Each Thursday, Hope Cottage - Dallas' oldest nonprofit, nonsectarian adoption agency, shares resources for parents and families - especially those families made through adoption. We hope you find these offerings beneficial. If you have a resource to share or suggest, e-mail it to Leslie Clay, Chief Development Officer at lclay@hopecottage.org.
New Year's Resolutions for Parents
It's never too late to make a resolution for the year. She Knows Parenting website offers these
suggestions.
From the 60 Second Parent - February 1, 2011 issue. Food for thought.
True Confessions and Adoption Angst
One mother shares about her first post adoption meeting with the birthfamily.
An article on Collaborative Problem Solving.
Parenting Strategies When Bad Things Happen — Talking To Preschoolers About Tragedies
Learn more about Avoiding Mom Burnout.
Hope Cottage is the oldest nonprofit, non sectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918 Hope Cottage has been building and nurturing strong families through counseling, education and adoption services.
If you have questions about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721.
If you are a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy and would like to talk to someone about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 1.800.944.4464 or 214.404.4546.
Showing posts with label adopted families. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adopted families. Show all posts
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Thursday, September 16, 2010
For Your Reading Pleasure
Dallas Adoption Agency, Hope Cottage, wants to share with you some interesting reading from the adoption world.
A poignant story about a child's first birthday celebration. Birth Siblings - experiences from six different families.
Adoptive Mothers (and Fathers!) CAN experience post partum depression. What about those precious moments you might have in the hospital with your birth mother? Here are suggestions to make that time run more smoothly.
Hope Cottage is the oldest nonprofit, non sectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918 Hope Cottage has been building and nurturing strong families through counseling, education and adoption services.
If you have questions about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721.
If you are a woman facing a crises pregnancy and would like to talk to someone about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 1.800.944.4464 or 214.404.4546.
A poignant story about a child's first birthday celebration. Birth Siblings - experiences from six different families.
Adoptive Mothers (and Fathers!) CAN experience post partum depression. What about those precious moments you might have in the hospital with your birth mother? Here are suggestions to make that time run more smoothly.
Hope Cottage is the oldest nonprofit, non sectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918 Hope Cottage has been building and nurturing strong families through counseling, education and adoption services.
If you have questions about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721.
If you are a woman facing a crises pregnancy and would like to talk to someone about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 1.800.944.4464 or 214.404.4546.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Resources for Wanting to Adopt and Adoptive Families
Dallas Adoption Agency, Hope Cottage, would like to share these resources for Wanting to Adopt and Adoptive Families. Knowledge is a great thing!
Here is a link for a recent blog post, entitled "Five Tips for Exchanging Gifts Among Birth and Adoptive Familes."
Interested in adopting from the Foster Care System? Click here for a Fact Sheet dispelling myths about Foster to Adopt.
Hope Cottage is the oldest nonprofit, non sectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918 Hope Cottage has been building and nurturing strong families through counseling, education and adoption services.
If you have questions about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721.
If you are a woman facing a crises pregnancy and would like to talk to someone about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 1.800.944.4464 or 214.404.4546.
Here is a link for a recent blog post, entitled "Five Tips for Exchanging Gifts Among Birth and Adoptive Familes."
Interested in adopting from the Foster Care System? Click here for a Fact Sheet dispelling myths about Foster to Adopt.
Hope Cottage is the oldest nonprofit, non sectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918 Hope Cottage has been building and nurturing strong families through counseling, education and adoption services.
If you have questions about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721.
If you are a woman facing a crises pregnancy and would like to talk to someone about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 1.800.944.4464 or 214.404.4546.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Dallas Adoption Agency Hope Cottage Helps Make Two New Families
Things are so exciting at Hope Cottage. We made a placement last week and another child is being placed today with his adoptive family. Don't we have a happy job?
Hope Cottage is the oldest nonprofit, nonsectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918, Hope Cottage has been nurturing and building families through education, counseling and adoption services.
If you have questions about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721.
If you are a woman facing a crises pregnancy and would like to talk to someone about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 1.800.944.4464 or 214.404.4546.
Hope Cottage is the oldest nonprofit, nonsectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918, Hope Cottage has been nurturing and building families through education, counseling and adoption services.
If you have questions about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721.
If you are a woman facing a crises pregnancy and would like to talk to someone about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 1.800.944.4464 or 214.404.4546.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
We Can All Use A Little Help Now and Then
As parents we can all use a little help now and then. Here is an article entitled Common Parenting Myths Debunked.
