For kids seeking adoption, the process can sometimes take years. Would-be adoptive parents tend to seek infants or young children, making it an even more desperate position for older kids seeking a family.
That’s why when four teenage siblings left an abusive situation and were seeking a loving home to take them in, things were looking pretty bleak.
After 2.5 years in foster care, siblings Alicia, 17, Bradley, 16, Cody, 15, and Emma, 11, were about to lose the only thing they had left: each other. In order to place them, they were going to be split up and sent to different families. And Alicia was just about to age out of the program entirely.
Meet Bradley (16), Emma (11), Alisia (17), and Cody (15).They’ve had a rough childhood. They were abused and…
Enter Eric and Phyllis Watson, a couple from Olathe, Kansas. Although they had no children of their own, they had just been approved to become foster parents and were joyously looking forward to adopting a child.
The next day, the couple received a text and learned about the four siblings and their terrifying situation. A bit hesitant at first, the couple soon decided to take all of them home.
“The turning point for me was they were going to be split up and I didn’t want to see that,” said Eric, a youth director of Faith Baptist Church. “God’s hand has been all through this process.
“We were thinking one foster child at a time. Maybe two? We weren’t thinking four at once.”
After the four siblings arrived, though, a shared feeling of joy soon made it clear that they had found a match in the Watsons. And on March 12, 2018, the adoption process went through in court.
District Judge Kathleen Sloan presided over the process, and for her to witness the siblings, who had been through so much anguish and fear, gain such wonderful, loving parents, she couldn’t help but shed tears of joy.
“There is nothing better than adoption, in part, because you all came in here happy, and I get to let you leave happier than when you came in here,” said Judge Sloan. “And you all are going to have to trust me on this: Judges do not get to do that very often, at all”
After all the papers were signed, the jubilant family and judge had their pictures taken together.
“It’s not what I had planned, but it’s so much better,” said Phyllis. “I love them like they are my own.”
Thumbnail Credit: Video Screenshot | KSHB
