This is Dylan’s story submitted for this website by his family
Dylan before he was adopted by his new family.
After a while of unsuccessfully trying to adopt from the foster care system we came across a possibility of adopting a child who was already adopted but needed a new start.
I saw the profile of Dylan, a 10 year old boy, originally from Eastern Europe who was adopted at age 4 with his 2 bio siblings. The 2 siblings are living in residential care and are not available for adoption. He also had 4 adoptive siblings.
At first I didn’t think we could afford the fees involved so I kept an eye on his profile. For a while it said he had been ‘placed’ but I later learned the person had changed their mind. Unfortunately there are people out there who think older children are ‘trouble’ and have lots of problems.
We read through the information about Dylan and thought he would be happy in our family.
On the conference call we were able to find out even more and knew we really wanted him to be our son. We became very excited and anxious to bring Dylan home.
Cyndi was able to find us a low cost lawyer, and we went to get Dylan from the ranch for kids. We didn’t really know what to expect and you can’t always go by what you hear/read about the child. Dylan came to us with just a few items of clothing (most of which were too small) and a bible. I was surprised when he started calling me mom from day one, it wouldn’t have mattered to me if he had or not. I thought he was going to be nervous and weary but he was quite the opposite. Dylan appeared to be eager to be joining a new family.
Dylan today.
Dylan’s personality is happy go lucky, sociable, high energy and extroverted. He has a lot of enthusiasm and loves to be helpful. There is always a smile on his face. He is not the child that was described by his old parents in the paperwork (moody, hard to discipline and has trouble sleeping).
I believe that Dylan was not in the right family, was unhappy and this affected his disposition and well-being.
Dylan also didn’t do well with the mother in his old home, but this hasn’t been an issue with us.
People would say to us that Dylan’s good behaviors were a honey moon period and wouldn’t last, but it’s been over a year and he’s still doing great.
Since Dylan’s been with us we’ve never experienced any big problems. He’s not aggressive, doesn’t act out and is very obedient. We’ve never treated him like we expected there to be issues and always believed he would be successful in our home.
In his first adoptive family he was home schooled and the adoptive mother would get frustrated and say that he didn’t apply himself. We have had a specialist test him and now he is doing much better in school.
He has come a long way from when he first came to us.
Dylan has joined little league baseball and also loves to swim. His favorite hobbies are lego’s, remote control cars, go karts and minecraft.
He has phone contact with his 2 siblings in residential care and I was able to trace another sibling in his birth country.
When we finalized the adoption Dylan chose to keep his first name and change his middle name. We celebrate his adoption day and will for years to come. We made the right decision in pursuing this adoption and are a close knit family.