Throughout this series, I have talked about the importance of opening yourself up to the placing mother through your profile. The words we use are only a small part of the message that we communicate.

So much of how we feel about placing mothers and our comfort level with the adoption process are woven into the profiles that we create. The more comfortable you feel about adoption and the placing mother’s role, the more warmth will be reflected in your profile. Placing mothers are more likely to be drawn toward a warm and open profile.

Make sure you are honest in your profile. Don’t present what you think a placing mother wants to hear. Show her who you are, not what the “ideal” adoptive parents should look like.

None of us are Ward and June Cleaver, and I would imagine that many placing mothers are not looking for Ward and June, anyhow. Placing mothers are looking for real adoptive parents who they can trust to love their child.

Placing mothers are also looking for adoptive parents who will follow through on their promises. Unfortunately, there are adoptive parents out there who have lied to placing mothers, promising them openness in the adoption and then refusing to follow through. I would imagine that those adoptive parents probably did not express the same kind of warmth and openness in their profiles (unless they hired someone else to put their profiles together for them).

If a hopeful adoptive couple is too reserved to share a simple detail like a favorite restaurant with a placing mother, then that couple is unlikely to feel real comfortable in sharing their family with the placing mother through pictures and letters after the adoption, much less visits. These reservations are communicated through a lack of personal information in the profile.

Bottom line – Open yourself up in your profile. Regardless of the color scheme you choose or the pictures you select, what the placing mother really wants to see is you. Who are you? What makes you the person you are?

Don’t be afraid to share yourself through your profile. It is through this openness that a placing mother is able to match with a couple with whom she has something in common.

Related Topics:

• Hopeful Adoptive Parent Profiles/Life Books




• Parent Profiles




• Adoptive Parent Profile Series