Hope Cottage is the oldest non-profit, non-sectarian based adoption agency in Dallas, Tx. Since 1918, Hope Cottage has been building strong families through education, counseling and adoption services. If you would like to know more about adoption, call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721 or e-mail info@hopecottage.org.
Hope Cottage is the oldest non-profit, non-sectarian based adoption agency in Dallas, Tx. Since 1918, Hope Cottage has been building strong families through education, counseling and adoption services. If you would like to know more about adoption, call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721 or e-mail info@hopecottage.org.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Hope Cottage is Looking for the Most Joyful Baby
Post a picture of your child enjoying his/her most joyful self on the Hope Cottage Facebook page. Children depicted must be age 3 or under at the time the picture was taken. The contest is free to enter and open to all. Photos must be posted by 5 pm August 10th. Winner receives a prize and all decisions of the judges are final.
Since 1918, Hope Cottage has been building strong families through education, counseling and adoption.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
At Last I Know Who I Really Am - Part III
They talked all summer, sprawled on the floor munching candy bars and drinking diet sodas. They pored over family snapshots. They discovered they sang in the same register, laughed in the same key. Betty's 24-year marriage was on the verge of dissolving when Shannon found her, and she was grieving still for a son killed in an automobile accident five years earlier. It had been a long time since Betty had had very much to laugh about.
Inevitably, the conversation would its way back to Gatesville and June 5, 19XX - to the morning Betty first laid eyes on Shannon father, Don Tolin.
"I was on my way to the drugstore," Betty told her, "when this young soldier stepped out of the bank. He said something I didn't catch, but I turned around and I guess I smiled. He said I had the cutest smile he had ever seen and he wasn't going to let anybody with a smile that cute get away."
That's how it began. Don was 23, college educated, a Yankee, a sharp dresser with a new red car. Betty was 15, a farm girl in the 10th grade.
Dating Don, "I was like a celebrity in that little town," Betty remembers. "It was all very romantic. We'd been going together for just about six months when he proposed. We talked about getting married when school let out. But then, come February, I found out that I was going to have a baby."
When Don heard the news, he suggested they elope, but Betty would not hear of it. "I'd always dreamed of a real wedding-of walking down the aisle and saying 'I do' with family and friends there in the church", she says. "I wanted the hole thing." Don tried a second time, came by her house and asked her to leave with him that very night. "He was in uniform-I'd never seen him in uniform before-and I probably should have guessed that he had been discharged and was heading back home to Indianapolis. But I told him no. And then I waited and waited. It finally dawned on me that he wasn't coming back. I threw his ring into the Brazos river. It just didn't mean anything to me anymore."
When the time came, Betty went to Hope Cottage and had her baby. She named her Donna Gayle and immediately put her up for adoption. Betty saw Don once after that-two years later, when his reserve unit returned to Texas. "That ended with another argument," Betty says. "He wanted me to help him find Donna Gayle. I told him I wouldn't disrupt her life. I knew she'd been well placed, that she had more than I could ever hope to give her."
Shannon swears that what happened next just...happened. "It was my birth mother I had always identified with and fantasized about," Shannon says, "but the more Betty talked about Don-he was so this and so that and so the other-the closer I got to thinking,'Hey, I want to know him too.'" Finding him, however, was something else again. This time she had no tattletale number with which to begin her paper chase. She started in Indianapolis and wound up calling all the Tolins in all three Indiana area codes. None of the Tolin families had ever heard of a Donald Lee.
She tried the Army Reserve Board. His records had been among those destroyed in a fire some years earlier. She asked Baylor University to search its transcripts. Nothing. Then Betty decided it might have been Mary Hardin Baylor, a community college close to Gatesville, where Don had taken classes. Its records had also been destroyed in a fire.
"I had worked at it almost full-time for a month and had come up empty," Shannon says. "Without something solid to go on I was flat stymied. But then, just before midnight on July 3, Betty called to tell me her brother-in-law, An Army officer, had turned up Don's date of birth. I new I had him then. If he was anywhere in the country, a computer would find him." She enlisted the help of a police officer friend. It took only minutes: Donald Lee Tolin, male Caucasian, 5'11", 185 pounds, brown hair, green eyes...This current address? Dallas, Texas-not 15 minutes from Shannon's own house.
