Hana Williams and Older Child Adoption

I'm sure you have heard of Hana Williams by now. If not just google Larry and Carri Williams or Hanna Williams and you'll find the story. Hana was adopted about the same time Addis and Mulu were adopted. I identify with the story for several reasons.  One is when she was adopted which was in 2008 and Addis and Mulu were adopted in 2008. Another reason is that my girls were older as was Hana. ( Which is pronounced hah nuh. ) My girls were also older than we thought, one at least a year and the other at least two years and she aged a year in the process. Addis was supposed to be younger than my youngest son, but when we received her Ethiopian birth certificate her birthdate was stated that she was ten months older than he was. We accepted it and went on. What we didn't know was that she was older than two of our boys, not just one. We also homeschool as did the Williams family and have also read To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl. We even sold their books and many other Christian books when we had a Christian bookstore on ebay. We had enough sense not to put into place the child training techniques that the Pearls advocate with our biological children, but especially not with an adopted child.

There is a facebook page in remembrance of Hana: https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/156422897766042/  You'll find access to many of the articles that have been published about the case and you might even find the report by the sheriff's or child protection dept. There are pictures as well.

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Hana's story was being discussed on our adoptive Yahoo group and this is what I wrote about it.



I've been part of the facebook group for a while and have watched this unfold. It is horrible. There are several issues going on that in my mind attributed to all of this.

There are a lot of different dynamics that went on in this family. They were
homeschooling. I have homeschooled for the last twenty-three years so I
know what some of the homeschooling community is like. If you're not careful it's easy to get caught in manipulation and how things should be done by "experts." Many of these "experts" are men. One of them has never even been married and had his own family, Bill Gothard of IBLP. If any of you watch 19 Kids and Counting then you can see Gothard teaching in practice. In their earlier shows everybody all dressed alike.

With homeschooling the parents have to have control of the children so the
training comes in. I have read Pearl books, I have read them all. Since I have
parented for twenty-eight years with seven boys I've had my fair share of
discipline and training issues. With my two older boys who are now 28 and 26.  I was too strict and after they turned eighteen and saw how they turned out we changed our parenting methods.

Then I think the Williams home-churched so the children were not in the public eye. No one saw these children on a regular basis. If I don't bring one of my girls people at church ask where they are. They're a visible part of our church family.

Add in that they were older when they were adopted. Hana was years older than her parents thought. This also happened to us. Our oldest Ethiopian daughter is eleven on paper. We thought she was more like fourteen but her ET father believes she is thirteen. She was fifty-six pounds when she arrived here three years ago, and within weeks of proper nutrition she started developing and a year later started her cycle. She has since doubled her weight and sees the dr. regularly for physicals and such.

One thing that needs to be addressed in the adoption community is older child
adoption. There is not enough training for people to know what they are getting into. Many times we have a romantic idea of what it is, and in reality it can be quite different. We have been blessed with our two older girls. They have not been troublesome in any way. Not that we didn't have issues and not that issues don't come up. But had we had not parented through the teens already (x4) our outcome could have been much different.

We did attend the Older Child adoption training that Kingdom Kids offered back in 2007 and that was very helpful. We need to attend Orphan and Adoption Conferences when they are offered. We need hair care training. We need to know how to attach to others when our inclination is to build a wall and turn away. I believe there needs to be more mentoring and in-real-life training. We can read books and do all the online training in the world, but until the rubber meets the road many times parents are not equipped to handle the baggage their children come home with. These kids have a past. They have memories. We need to honor what their past is and help them deal with it good or bad.

We have encouraged our older daughters to correspond with their father in
Ethiopia. If I had known better I would have kept their Ethiopian names, but was counseled otherwise. One of our daughters does have their original name, but three do not. We are active in an Ethiopian church when we can be, and our oldest daughter goes to the youth group with other Ethiopian teens. It's the one place where she can be with other kids who are like her. It also helps her pick up pieces of the language she has lost.

We are in process right now to adopt a girl from a disruption here in the USA.
She was adopted in April 2010 from Ethiopia. We will have to do more work andmore healing with her than our other girls simply because of the disruption. Why didn't the Williams disrupt? According to the group page on fb Carri Williams was a very proud and self-righteous person and wouldn't have admitted failure. All of us have to be open and transparent with one another and help each other through the tough times. They will be there. Who can we turn to? We can't judge one another when another mom comes to you and admits her failures. We need to build one another up and provide respite care if possible. We need to become a family. Each of our communities should be tight knit. We don't want another Hana among us.

(This was edited for things that did not apply or were too personal.)
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