A very sad story about the death of a four year old boy who was adopted from foster care has hit the local news, [ 4-Year-Old's Relatives Want Answers On How Adoption Happened ]. I'm horrified that the adoptive mother has been charged with second-degree murder and that so many people seem to be clueless about what is going on with the child's adoption and death.

The child's biological relatives seem to be baffled about the adoption and said they were working towards adopting them. They had taken care the child and his siblings for awhiel but according to them were unable financially to continue and the children went to foster care.

Personally I do beleive if relatives are available to parent or adoption a child, they should be strongly considered. However, I also hate seeing stories of children languishing in foster care, stuck in a limbo because a judge has given their biological parents yet another extension to get their lives together when it is clear to everyone else that it just isn't going to happen. I'm definitely on board with educated and supporting biological parents and other family members so they can parent children but there has to be reasonable time limits on that. They have to want to get back on track and some just don't.

No matter what, this biological family should have been informed of the plans. They should have been given a chance to say goodbye, especially members who had custody at one point. Ignoring the issue of the adoption because that is out of our scope, these people deserved a chance to say goodbye, to present the children with mementos to remember them and to let the children know they are loved by their biological family.

When our daughter left her foster family to be placed with us, she had a goodbye 'party' (that word doesn't really work). Her biological family all came to their local DSS office to share some time with her, bring her gifts and let her know that they wished her well. It also meant the biological family knew what was going on and could decide individually what they wanted to pass on and if they wanted to tell DSS they were available for future contact. Not every family or person can handle this but for the ones who can, saying goodbye is one of the best gifts they can give a child.