One adoption led to another for Kathy Pittis. She first fell for a little boy in Haiti, taking him into her home and her heart in June 2005.
More recently it was a 5-year-old boy she met in Ghana just last month while helping at an orphanage there.
Pittis now has six reasons to celebrate Mother’s Day this Sunday. She’s the mom to two biological, two step and two adopted children.
Kathy Pittis said she’s selfish.
She strongly questioned how adopting a child would affect her family’s finances, her own time and her other four children. Pittis also wanted to go to Disney World.
But in the end, she traded her typical resort vacation for one in a Third World country.
She moved to a less expensive house.
She gave up her fancy car to buy a Kia, though she said she does love it now.
Pittis did all this for a 2 1/2-year-old boy destined for childhood in an orphanage.
When her husband Russ started considering adoption, Pittis was hesitant.
Self-doubt crept in. She wondered if she was too old to take on another child and if she would even have enough energy to keep up with one. And then there was the selfishness.
“You start thinking about me,” she said.
She became convinced, however, after “years of seeds being planted, prayer and then doors and connections opened up to Haiti,” she said.
Kathy and Russ were first pointed toward Bolivia after meeting a couple who adopted from the county. Pittis even enrolled in Spanish language classes. But for one reason or another, it didn’t work out.
They then considered fostering a child with the chance of it leading to a foster adoption as it did for Russ’ brother.
Eventually Haiti came into the picture. Kathy met up with a woman she knew while attending Anacortes High School and who was adopting from Haiti.
The door opened and the connection was made.
What to do next came to Russ, who suggested the couple use their vacation time to visit Haiti in June 2004.
Once there, they learned the extent of the situation.
“Right now there are 1.2 million orphans in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere,” Pittis said.
Words cannot describe the conditions there, from the smells of open sewers to the desperation in the people, she said.
At the first orphanage they visited, they were inundated with a hundred children immediately referring to them as mama and papa.
It was at another orphanage with no running water, no electricity and meals primarily made up of rice and beans that they met Joshua. They knew he was for them right from the start, Pittis said.
“Part of it was Josh decided on us.”
The following Christmas, they sent Joshua a pair of tennis shoes and a photo album of everyone in his new family. In the meantime, they dealt with getting the adoption paperwork through the Haitian government system.
Russ and Kathy were told several times they would be denied for reasons as obscure as they had four biological children. And they were told they would have to get the Haitian president to sign off. They knew if they pushed the issue they would risk making the situation worse.
Part of the reason was because of the many issues the country faces, including poverty, a high crime rate and AIDS epidemic, Pittis said.
Orphaned children are on the list, but lower down.
It was a horrible thing to have to go through, she said. But looking back she understands it was a good experience for her because she was willing to fight for Joshua even with her doubts.
Eventually, with help from the orphanage, the president did sign off on their paperwork, while the approvals on the U.S. side went through easily. And one year after meeting him, Joshua came home.
An adopted child needs different parenting than a biological child when it comes to things like health, nutrition and language, Pittis said.
“Not different meaning love, but there are differences,” she said. “When they have a past, you don’t sweep it under the rug. You have to deal with it.”
Many children in Haiti suffer from malnutrition and Pittis had heard some adopted children hoard food as a sign of self-preservation.
“They can’t let go that it’s not going to be there,” she said.
To deal with the possibility of food issues when Joshua came home, Pittis kept a three-tiered plate on the kitchen countertop filled with healthy foods. Joshua was told he could eat anything he wanted from it and never had to ask beforehand. It was to show him he would always have food.
Joshua seemed to eat nonstop for about three weeks, after which he was exhausted just from eating, Pittis said.
She admits it was hard at the beginning when she and her husband were getting to know Joshua and vice versa.
“But all our lives are messy,” she said.
Joshua had a self-defense mechanism where he would zone out when he didn’t know how to deal with emotional or physical pain.
“It was just loving him through it,” she said. “And if it went too far, there is always diversion.”
He doesn’t do it anymore, said Pittis, who likens the episodes to childbirth — at the time they were painful to go through, but she doesn’t even think about them today.
As far as language, Pittis took it upon herself to learn Creole Haitian so she could better communicate with Joshua when he came home. But there aren’t a lot of classes or tapes offered in Creole Haitian, she pointed out.
What did eventually help was a book, “On (Almost) Even Ground,” by Barbara Ann Bineta Baro, who lives in Haiti with her two adopted Haitian daughters. The book is full of phrases a parent needs to communicate with his or her child as simple as “you need to brush your teeth.”
With the help of her daughter, Bineta Baro also put together a CD for Kathy. On it, her daughter’s voice explains to Joshua in his own language how he’s entering his forever family and will be loved forever. Words like that don’t come easily in another language, Pittis said.
Bonding was another issue Kathy and Russ addressed head on. From the moment they got home with Joshua, they spent about three months alone with him without extended family or friends.
They did so to gradually get him adjusted to the family’s routine and teach him he was to depend on them for his basic needs.
“I know we alleviated some of the issues of bonding with that,” Pittis said.
Even Pittis’ mother who lives with them made herself scarce. At the same time, Pittis never left Joshua’s side. Russ did the same except when he had to work.
