8f0ec3b-4e42-45e5-8995-2ccf7969081d&f=39&fg=copy

Positive adoption story from Australia’s 60 Minutes. This looks at a family 18 months after adoption and back to the day the family met.

Philippines Travel Guide – Philippines Vacations – VirtualTourist.com

This appears to be some good background info on the Philippines. One of my problems has always been to find info that I could use for a short break.

Check it out.

Adopting across cultures results in transracial families who need to deal with racism, adoption and other issues. A good article from Karris Golden from thelutheran.org on the topic.

Adopting across cultures

Yet another video about adoption. This is a Steven Curtis Chapman song “all I really want for Christmas” that will make you catch your breath if you are involved in adoption. See it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0kA8QSGL2E
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0kA8QSGL2E[/youtube]

I love this video by Stephen Curtis Chapman.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=demRHgul2Zk[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=demRHgul2Zk