{"id":214979,"date":"2019-12-06T11:47:18","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T17:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=214979"},"modified":"2019-12-06T00:48:32","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T06:48:32","slug":"kindergarten-boy-class-courtroom-adoption-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/kindergarten-boy-class-courtroom-adoption-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Kindergarten boy&#8217;s entire class comes to the courtroom for his adoption day"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>&#8220;Family doesn&#8217;t have to be DNA, because family is support and love.&#8221;\u00a0Those words from the teacher of young Michael Orlando Clark, Jr. encompassed the attitude of the day in a courtroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday. That&#8217;s where Clark, age 5, an adorable kindergarten boy, had a break from his school day reading and writing (and maybe nap time) so he could be formally adopted. And he invited his entire kindergarten class along as witnesses to the happy event.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-container\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Young boy invites entire kindergarten class to his adoption hearing &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wzzm13?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@wzzm13<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/obdB3lQ4oe\">https:\/\/t.co\/obdB3lQ4oe<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/AdoptionEqualsLove?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#AdoptionEqualsLove<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2EZsnTduKh\">pic.twitter.com\/2EZsnTduKh<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; MI Supreme Court (@MISupremeCourt) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MISupremeCourt\/status\/1202686719344201733?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 5, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.woodtv.com\/news\/kent-county\/adoption-day-secures-forever-families-for-37-kids\/\">WOODTV reports<\/a> that Clark&#8217;s new parents, Andrea Melvin and Dave Eaton, started as his foster parents approximately a year ago; now they are his forever mom and dad:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>\u201cWe were thinking, \u2018How can we build our family?&#8217;\u201d Melvin said before her new rambunctious kindergarten-age son cut in.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>\u201cI love my Mommy!\u201d Michael said.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>\u201cAnd there\u2019s so many options, right, for building a family these days,\u201d Melvin continued.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 1px solid #e6e6e6;\" src=\"https:\/\/media.khou.com\/embeds\/video\/285-d4264621-a4f0-4bc9-b57c-ea0343a80b7d\/iframe\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>17th Circuit Court Family Division Judge Patricia Gardner acknowledged the kindergarten guests in her courtroom on the county&#8217;s 23rd annual adoption day, which saw 36 adoptions. Each of the 36 was allowed 30 minutes in the courtroom to celebrate, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wzzm13.com\/article\/life\/family\/kent-county-adoption-day\/69-c037502e-f0ae-4dbb-a1f0-38744b17c127\">WZZM reported<\/a>. It&#8217;s hard to imagine any celebration was as heart-tugging as seeing a class of kindergarten kids from Wealthy Elementary in East Grand Rapids, complete with hearts on sticks, telling Judge Gardner how they felt about Michael.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My name is Steven, and Michael is my best friend,&#8221; one little boy said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My name is Lily, and I love Michael,&#8221; another little girl said.<\/p>\n<p>The very special testimony was followed by the judge&#8217;s order stating Michael&#8217;s adoption was complete. On the count of three, the judge, Michael, and his parents pounded the gavel together and the entire kindergarten class burst into applause, with a collective &#8220;YAY!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The joy of adoption, love, friendship, and family, was all rolled into 30 minutes in a courtroom where the power of love was affirmed &#8212; and adoption was normalized to a large group of children, and to their families as well.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveactionnewsonline\/\">\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a> for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Family doesn&#8217;t have to be DNA, because family is support and love.&#8221;\u00a0Those words from the teacher of young Michael Orlando Clark, Jr. encompassed the attitude of the day in a courtroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday. That&#8217;s where Clark, age 5, an adorable kindergarten boy, had a break from his school day reading and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":827,"featured_media":214998,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[9455,3473],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Kindergarten boy&#039;s entire class comes to the courtroom for his adoption day<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The adoption celebration was heart-tugging, as kindergarten kids from Wealthy Elementary in East Grand Rapids showed up, complete with hearts on sticks.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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