Adoption In The News: The Perfect Child
This article in the Charlotte Observer is about a family who adopted their “perfect child,” a three-year-old toddler from China named Carly. Carly does not look like many other Chinese children because she was born with albinism, which has given her pale skin and blonde hair. Because of the albinism Carly is also blind.
Kelly and Wilbur Long, who have a biological daughter Clara, adopted Carly after deciding that they wanted to care and provide for a child who needed a home instead of bringing another child into the world. The family decided that they would be open to a child with special needs after reading that in China there were “thousands of children with disabilities growing up in orphanages,” according to the article.
What was interesting about this story was that the family was not looking for someone else’s view of a “perfect child,” they were looking for the “perfect child” for their specific family. According to the article, the Long’s did their research in the beginning stages of the adoption process and decided what types of special needs they felt they, along with their daughter Clara, could handle.
“We didn’t want to take on, from a selfish perspective, anything that was going to disrupt our marriage, or our older daughter” Kelly said in the article. “The needs we were to open to were needs we knew as a family we could handle. We thought we might get a child with a cleft palate or a heart condition.”
It is great to see families take an honest look at what they can and can not envision for their family, and than make an educated decision. When adopting a child, you are choosing to bring someone into your family. Your “perfect child” may not be someone else’s “perfect child,” but to you they couldn’t be more “perfect.” It was nice to read an article that promoted that theme.