What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to face in adopting older children?
Karla: With international adoption, you don’t know your children’s history. You may know pieces of it, though they might not be accurate. In Ethiopia, most of the challenges come from loss and separation from parents and extended family. They’re coming from an environment that is undernourished and undereducated. When your kids come with no English, and have had no prior education, like mine, it’s a challenge. My girls had waves of sorrow due to the deaths of their mother, father, and baby brother. But they seemed very ready to have a mother again, which I think is one of the reasons their adjustment went so well. Most adoptive kids from Ethiopia adjust well overall because they started out in loving and nurturing families. Wendy: In our case there turned out to be a lot of discrepancies in our children’s family history. Due to desperate family health and living conditions, family members were dishonest to the orphanage. To give the kids a future, they viewed adoption as their only opt