Long lost fathers, she had been cautioned, tend to be more suspicious than long lost mothers. And indeed, it took some persuading by a go-between to get Don to agree to a Friday get-together with Shannon and Betty. "But I couldn't wait for Friday," Shannon says. "I went to his office ahead of time, walked in on him unannounced and told him who I was. He stood up and put his hand out to me. 'I want to touch you, but I just don't know what you want me to do,' he said. 'How about a hug?' I said. He came around his desk and almost squished my guts out!" They talked for two and a half hours. About his 15-year marriage, which had ended in divorce nine years ago. About his five other children. But mostly he wanted to know about Betty. Was she still just as cute and sweet as he remembered?
The reunion on Friday couldn't have bone better. Shannon's husband, Robert, says with a grin, "You could see there was something between them the instants he walked into the restaurant and picked her up and hugged her. It was like they'd never been apart." As they were saying their good-byes in the parking lot, Don Sidled over to Shannon and whispered, "You know, I'd really like to see Betty again, but I feel kind of weird. What do I do?" "Call her, " his daughter advised. He did. And a few weeks later when he and Betty were out for a drive, he said "You know you're going to marry me, don't you?" And Betty replied, "If you're asking me, I said yes once before and I'll say it again. Do you think we should elope?" "Hell, no!" Don thundered. "You've held out for a wedding for 27 years, and, by God, you'll get one!"
On Saturday, November 22, 198X in the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Donald Lee Tolin took Betty Jane Parrish to be his lawful wedded wife. Family and friends-Shannon's "other" father included-looked on as they exchanged their vows. Young Obie Frazier, Shannon and Robert's son, was the ring-bearer. And Donna Gayle Parrish/Shannon Moore Kincaid Frazier was-appropriately enough - matron of honor. It was, Shannon says, the beautiful happy ending that she had dreamed of all these years.
"Everything all fell into place so neatly I'm convinced it was meant to be. But that doesn't mean there wasn't some hurt along the way. It was very difficult, for example, for my mom. For 26 years she'd thought of me as completely hers. But she's gradually come to terms with the idea that I now have two sets of parents. She's still Mom to me and always will be. Betty is Betty." Shannon pauses and grins. "Shoot," she says. "If you don't have two mothers and two fathers these days, you're nothin'!"
Inevitably, the conversation would its way back to Gatesville and June 5, 19XX - to the morning Betty first laid eyes on Shannon father, Don Tolin.
"I was on my way to the drugstore," Betty told her, "when this young soldier stepped out of the bank. He said something I didn't catch, but I turned around and I guess I smiled. He said I had the cutest smile he had ever seen and he wasn't going to let anybody with a smile that cute get away."
That's how it began. Don was 23, college educated, a Yankee, a sharp dresser with a new red car. Betty was 15, a farm girl in the 10th grade.
Dating Don, "I was like a celebrity in that little town," Betty remembers. "It was all very romantic. We'd been going together for just about six months when he proposed. We talked about getting married when school let out. But then, come February, I found out that I was going to have a baby."
When Don heard the news, he suggested they elope, but Betty would not hear of it. "I'd always dreamed of a real wedding-of walking down the aisle and saying 'I do' with family and friends there in the church", she says. "I wanted the hole thing." Don tried a second time, came by her house and asked her to leave with him that very night. "He was in uniform-I'd never seen him in uniform before-and I probably should have guessed that he had been discharged and was heading back home to Indianapolis. But I told him no. And then I waited and waited. It finally dawned on me that he wasn't coming back. I threw his ring into the Brazos river. It just didn't mean anything to me anymore."
When the time came, Betty went to Hope Cottage and had her baby. She named her Donna Gayle and immediately put her up for adoption. Betty saw Don once after that-two years later, when his reserve unit returned to Texas. "That ended with another argument," Betty says. "He wanted me to help him find Donna Gayle. I told him I wouldn't disrupt her life. I knew she'd been well placed, that she had more than I could ever hope to give her."
Shannon swears that what happened next just...happened. "It was my birth mother I had always identified with and fantasized about," Shannon says, "but the more Betty talked about Don-he was so this and so that and so the other-the closer I got to thinking,'Hey, I want to know him too.'" Finding him, however, was something else again. This time she had no tattletale number with which to begin her paper chase. She started in Indianapolis and wound up calling all the Tolins in all three Indiana area codes. None of the Tolin families had ever heard of a Donald Lee.
She tried the Army Reserve Board. His records had been among those destroyed in a fire some years earlier. She asked Baylor University to search its transcripts. Nothing. Then Betty decided it might have been Mary Hardin Baylor, a community college close to Gatesville, where Don had taken classes. Its records had also been destroyed in a fire.
