Navigating Time Off from Work to Bond with a Newly Adopted Child

Question: My husband and I are in the process of adopting a waiting child internationally. This is our first adoption and we will soon be waiting to be matched with a child. I teach in higher education and my schedule is coordinated about nine months out. I am working with my supervisors to try and make sure my schedule for the next year is flexible to account for uncertain adoption timing. It has been so difficult to try and navigate this with my job, especially because my institution has very limited options for paid parental leave. 

I'm wondering if you have any insight into how to discuss a few of my questions with my employer:

1. How to manage unpredictable adoption timelines that may require mid-semester leave on minimal notice,
2. Explaining the necessity of time off work to bond with our new child, without the physical recovery needs that traditional birth includes, and 
3. That while teaching online is an option, balancing teaching online with international travel and a critical bonding period is very daunting. 

If you have any insight into how to discuss these topics with my employer, or any additional details I should be considering, I would love to hear your thoughts. I should say that my supervisors are very supportive and excited for my family, and they are open to creative solutions. These are just uncharted waters at my institution. I love listening to your podcast every week and my husband and I have learned so much from you all while we've been on our adoption journey!

Resources:

• How Can I Get Paid Leave for My Adoption?
• The Movement Project: Relationship & Parental Recognition: State Family Leave Laws 
• Center for Parental Leave Leadership

