Older Parent Adoption Blog

Disappointing grandparents

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:49:55 +0000

For a bit of a giggle for older adoptive parents who have grown kids as well, this story may provoke a chuckle or two.

All about young-ish moms hoping for grandma to help out, and how many grandma's are too busy doing their own thing ... raising children in our case ... to pitch in as some of our kids think we should.

Starting off with a "general image of what a good granny is: apple-cheeked with a bursting biscuit tin and oodles of time to spend with her precious grandchildren", it's a tale of disappointment for some that follows.

Sadie... more

Is it because I'm old ... ?

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 08:52:25 +0000

Is it because I'm old, or because it's deplorable? You make the call ...

This story bugs the heck out of me, makes me squirm and want to throttle someone at the same time, and scares the padooky out of me just thinking of the ramifications.

Here's the open:

At the recently opened Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique at Cinderella's castle in Walt Disney World, hordes of young girls in ball gowns jostle every day to get their hair coiffed, their nails painted and their faces plastered with make-up to imitate their favorite princess.

Really? Parents... more

Adoption is everywhere!

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 07:03:14 +0000

The first adoptee blogger here, Jupe, coined an apt phrase she used to describe the frequency adoption-related bits and pieces of ephemera would drift into her realm, then stick for a while: adoption velcro.

All of us experience this to some degree ... well, all of us who deposit time and energy into the awareness bank and keep our vigilance accounts topped up. I can, however, still be surprised by how often adoption comes at me from what... more

Putting our gray heads together

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 12:45:01 +0000

It's day 23 of National Blog Posting Month ... NaBloPoMo ... and I've been dutifully posting on my personal blog every single day on a wide variety of topics.

I blog every day, no matter what, either here, on the News Blog, the International Adoption Blog or the release vent that is my personal blog, so I didn't think this whole venture was going to have much... more

Love Thursday: Thanksgiving

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:12:21 +0000

Always the grandest of Love Thursdays, Thanksgiving is the American holiday I miss the most. Although we have a local version of most of the others ... 4th of July being a notable exception ... there is still always an "American version" that I miss while others celebrate in the fashion they're accustomed to. Thanksgiving, though, goes right over the heads of the Seychellois and Brits that I live my life with and around these days, and by missing the point completely I think they really are missing out.

This will be my 14th consecutive non-Thanksgiving, and like most when they finally roll around this one has me wondering why the heck Mark and the kids and I didn't pack up about a... more

New resourse for those caring for aged parents

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:44:42 +0000

There is a new resource for those 'sandwich generation' people, so many of whom seem to be older adoptive parents; you know the ones -- little kids on one side, aging parents on the other, you in the middle trying to see to it that both are cared for properly, have all the attention they need, their medical issues attended to, their futures as bright and healthy as possible.

Caring.com is a brand new online facility that's been in the works for some time now. It's been ... more

If only ...

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:27:01 +0000

As has been mentioned on most of my blogs, my son Sam had his fifth birthday last week. Since math is still a skill I can occasionally employ in correct usage, him being five means that I am fifty-six ... yes, there is a fifty-one-year-plus gap between my entrance on the world stage and his.

In a different time or another place, such a wide span between parent and child would not be possible. It wasn't all that long ago that the statistical likelihood of being alive after... more

Creating a monster

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 04:24:16 +0000

I have a dear friend who spent a good bit of her adult life longing for motherhood. For all the usual reasons ... career building, late finding of soul mate, infertility ... plans to make a baby from scratch didn't pan out. At the age of forty-nine, she and her husband brought home a darling little girl from Cambodia. That was almost two years ago, and not a day goes by that she doesn't almost fall to her knees in gratitude for the miracle that adoption has been for her and her family.

It's sweet to see. My friend has transformed; life now has real meaning... more

Love Thursday: My husband's birthday

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 09:28:52 +0000

Today is my husband's forty-first birthday. That sounds really old to him, and I'm having more than a little trouble coming up with sympathetic clucks to go along with his deep-felt anxieties over heading toward fifty ... yes, that's where he's going with this already ... and watching the last dregs of youth slide away into the ever-diminishing sunset.

He was twenty-six when we met, and he won't be as old as I was then until next year, so whining around the fringes of forty-one somehow rhyming with ancient doesn't work for me.

At forty-one I donned a backpack... more

Time runs backwards for our daughters

Sandra Hanks Benoiton — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:41:59 +0000

Anyone who reads me often knows that there are certain publications that tend to put me off my lunch. The UK's Telegraph is one example, especially after a completely unprofessional sudden change of headline as an attempt to step back from a clumsy and irresponsible move.

Well, once again The Telegraph is annoying me.

This time, with ... more