Russ has worked for the city of Anacortes for more than 20 years in the parks department and currently as facilities manager. When he and Kathy married 10 years ago, he brought his two sons into the family. Tyler, 22, attends Northwest University, and Aaron, 26, lives in Oregon with his wife Ashlee and is expecting the family’s first grandchild.
Kathy, who’s been working at the Port of Anacortes for 17 years, has biological son Austin, 18, an Anacortes High School senior planning to be a firefighter. Joshua adores his big brother and thinks anything he does is cool, Pittis said.
Her daughter Ashley, 22, plans to be a stay-at-home mom with husband Chris Byer. When Pittis decided to take this year’s vacation in Accra, Ghana, helping out in the Beacon House orphanage while director Romana Testa had a hysterectomy, she took Ashley along.
Pittis decided on Ghana after speaking with a family in her church, which was planning to adopt their 10th child from there. Another reason was the estimated 1 million orphans in the African country.
“Well now 999,999,” Pittis said.
Among the photos her friends sent back of the orphanage was one of Moses, a 5-year-old boy with a huge smile.
Russ was on board from day one, telling Kathy to go. However, she was having similar doubts as she had four years ago including what a second adoption would do to the family’s finances, her time and how it would impact Joshua.
Pittis suspected it was Ashley’s sense of protection for Joshua that motivated her to go.
“Boy, she loves Joshua,” Pittis said. “I know that’s the reason she went. She was going to check this kid out.”
In Ghana, the children were in a better place than Joshua had been. It was more of a home than just a compound with barbed wire to keep people out.
Some of the children were biologically orphaned, while others were rescue cases, Pittis said. While there, she met two young sisters who would have been stoned as witches if not for Beacon House.
Pittis learned she and Ashley were going to be able to accompany her friends’ 10th child home. When Moses found out the little girl was going home with Pittis, he said he wanted to follow her.
It was somewhat out of character for him, because he didn’t pay too much attention to visitors other than Pittis and her daughter. He liked playing with his friends and the orphanage itself after living in a state-run orphanage for three years that was more like an institution.
The final decision didn’t come to Pittis until the last day she and Ashley were to spend in Haiti.
“I asked him if he wanted to be adopted, to be a part of our family,” she said. “But then he asked ‘Will you love me?’”
“For him it will take some time to know no matter what he does, we will never not be his family,” Pittis said. “It will be forever.”
The paperwork for Moses has gone much easier than it did for Joshua. Part of the reason is the different country but also because the family has gone through it all before. They met Moses the first week of April and on April 18, he was legally declared their child. They are now just waiting for the U.S. process to finish up and expect him home by mid-summer.
In the meantime, Moses got his own photo album. People at the orphanage tell Pittis he shows it off constantly to others while talking of his new family.
As for mothering the second time around, it’s different, Pittis said. She’s not trying to be the perfect mom or expecting that from her children anymore and not worrying as much because of that. It’s not that she doesn’t care, she said, but is more confident. This time, it’s more about loving them and nurturing them.
“I’m actually better equipped being older.”
Pittis said she also has more energy and even her health is better. Since taking in Joshua and cutting her sometimes 60-hour-a-week job down to part time, the migraines and cluster headaches she used to suffer from have diminished almost 90 percent.
“Everything is so much better,” Pittis said.
The family did have to make lifestyle changes.
“We sold the big house. We sold our cool cars,” Pittis said. “But no regrets. I wouldn’t trade any of this now.”
“Look at how much we have,” Pittis said of the quality Anacortes schools and safe community to grow up in. “How many of us realize it?”
But she added, “I can’t tell you the desire to go to Disney World is gone.”
Even so, the family will be moving again to help with finances and making additional changes.
How Pittis got over her selfishness was “prayer, a lot of prayer for that,” she said.
She’s also been able to let go of her desire to control situations around her by facing doors when they opened and letting go when they closed.
It was a path no one could have orchestrated, she said, and credits God for much of it.
“I knew God knew before they were born what they were destined for,” she said of Joshua and Moses.
Adopting was supposed to be an act of unselfishness for Pittis. It turns out she’s the one who’s benefited the most.
When people say the boys are lucky, Pittis corrects them and says it’s the complete opposite.
“We’ve been blessed by them.”
Children don’t want to be orphans
No matter how much we support, love and care for them in an orphanage or foster home, they are still orphans. Even the best orphanages in the world are no substitute for family.
Not everyone is called to adopt, but anyone can love and care for the needs of orphan children in practical and meaningful ways.
Right now there is a situation in Ghana where $5 makes a difference between filling stomachs with “filler” or actually being able to provide a nutritious “real” meal.
— Kathy Pittis
For more information, e-mail .
Helpful adoption information
“Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today’s Parents” by Deborah D. Gray, published 2002 by Perspective Press.
“Nurturing Adoptions: Creating Resilience after Neglect and Trauma” by Deborah D. Gray, published 2007 by Perspective Press.
“On (Almost) Even Ground” by Barbara Ann Bineta Baro, published 2004 by Bin’s Missionary Guest Home/Haiti.
The Center for Adoption Medicine at the University of Washington, a resource for medical and developmental issues in adoption and pediatrics, is at
http://www.adoptmed.org.
If you are considering adoption or desire to join a discussion on how to help orphans, Kathy Pittis invites you to e-mail her at .
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