 Hi guys, welcome back to my channel. Today I have my mom here again. Hi. Because you guys always seem to be asking for adoption videos and for her to make an appearance. Don't worry, there's more videos of the Valerie coming soon. You might see a brownie outfit sometimes. Oh. Before we get into the video, I just wanted to remind you to please subscribe to my channel as well as follow me on Instagram because it would mean the world to me. Today my mom will be comparing some old rules versus new rules on adopting a child from China. Did I word that correctly? Yes, because since we've done a couple of those adoption videos, I've just been concerned that the only thing we've really talked about has been how it was 23 years ago, you know, where all the rules were. And I know everything has been updated since then. So I wanted to do a little investigation on what those changes were and kind of communicate those to you guys. So if anybody was thinking about adopting, you would know what the rules are currently. And if you see her looking down, she has my little laptop here. I do. But she will tell you what the current rule is versus what it was back then, which I think it'll be cool. So without further ado, share you take it away. Okay. First of all, there are no adoptions happening right now because of COVID. Yeah. But before COVID, and then soon we'll have after COVID, hopefully when adoption start up again from China, they are no longer offering healthy babies for adoption. Any healthy babies that are available are only done domestically. So there's no international adoption at this point in time for healthy babies from China. Any children with any kind of discernible special needs are adoptable. Normally they are adopted in the age two to four range, but they have kids up to age 13 that can be adopted. At age 14, they're no longer eligible for adoption. So I don't know what happens to them at age 14. But they're no longer eligible for adoption. One of the things that's a little bit different that I was reading about is the age of parents. Parents have to be at least age 30 to adopt now. I think it was 35. So it was actually a little more strict when we adopted, but the age now is 30. And you can be a little bit older than you could be back then. I think you could only be like 50 at that point in time. But now whoever, if you're married, the person who is the youngest spouse, you can have a 50 year age difference between you and that child. So if the child was four, you could be 54 and still adopt a four year old. So you can be an older adoptive parent if you wanted to be for kids that are older that are waiting for families. Parents now, if you are married, so couples that are married now have to be married at least two years at the time that you submit your dossier. So you have to have all your information together, submit that, but you have to be married at least two years when you submit it. If either spouse has two divorces, the minimum length for the current marriage is five years. So if you've been divorced, they don't think that you've been very stable. So if either one of you has had two divorces, they're like, eh, we don't know if you're gonna stay together. So in that case, you have to be married for five years to prove that you're a stable couple, but you can include cohabitation. So if you've been living together for two years and then you've been married for three, that would count for your five years. And if you have had more than two divorces, then you are not eligible to adopt. So no more than two divorces. Families can have up to five children under the age of 18 in the home and the youngest child must be at least age three at the time you submit your information. So that's a little bit different because back in the day, you couldn't have any other kids. Oh, really? Yeah, so you could not have any other children and adopt, but this is, I don't know what the rules were back then for special needs. These are all special needs requirements because they just left out total healthy baby adoptions because they're not letting anyone adopt now internationally. So that's really why. Now they're still allowing single women to apply. You have to be at least 30. She was a single woman. Yep, which is that same. They have that same 50 year difference thing. You can still have up to two kids under the age of 18 as long as the youngest one is at least three years old. The income level for a single applicant is you have to make $30,000 plus 10,000 for each child you have in the home. Oh, wow. So if you have two kids, you have to make $50,000. So they wanna make sure that when children are adopted that they're gonna go to a home where they can be well taken care of. We had income things too, but I don't remember exactly what they were. There are additional requirements for single applicants who live with a male partner. So if you are cohabitating, it looks like there's some special requirements and single applicants, ah, this is different. Single applicants will be required to have a companion when traveling to China. We had someone in our group who was a single mom and she traveled alone, which wasn't really a problem because we were all there to help all the other families. There were two people there with each family. They weren't necessarily husband and wife or anything. Some had a friend or a cousin or a relative that would be with them to travel because it was easier if you had somebody. But now I guess you're required to. At least one parent is required to travel so you can't send Uncle Fred down the street. You have to go if you're gonna be the parent and they strongly recommend that both parents go if you're married and the average trip is 14 days. Interesting. That was probably the average when we went to because there were some provinces where you adopted and you were in and out in a week. They didn't have a lot of extra requirements but where we were, for some reason, it took, it was like almost a month. We were there like three weeks, I think. So maybe it does average out to two weeks. So right now, they're estimating that if you have a special needs child who is older, who is not in that two to four year age, that it's about 12 months from the time you make an application that you would be matched with a child. They didn't really give us a time frame. A total time frame. They didn't really give us a time frame for that matching to happen. And from the time we submitted to, I guess it would have been, it was a year, I guess, when we got that, but the government was shut down for a while because they were revamping the process. So there was like a hold of three or four months. So it probably was faster back then because they were doing a lot of adoptions. And they had more healthy babies to have adopted. So they probably were like, hey, we can get all these, get them in, get them out, and get it done quickly. But you have to be flexible and you had to be this too in the past, flexible with the age and gender of your child. But it was almost all girls. You were adopted. So a couple of other things that are just like miscellaneous things is that parents have to have at least high school diploma or a GED. Minimum annual income was the 30,000 for singles and a net worth of 80,000 for couples and 100,000 for singles. So as a single, not only do you have to make a certain amount, you have to have a net worth of savings, investments, things like that of $100,000. You got to have some money in the bank, I guess in case you lose your job or the child would need some, since these are special needs kids, probably surgeries and you would need for additional medical things, I guess. Oh my goodness, here's one. This was not a requirement. I see it. Body mass index cannot exceed 40 for each applicant. So you can't be obese and adopt. Well, there was no one in our group that was obese. I was probably the chubbiest of the people in our group. That's funny. Yeah, that was not a requirement then. If one spouse is healthy, China is open to a chronic, well-controlled medical condition in the other spouse. Interesting. So for skin, thyroid, breast, or testicular cancer, the applicant must be cancer-free for three years. Wow. There's a lot more detail now. For other types of cancer, you have to be free for five years. You can have some well-controlled health conditions like anxiety or depression with a positive mental health letter. So you have to have a, that's probably similar crying cry to go to a psychiatrist or something and get a statement that says you have positive mental health. Let's see, home studies for China must be done by a HEC or COA accredited agency. I don't know what those things mean, but you can find that on your state's website. It's a long process just to adopt. I mean, there's some people that just, you know, get pregnant super easily. It is. And just in the process of doing the home studies, filling out the forms, all of that, that took from probably December until September to even get all that together to send to China. And then it took from September to July to get a match. And then from July to September to actually travel to China. So it took me two years for the whole process once we got started. So that is, man, that body mass index, that would have scared me at the time. Oh no. I think I'm under that now though. Yeah, I think you are. I'm not sure what 40 is, I think I was like, I don't know the 20s or something. Yeah. Last time, so that would be kind of obese, I guess. So before we go, I would like to add one more thing. I'd like to give you the information for Holt International Adoption Agency, which is the agency we went through. And if you have any questions or want to know more information interested in adoption, give them a call at 833-346-9044 or send them an email at adopt at holtinternational.org. Okay, so that is going to be it for this video. I will have the website linked down below. So if you want to check out more information, you can. Make sure to give this video a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.