They decided to adopt two “big” girls and told their touching experience

Emilia Zanni She’s 27 years old, a biologist, and this long weekend decided to join the viral Twitter challenge #AdoptBigKids and share your experience with adoption two sisters aged 7 and 5.

The aim of the campaign is to keep minors from spending their childhood and adolescence in homes, as most applicants want to start their relationship with babies or young children.

Through a thread on Twitter, the young woman reported that the wait was not easy, but after a little more than a year together, when she hears the phrase of one of them: “Mom, now it looks like I’m a happy girl”You realize that you have made the best decision of your life.

Emmy and her husband Abel Salazar They started considering the issue of adoption about three years ago when the legality of abortion in Argentina was being debated and the issue of adoption came up in the discussion.

“For several weeks the subject had been hanging in my head and I began to seriously think about whether I would be able to adopt“, began the young woman on the social network of the little bird.

And he added: “I thought about it for a few weeks and found a lot of worries or excuses, but I realized that most were really problems or fears typical of any upbringingand that these are things that can happen to me with both biological and adopted children.

She and her husband had an idea to look for a child, and when they discussed it, they realized that their concept of family did not go through the child’s origin. So they began to learn on the Internet and began the process of registration in the Unified Adoption Registry of Mendoza, which took them almost two years and a pandemic.

The most awaited call

“Once we were on the ‘waiting list’ it felt like a great achievement and we had a break, but it was short. A a few weeks later they contacted us about a possible relationshipbut we were going through an adverse family situation and decided not to do it,” he continued.

Three months later they were called again; They accepted and conducted an interview. Apart from them, there were three other interested families and they thought that they would not be chosen, because their economic situation was unstable.

“We were both unemployed and I was in my 1000s, finishing my dissertation so I could graduate and start a job. It was a “coincidence” that during those weeks one of the girls became seriously ill, so they decide to delay the process until he recovers. Once that happens, the process will continue and the judge will receive relevant reports from each family for selection,” he said, adding that at that pivotal moment, she was already working.

“Unexpectedly, a few weeks later, we got a call from RUA and told us this we were chosen as an adoptive family for a daughter at 7 and another at 5. Not only that, but the next day we were going to have our first date. My head was racing, trying to process it all in a few hours,” the young mother continued.

Emmy was very nervous that day. They were waiting for them in a square near the home and when he saw them, his anxiety subsided. “The situation became pleasant and we were able to meet and talk to the girls. Since then we had daily dates and outings for 3 weeks and then they moved in with us. The first months were not easy and there was a lot of excitement of emotions. Outbursts, moments of conversation, quiet walks, anger, moments of play, the house in chaos, family movies, birthdays, etc.,” he recalls.

And he explained: “Little by little, things fell into place and now it seems that they have always been with us. They go to great lengths to learn to be daughters and understand how a family works. Basic and naturalized things for us, were not for them”.

“For our part, we had to learn to be half-parents. It’s hard to face so many changes together, but the reward is worth it. In fact, It took me about a year to feel or perceive myself as a motherbecause connections and relationships are built little by little,” he admitted.

feel like a mother

A little more than a year since they have been together, the minors have grown up physically, but they have also changed their faces, and their character, and their way of expressing themselves, and their way of communicating is different.

Unexpectedly my adopted daughters arrived before my biological sons and how nice was that. I wish you could hear them randomly say, “Mom, I look like a happy girl now.”

— Emi Zanni (@ZanniEmi) October 7, 2022

“Originally their way of processing all of this was summed up in the phrase “they chose us and we chose them” and that’s how they explained to people that we are now a family”.

“I wish you could hear them randomly say, ‘Mom, I look like a happy girl now.’”, he concluded in his account on the social network Twitter.

In dialogue with sunAbel and Emmy pointed out that in order to start the adoption process, you have to be patient: “It’s not hard, it’s a bit long and you have to move a lot on your own.”

In this sense, they compare waiting to pregnancy and emphasize that the challenge is to build the relationship and learn to live together.

“They had no idea what a father and a mother were and what their role was.”Abel recounted, saying that “they were a blank page” as they had no memories of their lives before home.

By sharing their story, the couple hopes to infect others and encourage more people to adopt older children. “If you’re thinking of starting or growing your family, don’t forget about #Adoption. And if you’re thinking of adopting, go ahead and #AdoptenNiñesGrandes,” they concluded.

According to data from the National Secretariat for Children, Adolescents and Families (SENAF), at the end of 2020, there were more than 9,000 children and adolescents without parental care in residential or family care homes across the country. Between them, 24% were under 5 years of age, 37% were between 6 and 12 years of age, 32% are between 13 and 17 years old and 6.2% are youth 18 or older. Of the total, almost 8% of children and adolescents have some type of certified disability or permanent illness.

Most of and applicants are willing to adopt small children. When searching the national database for a 1-year-old child, 87% of the available files (2139 families) come up. On the other hand, when looking for families for girls or boys aged 12, only 1.34% (33 families) appear.

In addition, the data reveal how complex it is to find families as children age or when forming a sibling group, or when they present a situation of illness and/or disability. In relation to this last variable, attendees were told that only 17.69% of those registered (436 families) had this possibility of adoption.