Posts Tagged "adoption"
Seven top tips for adoptive parents Part 2
Robyn Wolfson Vorster In this two-part article, the focus is on how we as adoptive parents, can best parent our adoptees. Part 1 contained tips 1-4. This article explores the last three. 5. Your child should not remember the first time they heard their adoption story Years ago, I watched an episode of the sitcom “Friends” where Chandler inadvertently told...
Seven top tips for adoptive parents Part 1
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster As adoptive parents, we should constantly be learning how to parent our adoptees better, which led me to documenting these seven top tips for adoptive parents, along with some related dos and don’ts. But first a disclaimer. I am a step-mother, a biological mother, an adoptive mom and even a grandmother. It makes me a veteran...
Sounding the death knell for adoption
Robyn Wolfson Vorster The 2016 World Adoption Day celebrations are proving muted, overshadowed by the election soap opera in America, and here at home by the crushing disclosure that there were only 1,165 adoptions last year. In a country with 3-million orphans and tens of thousands of crisis pregnancies annually, adoptions have stuttered and, in some cases, stopped. While...
Families for the lonely
For the sake of my family and my sanity, I work hard to keep the emotion of what I do at bay. This week it all unravelled over a cup of tea, a cuddly yellow bunny and an innocent question. The week started with a chat with a formidable member of the National Assembly. As we sipped our tea,...
Fearing the foreigner: When child protection and institutionalised xenophobia collide
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster Adoption, like all child protection initiatives, is predicated on the principle of “the best interests of the child”. Except when it isn’t. In some significant matters, government agenda has overridden this tenet, at times with disastrous and even tragic consequences. One of the areas where this is most evident is “foreigners”: foreigners resident in South Africa...