The two families described earlier are real, and both families did have foster children permanently placed in their homes for adoption. Brandon and Rhonda Hagy are the young white couple in Wadsworth, and they've adopted Mercedes, a young African American girl who never stops moving, and Talaya, an African American infant who is a new baby sister for Mercedes. When the Hagy's had difficulty conceiving, they wondered about adoption...

Rhonda: At first we thought adoption wouldn't be feasible for us because we don't have a very high income.

The girl's birth mothers both abused drugs during their pregnancies, and Rhonda says it's created a number of problems for Mercedes...

Rhonda: She basically had a very severe problem eating. She couldn't eat solid food, severe temper tantrums; she was all the way behind approximately about a year or more for her age.

Mercedes is still behind developmentally. Bouncing in the living room beneath a fish tank and paintings of Christ, she can sing the tune to her ABC's, but doesn't know the letters. But that's just fine with her mom...

Rhonda: There's never going to be an ideal child from our experience. If your children look different than you, that's OK. If your children act different than you, that's OK too. Really realize what a blessing it is to have this child that God has placed in your home. He thought about you and this child before this child was born and knew that they were going to be placed with you and that will help you realize how important they are and how special they are.

The adoption experience did not go as smoothly for John and Belinda Senick. In their late thirties and finding it difficult to have children of their own, the Senicks were foster parents to Rhonda and Shauna, a pair of white school age sisters. Belinda says from the beginning, Rhonda was a handful...

Belinda: The first incident, we had a little campfire in the backyard and it was time to go to bed. We came in and she would wear these bell-bottoms that were too big on her and were real long and they got all muddy...and you know, my carpets are real light. So I say, "OK now, we're going to have to go into the bathroom now and I'm going to give you your jimmies and you change into them because I don't want you walking up the steps with your muddy pants and then I'm going to throw them into the washer for you for tomorrow." She didn't want to do that. So I just put the pajamas next to her and I said, "I'll see you in the morning, you know where your bedroom is." Well, eventually she did put her pajamas on. Going to bed one night, we were in the family room, and she's hanging on to the bottom of the table...so we turned off the lights and we say, "OK, we're going to go to bed." So we went upstairs and she followed us upstairs but she laid on the hallway floor screaming at the top of her lungs for an hour. We'd go to a store and maybe she'd get mad at you 'cause you wouldn't buy her something and she'd just plop herself down in the middle of the aisle and she wouldn't get up.