Stand Up for Orphans!!!!!!!

I was appalled to see the movie trailer for the new Warner Brothers movie titled "Orphan". The catch phrase for the movie goes something like "There is something wrong with Esther" and of course it is a horror movie. There are enough negative portrayals of orphaned and adopted children out there and I am tired of it. It seems that every time Adoption Awareness Month rolls around some news station features real stories of older adopted children with adjustment and attachment problems, and of course the adoptive parents always claim that they had no idea what they were getting into. Then there are the movies and books, and this new one is just ridiculous, even titled "Orphan". What about all the thousands of positive adoption stories of children of all ages and sizes and ethnicity's? So if you care go the following website: http://www.orphansdeservebetter.org/ The Orphans Deserve Better Initiative is sponsored by the Christian Alliance for Orphans (http://www.christianalliancefororphans.org/). You can sign a petition to send a message to Warner Brothers, tell your own positive adoption story and find ways to get involved. What are you waiting for?

Here are some facts as copied from the website:

U.N. estimate of the number of orphans in the world today: 145 million
Number of children in the foster care system in the United States: Approximately 500,000
Number of children in the foster care system waiting to be adopted: Approximately 130,000
Number of caring adults it takes to make a lasting impact in the life of an orphan: 1

The fears fanned by the movie Orphan reflect natural concerns many parents have regarding the long-term impact of adoption. How will adopted kids turn out? How would adoption affect our family? Adopted children and their futures vary as much as biological children do. But studies show definitively that the fears stoked by a movie like Orphan are not supported by the data. In fact, the opposite is most often true.

• An expansive 1994 study by the Search Institute comparing adopted teens to other teens found that:
  Adopted teens scored higher on indicators of well-being such as school performance, friendships, volunteerism, self-esteem and optimism.
  Adopted teens scored lower on indicators of high-risk behavior such as depression, alcohol use, vandalism, and police trouble.
  Compared to their non-adopted siblings, adopted teens showed no significant difference in their perception of similarities between themselves and adoptive parents in terms of interests.
  Children adopted trans racially showed no differences in terms of identity formation and self-esteem, attachment to parents, or psychological health.