Adopting in rural areas

You may think that adopting while you live in a rural area is no different than adopting while you live in an urban area, but it is.

We have lived in the same rural area the entire time that we have had children. There are certain pros and cons to this way of living.

Our biggest pro has been the school. Living where we do means that our kids have gone to smaller schools and that has been a blessing, especially when there are special education need.

This is the same school I attended so we know many of the families there and there are even some teachers who are still there from when I attended. Because of the small class sizes, our kids get plenty of attention and we have great communication with the school. If I enter the school, virtually every teacher knows who I am.

Our biggest con is the travel time for services. We travel close to an hour for our attachment therapist, and about forty-five minutes for our psychiatrist. There are psychiatrists and therapists who are closer, but the ones who can really help my kids are in larger metropolitan areas. Some days I hate the travel time, but the results are worth the travel.

Another con to living in a rural area is that the support system isn’t as great. Living in a small town means that there are not very many other families like ours. There are other families who have adopted, but I only know of one other family who has adopted from foster care. Again, this means travel for our support system or education and seminars, but it is worth it. The advent of the internet has made finding support easier than it was fifteen or twenty years ago. In fact, most of my support and communication comes from the internet.

One pro is that we live on a country lot of over four acres, and our neighbors live on larger lots also. This means that when my kids are having a good old fashioned screaming fit, there isn’t really anyone to hear them. I have sent my kids outside in nice weather to have their big screaming fit.

One thing that is both a pro and a con is the fact that we live in a small town and everyone knows who we are. I have lived here most of my life, so my kids have the advantage or disadvantage, depending on how you look at it, of automatically being known because of who their mom is. It is a good thing for us because I hear about things my kids have done fairly quickly. We have a long driveway so I don’t always see my kids while they are waiting for the bus. It depends on where they are standing on the driveway. One day we received a call from someone we knew to tell me that Sammy was standing in the middle of the road while waiting for the bus. The road we are on is fairly busy, so this was extremely dangerous. Sammy was shocked by the fact that someone he didn’t know made this call because he knew who my husband and I were.

On the flip side, I remember hating the fact that I had very little privacy, and I was basically a pretty good kid. With living in a small town and being a rather distinctive family, my kids don’t have a lot of anonymity, and they can tend to be known as the “adopted kids” or the “foster care kids.” Right now it doesn’t really seem to bother them, but I’m fairly sure at some point it will.

I don’t want to discourage you from adopting if you live in a rural area, just be aware that there are certainly pros and cons to it.

Photo credit

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.