Thursday, July 5, 2007

Adoption Abbreviations

One of the many mysteries of adoption is the lingo. Any adoption website we have navigated through has left us wondering what all these abbreviations mean. Eventually, we figured some of them out like PAP is pre-adoptive parent, but we could not make sense of DS and DD no matter how hard we tried. The only thing that came to mind was that it meant, "'dopted son and 'dopted daughter"! Finally today we were reading posts from the Kemerovo Yahoo group and someone had listed the abbreviations. DS is Dear Son and DD is Dear Daughter. What? Affectionate maybe, but how is a PAP supposed to figure that out? Here are more abbreviations for those of you still wondering what in the world all these abbreviations mean.

AD Adoptive Dad
AF Adoptive Father
AM Adoptive Mother
AP Adoptive Parent/s
AYAP As Young As Possible
BC Birth Certificate or Because depending on context
BCIS Bureau of Customs & Immigration Services (now USCIS)
BIL Brother In Law
BioF Birth (or Biological) Father
BioM Birth (or Biological) Mother
BTW By The Way
CIS Customs & Immigration Services (now USCIS)
CoC Certificate of Citizenship
DD Dear Daughter
DH Dear Husband
DOE Also DoE or Dept. of Ed. - Department of Education
DS Dear Son
DW Dear Wife
FIL Father-in-Law
FP Fingerprint / Fingerprinting
HS Home Study
I-600 Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative
I-600A Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition
I-171H US federal approval to adopt foreign-born child
I-797 The new I-171H
IA International Adoption
IMHO In My Humble Opinion or In My Honest Opinion
IMO In My Opinion
INS Immigration & Naturalization Service (now USCIS)
FIL Father In Law
LOI Letter Of Invitation (to get a visa to travel)
LOL Laughing Out Loud
MIL Mother In Law
MOE Also MoE or Min. of Ed. - Ministry of Education
OP Original Poster
PAP Pre Adoptive Parent or Prospective Adoptive Parent
PP Post Placement
PPR Post Placement Report
RAD Reactive Attachment Disorder
ROTFL Rolling On The Floor Laughing
SIL Sister In Law
SN Special Needs
SPD Sensory Processing Disorder also known as Sensory Integration
Disorder
SW Social Worker
USCIS United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (used to be
know as INS)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

SIL and DD,
Thank you for the helpful tips on the adoption abbreviations. I am hoping that the AD and AM will be able to get their DS ASAP so that is will still be AYAP. For sure, your MIL and FIL are eager to meet their new DGS. I hope this makes sense to you so you don't LOL or ROTFL. LAF, Your DS's N

Becky and Keith said...

Thanks for the list! There is still one that I need to look up - PI. It's used like "I still don't think my ds is PI" Maybe post-institutionalized? It's always used when talking about problems with the child. Guess I should google it. BTW, the post from you DS's N had me ROTFL. :-)