Maddie Hanson has spent the first 11 months of their life in a metal crib in a room full of cribs and looked bad on coatings and color chipped in an orphanage in Nanjing, China.Alex Lans Ford has spent the first three years of his life in a sea of children in a Romanian orphanage sale _ surviving in the broth, or even cuddled not consoled.
They were part of The Untold millions of children stranded in orphanages around the world from poverty, overpopulation and war.
Today, they are both Maddie and Alex are a U.S. citizen, loving families of the Pikes Peak region, and they also represent the joys and challenges of international adoption.
Since the 1970 international adoptions more and more popular over the years. More than 8000 international children adopted annually by families in the USA, which represent about 15 percent of all adoptions in the country.
With the growing popularity of international adoption has come a growing awareness of some of the inherent problems: children in institutions, often at third _-_ countries in the world have failed, the collage is of paramount importance, that their well-being. Or they have health problems _ malnutrition, pneumonia, parasites, hepatitis. Or both.
Some children survive, but at a price. Other better.
What makes the difference? Parents, acceptance, agencies and psychologists, the child begins to learn how children can be traces of institutionalization, and how can they be helped.
Children like Maddie and Alex Hanson Lans Ford.
The orphanage in Nanjing, China, where Elana Hanson and Bert Sick Scot found his daughter Madalyn a year-and-a-half ago seems a million miles away couple’s comfortable house in the divide, Colo.
But they never forget that the conditions in which they find Maddie.
If Hanson, 44, and Sick Bert, 41, a doctor, decided they wanted an international acquisition four years ago, the child, China seemed the ideal choice.
The severe overcrowding country had recently opened its orphanages, replete with an estimated 1 million children, mostly girls. The Chinese government punishes Chinese families, more than one child, for centuries and cultural traditions of more boys than girls desirable.