Kazakh boy helps couple create family Couple wanted to give orphan from Kazakhstan a home in America BY JAY BODAS Staff Writer JAY BODAS Jonathan and Lisa Miller adopted 2-year-old T.J. from Kazakhstan last summer. The Millers say T.J. is adjusting well to life in America. METUCHEN — One of the borough’s newest residents now calls Metuchen, as well as the entire United States, home for the very first time. Earlier this summer, residents Jonathan and Lisa Miller brought home T.J., a 2-year-old boy from Kazakhstan, adopting him as their own son. The two considered going through the process after having difficulty conceiving a child, and they believed foreign adoption would be an easier process than staying within the United States. “One reason we chose international versus domestic is that I had heard some heartbreaking stories in domestic adoption,” said Jonathan Miller, 38, a supervisor of social studies for three Edison schools. “Legally, after she gives up the child, the biological mother has a time frame in which to change her mind. There have been cases where the adopting parents who had been in custody of the child, beginning the bonding process, had to give the child back, and this is an absolutely horrible scenario.” Lisa Miller said that the couple’s reasoning for adopting rather than pursuing artificial means of pregnancy was that of compassion. “We were having trouble biologically, but rather than pursuing that, it was a very natural reason to adopt just because there are so many children out there in the world who need a family, and we needed a family,” said Lisa Miller, 33, a senior vice president at the advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi. After some research, the Millers settled on international adoption agency World Partners Adoption Inc., based in Atlanta, Ga., and chose Kazakhstan as the country from which they would adopt a child. “We looked at several countries, and from our research it seemed that Kazakhstan did the best job in terms of taking care of the kids and the whole adoption process,” Lisa Miller said. “At the orphanages there, or baby houses as they are called, there are doctors and speech therapists, and they care a lot about the kids. Everybody we talked to spoke very highly of the country, and it seemed like there were less developmental issues with the kids coming from there.” Jonathan Miller said that the former Soviet Bloc country, though split into three major religious factions, seemed to him to be progressive. “The country is split among Muslims, Russian Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism,” Jonathan Miller said. “There are churches and mosques together on the landscape. It is sort of in between first-world and third-world, though I found the people were very progressive, such as in terms of the way people dress.” After 12 months of preparation, which included everything from an FBI background check to a home study by a state-licensed social worker, they were approved to go to Kazakhstan for the purpose of adoption. However, it was never a sure thing that they would return home with a child. “We had requested gender, age and ethnicity, and they told us there was a child that was available,” she said. “At that point we got travel dates, and when we arrived there they showed us three children to select from. But there were never any guarantees.” Jonathan Miller said that seeing some of the children who were deemed “unadoptable” was heartbreaking. “We saw some kids there who were unadoptable, which is unbelievable,” Jonathan Miller said. “Some of the children are unadoptable if the parents have not legally signed away their rights to the children, so they are in limbo as wards of the state. When we arrived at the baby house, some of the kids would yell ‘Momma, Momma’ at us, and your heart got torn at seeing these kids who wanted to be adopted but in some cases could not be … or maybe there were not enough people who were adopting.” The Millers came to choose a 2-year-old boy they would come to name T.J., who had been abandoned by his mother at the age of 1. While there, the three spent two hours together every day for 14 days, a mandatory bonding period to allow both parent and child to become comfortable with each other. “On the first day, he was very shy, and he wouldn’t make eye contact,” Lisa Miller said. “But maybe by day eight, we walked into the courtyard of the baby house, and he saw us from about 40 feet away and leapt into Jon’s arms. What was really great about the process was the fact that we were able to see such a change in a short amount of time.” They were awarded custody of T.J. on June 29, and they returned to the United States as a family not long afterward. Since then, T.J. has adjusted well to his new home, the Millers said. “The research said that we should not have large get-togethers in the beginning, and to introduce him slowly to the grandparents, cousins, and extended family,” Jonathan Miller said. “But this past Thanksgiving’s family reunion was no problem. He adjusted to it all very quickly. And the cognitive tests we had done say that he is at grade level in everything except for his English language skills, which is understandable, though that is coming along.” The couple recommends the same process for others who may be interested in adopting a child from another country — they themselves are considering going through it a second time to adopt a daughter. The entire process can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $35,000, depending on the country one adopts from, they said. “A lot of people say to us that T.J. is so lucky, but really we are the lucky ones,” said Lisa Miller. “It is really great we went through this process, because everything we do with him is that much more special, especially with everything we have gone through.” To learn more about the adoption process, go to www.worldpartnersadoption.org.