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Hello and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. This is a podcast from creatingafamily .org and
I'm Tracy Whitney, your host for today's episode. The Weekend Wisdom is our
opportunity to engage with you, our listeners, to talk about adoption, foster care
and kinship care and the specific questions you have about raising and living and
processing and dealing with all the issues surrounding adoptive foster or kinship
built families. So if you have questions you can send them to info @creatingafamily
.org. We come through our archives, we pull up information from previous guest
experts, we lean on some of our own lived experiences, and we work all those things
together to create an answer that will hopefully strengthen your family. And we'd
love it if you would tell your friends about Weekend Wisdom. We think that it's a
great way for us to educate the masses about issues related to adoption,
foster care and kinship care, but we also think it's a great way for you to
support the people around you. And so if you could tell a friend today about
Weekend Wisdom or about our other podcast, creating a family, talk about adoption,
foster care, and kinship care. We would so appreciate it. Thanks so much and let's
get right to today's question. Today we're hoping to help Jessica and her husband
navigate some parental leave issues and she's got a pretty uncertain timeline so
here's her question. My husband and I are in the process of adopting a waiting
child internationally. This is our first adoption and we will soon be waiting to be
matched with a child. I teach in higher education and my schedule is coordinated
about nine months in advance. I'm working with my supervisors to try and make sure
that my schedule for the coming year is flexible, but it's very difficult and I
have to account for uncertain adoption timing. It's been very difficult to navigate
this with my job, especially because I have limited options for paid parental leave.
I'm wondering if you have any insight on how to discuss a few of these specific
questions with my employer. Number one, how to manage unpredictable adoption timelines
that may require mid semester leave on short notice. Number two,
explaining the necessity of time off to bond with our new child, even though we
don't have the physical recovery needs that a traditional birth includes. And number
three, while teaching online is an option, bonding while teaching online seems like a
daunting task. And if you have any insight on how to discuss these things with my
employer or any additional details I should consider, I would love to hear your
thoughts. Jessica, thank you so much for writing in. We are very excited for you
and your adoption process being matched with a child is very exciting and I know
it's also pretty stressful and you have a lot of questions and being matched will
likely bring up more questions and it's going to be kind of a uncertain time for
you once you get the match and you get the timeline laid out by your agency but
let's focus a little bit on some of those questions that you shared with us and
how to manage your professional life and the obligations that you have there with
the unpredictability of an adoption timeline. So we're gonna break it down and look
at the questions one by one, but I wanted to make sure that you understand that
you are not alone in this process. It is a very common concern that many pre
-adoptive parents have not just for international adoption, but for foster care or for
domestic infant adoption, it's you can't really like pin the process to a specific
timeline and then count on that timeline to follow your expectations. So it requires
a little bit of nimbleness. It requires a little bit of flexibility and kind of
open -mindedness. So let's jump into the three questions. We're going to tackle them
one by one. So the first question that you asked was about managing an unpredictable
adoption timeline. So you understand that that process doesn't come with specific
locked in due dates, but your employers might not understand that. And so it's going
to be necessary for you to keep reinforcing the message that any conversations that
you want to have with them about your leave will require flexibility and
collaboration from both sides. So rather than offering them firm dates or promises
about how this process is gonna go, you'll need to just keep reinforcing, listen,
my husband and I are just trying to be responsive and nimble, and we're asking that
you be as flexible with us with my timeline as you possibly can be. Be clear that
you may only have a few weeks or even a few days before you have to travel to
accept placement of this child. And so while you're clear in that, you can try and
show your due diligence by maybe proposing some contingency plans, like identifying a
colleague who could do some guest lectures for you while you're away or setting up
a schedule where you kind of front load some of the teaching to kind of minimize
what has to be done in person while you're away or preparing some online modules
because online is like you said an option but preparing some online recorded modules
to cover your absence should you need to leave mid -semester. I suggest that you put
these plans or suggestions in writing by email so that your supervisors can see that
you're committed to minimizing disruption for your students, minimizing disruption for
the administration, but also that you're committed to preparing realistically for this
adoption. You would also be establishing a protective paper trail for yourself in
case of what if scenario rises up. So you could try saying something like,
since adoption doesn't really come with a due date, I would love to set up a few
contingency plans so that we're ready when our phone call comes, here's what I'm
thinking and then just kind of list some of your ideas. You could also say
something like, I may only get a few weeks notice before I have to travel and I
want to make sure that my classes and my students are covered no matter what. So
here's what I'm working on. And when you establish that paper trail and you show
them that you are willing to be preparing in advance and flexible about how this
will go, you might get some more ground with them on the conversations. The second
question you asked was about explaining the need for bonding time. And it's pretty
common that the general public is not familiar with adoption and all of the issues
that come with adopting a child no matter their age. So they may not understand the
crucial nature of what you're asking for, and you may have to do a little bit of
educating. So you'll have to kind of take it as a, as it comes kind of sussing
out what they know or what they understand about adoption and bonding. And you'll
have to be clear that, yes, you understand you don't need physical recovery time,
but that you and your child of that same kind of chunk of time to start to learn
each other and set a good foundation between you for trust and attachment that will
last the child's lifetime. You can frame it in terms of child development and
student success. The research is very clear that children who join families through
adoption, especially if they've experienced loss or trauma, they need concentrated time
to build a trusting, secure attachment between them and their new caregivers.
