Posts

Showing posts from April, 2014

Why Test Your Child's DNA?

Image
My son, Matt, posing in this picture, is 20 years old and until last year was unaware of any ethnicity on my side of the family.  As we sat together for Easter dinner, Matt's girlfriend was joking about how when she first saw Matt, she thought he was Asian.  Her whole family thought he was Asian as well. Which then led me to remember that when Matt and I used to work together, many of our co-workers thought Matt was Latino.  I guess as my son, he inherited my Generic Ethnic  look (poor kid).  He was almost as excited as I was last year to get my DNA results. After Easter dinner, Matt waited the prescribed 30 minutes and spit into the tube provided by  23 and Me .  I registered Matt's DNA kit and then shipped it off yesterday to await the results (23 and Me states it should take 3 to 4 weeks). My research goals in testing Matt's DNA are as follows: 1.  To find my biological father's family (Matt's grandfather's family) 2.  To confirm Matt's ethnici

Closed Adoption as a Form of Emotional Neglect

Image
*Note:  This blog has been edited from its original version as it was mistakenly published in draft After working in child welfare for many years, I have been educated on abuse and neglect of children. Growing up in an almost idyllic area of town with all my material needs provided for, the thought had never occurred to me when I was growing up that I had been emotionally neglected.  For a long time, I thought I had the perfect family. . ..until I no longer did. I have always had a heart for children. I was a former Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA/GAL) for many years as a volunteer.  This position allowed me to hone my investigative and writing skills, through interviews with children and their families and write recommendations to the Judge on the case.  I became very familiar with the definitions of both abuse and neglect through working for both a custody attorney and handling my own cases through my volunteer work.   During the training I was required to receive, I