"I had worked at it almost full-time for a month and had come up empty," Shannon says. "Without something solid to go on I was flat stymied. But then, just before midnight on July 3, Betty called to tell me her brother-in-law, An Army officer, had turned up Don's date of birth. I new I had him then. If he was anywhere in the country, a computer would find him." She enlisted the help of a police officer friend. It took only minutes: Donald Lee Tolin, male Caucasian, 5'11", 185 pounds, brown hair, green eyes...This current address? Dallas, Texas-not 15 minutes from Shannon's own house.
Long lost fathers, she had been cautioned, tend to be more suspicious than long lost mothers. And indeed, it took some persuading by a go-between to get Don to agree to a Friday get-together with Shannon and Betty. "But I couldn't wait for Friday," Shannon says. "I went to his office ahead of time, walked in on him unannounced and told him who I was. He stood up and put his hand out to me. 'I want to touch you, but I just don't know what you want me to do,' he said. 'How about a hug?' I said. He came around his desk and almost squished my guts out!" They talked for two and a half hours. About his 15-year marriage, which had ended in divorce nine years ago. About his five other children. But mostly he wanted to know about Betty. Was she still just as cute and sweet as he remembered?
The reunion on Friday couldn't have bone better. Shannon's husband, Robert, says with a grin, "You could see there was something between them the instants he walked into the restaurant and picked her up and hugged her. It was like they'd never been apart." As they were saying their good-byes in the parking lot, Don Sidled over to Shannon and whispered, "You know, I'd really like to see Betty again, but I feel kind of weird. What do I do?" "Call her, " his daughter advised. He did. And a few weeks later when he and Betty were out for a drive, he said "You know you're going to marry me, don't you?" And Betty replied, "If you're asking me, I said yes once before and I'll say it again. Do you think we should elope?" "Hell, no!" Don thundered. "You've held out for a wedding for 27 years, and, by God, you'll get one!"
On Saturday, November 22, 198X in the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Donald Lee Tolin took Betty Jane Parrish to be his lawful wedded wife. Family and friends-Shannon's "other" father included-looked on as they exchanged their vows. Young Obie Frazier, Shannon and Robert's son, was the ring-bearer. And Donna Gayle Parrish/Shannon Moore Kincaid Frazier was-appropriately enough - matron of honor. It was, Shannon says, the beautiful happy ending that she had dreamed of all these years.
"Everything all fell into place so neatly I'm convinced it was meant to be. But that doesn't mean there wasn't some hurt along the way. It was very difficult, for example, for my mom. For 26 years she'd thought of me as completely hers. But she's gradually come to terms with the idea that I now have two sets of parents. She's still Mom to me and always will be. Betty is Betty." Shannon pauses and grins. "Shoot," she says. "If you don't have two mothers and two fathers these days, you're nothin'!"
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The History of Hope Cottage
Emma Wylie Ballard was the president of the Dallas Humane Society and was distressed at the thought of children and babies abandoned in the streets of Dallas. This concern for the welfare of these children was the beginning of Hope Cottage. A few weeks after I began work here, I was shown the original ledgers from Hope Cottage - ledgers that recorded the children who passed through the doors of Hope Cottage from the very beginning. Some of the records will break your heart - an entry that indicates a one month old was left on a back porch swing in the middle of the night in February. Another entry that listed 6 children, ages 4 months - 16 who had been abandoned in a car. We found a copy of an old newspaper article that stated "can you believe this happy boy was the child who was found abandoned on an ant hill".
By 1922 crowded conditions led to the construction of the first Hope Cottage at 2301 Welborn, the site of the present day playground at Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. Babies were cared for in nurseries there until 1960. Enjoying community support, Hope Cottage merged with other agencies serving children. In 1960, the merger with the Children's Bureau, a large foster care organization, broadened the focus to include older children in need of homes. In 1965, Hope Cottage merged with Girls Foundation of the Dallas Federation of Women's Clubs, a foster group home. In the 1970's, a rapid decline in the number of children available for adoption begain with the legalization of abortion. In 1978 Hope Cottage sold its home of fifty years and moved to the present location at McKinney and Fitzhugh Avenues.And that is where our story stops for today. Tune in next week for a trip from the 80's to the present at Hope Cottage. One thing to remember - for almost 100 years, Hope Cottage, with the assitance of the citizens of Dallas, has been finding loving, permanent homes for children.
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