You could explain it like this. Our child will be adjusting to a new family, a new
language and new culture and a new environment all at once. And that first stretch
of time that we have together is so critical to helping them feel safe in our home
and in our family. Bonding time during leave is what will help ensure their long
-term success. If your institution or your employers have demonstrated in the past
that they're committed to you and your family, this will probably be an easier
conversation. If you don't feel like these are conversations you've had with them
before, you might have a little bit of a harder time and you still have to kind
of figure out what works to get this conversation across and get that need across.
If they don't have policies in place for adoptive parents, you can direct them to
the equity that is found in the Family and Medical Leave Act, commonly known as
FMLA. It recognizes the need for care and time off in adoption to be the same as
the need for care and time off after birth. And that is to your benefit that that
FMLA recognizes them as equal. Many states have family leave laws.
And unfortunately, every state's a little bit different. So your Institute might have
leave rules, policies, then your state has leave laws. And again, every state's a
little bit different. So familiarizing yourself with your state's laws and policies,
you can ask your HR department to give you the links and resources from the state
where you work. And those are all things that you can use to educate yourself and
then educate your employer. And again, a lot of this depends on the relationship you
already have with them and the relationship that you've seen demonstrated maybe in
other families who've needed time off for things like adoption or foster care. The
third question you asked is about how to balance teaching online with travel time
and bonding time. And it might be very tempting to push back on their suggestions
or expectations that you turn to online teaching while you're doing all this.
And you're right in pushing back a little bit. It's hard to explain the uncertainty
of adoption to someone who's not familiar with it. So in the process of having
these conversations, hopefully you've already been able to name those challenges with
them, the international travel, the jet lag, the absolute upheaval for a child in
their whole world changing the sense, the sights, the smells, the all the things
that change for the child and also managing while you're in country things like
embassy appointments and doctor's appointments and all the things that are required
and that's not even to say all the things that are required when you need to be
emotionally present for and with this child in the early days of meeting them and
then in the early days of bringing them home. So you can acknowledge to them that
online teaching is technically possible, but you can also try to advocate for
yourself that it's not optimal. It's not optimal for you, your child or the
students, because the students deserve to have you present and with them also. And
if your focus and intentions and presence are split between your child and the needs
of welcoming them to your family and welcoming them to your home and your students'
needs, nobody's getting the best of you. And in that dynamic, all deserve the the
presence that you can offer when you do things intentionally like time off to bond.
So again, this might require that you offer some proactive planning and some
demonstration that you are thinking about these issues and you are trying to set
plans in place that will minimize the gaps for the students, minimize the gaps for
your employer, and then minimize the disruption to your child's process of becoming
part of your family. So you could say something like, technically, yes, I can teach
online, but between international travel, embassy appointments, medical appointments, and
the adjustment period for our new child, I don't feel like I'm gonna be able to
give my best to the students or to my family and I don't want to be backed into
that corner. And again, establishing that paper trail, establishing those conversations,
having, you know, that demonstration of collaboration, all these things will help you.
There's a couple additional things that we think you might want to consider. You
didn't necessarily ask about them, but these are some things that we think might
help you as you're working through these questions. Number one, do some research into
your legal protections because even if your university doesn't have generous paid
parental leave, you may qualify for an FMLA job protected leave if you've been
employed there long enough. Some states go even further offering partial wage
replacement for adoptive parents. And so these are the key things that we want you
to think about protecting yourself, protecting your family, collaborating with your
employer in a respectful way, but keeping your intentions on your new family dynamic
as your priority. It's hard. These uncertain timelines are crazy to try and manage.
Don't get too far ahead of yourself. Take it one day at a time. Do the planning
that you can do and be focused on solutions, not just challenges.
When when they see you trying to work with them, it's more likely that that
goodwill will be established and they'll try and work with you. So try to outline
when you do meet with them in person or by email. Again, your anticipated needs for
flexibility and bonding time and leaving in the middle of the for that kind of
thing, but then also, again, focus on those proactive steps that you're ready to
take to protect your teaching load and the student's interests. And then demonstrate
a commitment to revisit this conversation as the adoption timeline unfolds.
Things might be less unpredictable than you expect. You might have more lead time
than you expect. And so staying in open communication with them about those things
will, will help you. And I want to say one last thing to encourage you again,
you're not alone in this, it can be stressful, but it's not uncommon. And so it
sounds like you've got a pretty supportive team around you. And that's huge. When
you frame it both as success for your family and success for your students, you may
find again that they're pretty eager to work with you. You don't have to have all
the answers right now. You don't have to know the timeline right now, but you do
have to set that collaborative tone right now. So congratulations on moving forward
in your adoption process. It's exciting getting that match and saying yes to that
match is exciting. And so I'm looking forward to that for you. I'm glad that you
and your husband are approaching this whole process So thoughtfully, I think it
demonstrates a great future for how you approach your child's needs in the future
and that thoughtfulness and that intentionality will be a really good skill to have
as you raise this child. So thanks so much, Jessica, for writing in and for taking
the time to listen. If you or any of our other listeners found today's information
helpful, Please leave us a rating or a review that helps us get more information
like this into the hands or the ears of other listeners who might find us.
If you could tell a friend about how this helped you today, we'd also appreciate
that, so thanks so much everybody for tuning in and we will talk to you next week.