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I would highly recommend all perspective adoptive families to have a conversation about what special needs they may or may not be willing to handle very early on in their adoption. While there are some parents who decide that they are only open to a “healthy” child, or one without any known health conditions or needs, there are also parents that purposefully choose to adopt children with known health conditions.

“Special needs” can be anything from a minor physical disability such as a missing finger, to an infectious disease such as Hepatitis B or HIV, to conditions such as Down Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy. There are many children that have minor heart defects diagnosed (some requiring surgery, some that resolve on their own as the child grows) and there are many children that suffer from cleft lips and palates. There are children with vision impairments, hearing impairments, significant limb differences and countless other “special needs", both big and small.

There is a huge need for more adoptive parents for special needs children, and yet it is a decision that should only be made after research, education and careful consideration.

There are also issues that are likely to affect many internationally adopted children. Issues such as malnutrition and general developmental delay (very common in kids in orphanages) are often not considered special needs, and are things that all adoptive parents adopting internationally should be aware of and educated about.

It is also important to remember that children in other parts of the world often get very sick and occasionally do die. It is not overly common, but with both agencies that we have used to adopt from Ethiopia, there have been one or more babies in the past year that have died in between referral and when the adoptive parents would have traveled. I personally know several families with children (some with known special needs, and some who were “healthy” babies) who have become quite ill while they were waiting for the adoption process to be completed. Kids get sick…it is a part of life.

Some children “catch” illnesses, some children have conditions that are not able to be treated as well as they could if they were in the US, and some children just do not thrive in an orphanage setting. Oftentimes a little medicine, some first rate medical care and a lot of TLC can turn the health of these children around quickly.

I say these things not to scare off potential adoptive parents (and let me say that I think that the vast majority of parents hoping to adopt a healthy child get just that), but because the very best adoption-related advice I can give is, “expect the unexpected.”

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