Help Rather Than Hinder

So you are preparing to adopt a child.  You may feel uncomfortable, protective, or defensive about the reality of your child’s pre-adoption loss of the first family.

“The moment the subject of the adoptee’s woundedness and loss comes up, it’s like a shield goes up and they can’t hear a word you say,” Jayne Schooler, adoption professional and author.

It’s painful to enter into your child’s suffering.  It’s so much easier to assume that all is well inside your child, especially if she hasn’t manifested any obvious problems.

The first thing your child wants you to know is this: I am a grieving child.  I came to you because of loss—one that was not your fault and that you can’t erase.

Present circumstances can trigger unresolved loss for an adopted child.  They can and do mourn the mother who carried them for nine months in her womb, whose face they never saw, and whose heartbeat was their original source of security.

Most adoptive parents, instead of helping their child to grieve the loss and find closure, deny his past losses and romanticize his adoption.  Denying loss and failing to grieve can keep parents and children at arms’ length instead of in a healthy, invested relationship.

Webster’s defines romanticism as “imbued with or dominated by idealism; fanciful; impractical; unrealistic; starry-eyed, dreamy; head-in-the-clouds; out of touch with reality.”

Could it be that you have unknowingly been an adoption romanticist all these years ?

The best thing you can do to help your child is to grieve your own losses which may have occurred prior to adoption—losses such as infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, or death—and to let yourself feel sad for your child’s losses and your inability to protect him from whatever happened to him prior to joining your family.

Thanks to Sherrie Eldridge for expressing these thoughts that I have excerpted for today’s blog.  You can find her thoughts here – https://sherrieeldridgeadoption.blog/.

Hmmmm, Cutting Through The Noise

What is so great about children being surrendered and raised without their identity ?  Did I get your attention ?

I can’t imagine losing my mom – can you ?  Both of my parents did.

You don’t have to take my word for it (just listen to enough adult adoptees and you will become a believer) – adoption is trauma.  Bringing a child into a stable, loving home does NOT erase their trauma.

Why would you glorify abandonment ?

You know, you’re basically waiting for a woman and her baby to have the worst day of their lives so that you can have the best day of yours….

Adoptive parents literally act like the stork delivers these children.

One person’s intense joy is a result of another person’s desperate sorrow.  I certainly saw the truth of this as I read my mom’s adoption file from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.

Tell people who are not familiar with conventional adoption about the fake birth certificates your parents were given.  That is one some people have trouble believing (yes, it is done all the time). Then tell them your parents’ REAL names were taken away from them and that they were both given a name that the adoptive couple preferred.

Imagine creating your family tree and having to list two names for each of your parents and then show their spouse with the adopted name so that someone might with difficulty sort it all out.  Yes, my parents were not allowed to use the names they were born with.  Are you incredulous yet ?  Most people have no idea that adoptees are forced to live fake identities.  My dad’s name was changed TWICE when his adoptive mother remarried.  He was already 8 years old at that time.

If that baby had lost his mother to cancer, you would be mourning with him right now.

If adoption is so wonderful, which one of your children would you give up to someone else for a “better life” ?  Note –  it should be the child you love the most that you give up, since you would obviously want that child to have the best life.  Crazy, huh ?

Ask an adoptee what it means to be adopted – adoption means you’re never going home.  Let that sink in.

Most adoptees would get an abortion before they would give up their own child for adoption.

As the child of two adoptees, I try to be balanced (after all, I would not exist but for) and not be too harsh.  Many people are well-intentioned but ill-informed about the realities surrounding adoption.   I want my readers to walk away having learned something real, maybe opening up further conversation on the topic.  Adoption is more complicated than you might imagine.

Many people believe that every adoptee was unwanted or they view the original mom as less than human because they can’t relate to someone who has given up a child.  Both perceptions are quite likely UNTRUE.

 

 

The Underground Marketplace

“Rehoming” is a term often used in situations where adoptive parents are trying to “get rid of” their adopted child. This can stem from behavioral and/or emotional issues from the adoptive child that the parents do not feel equipped to handle.

Most re-homing exchanges initially are made via the internet, through websites or forums. The majority of these rehoming exchanges are made by parents who adopted a child internationally. There is less follow-up/resources for these parents, so many of the parents have stated that they had nowhere to go or no one to reach out to for help regarding the issues they were having with their adopted child.

Although it seems like rehoming should be illegal, unfortunately, there aren’t many laws protecting children being given away to others. The problem with this is that many of the people who are taking these adopted children have criminal backgrounds or are psychologically unstable, putting the child at risk for emotional and sexual abuse, trafficking, or even death. Predators take advantage of adoptive parents who are emotionally burnt out, giving them an “out,” many times free of charge.

Kids can be put into real danger when adoptive parents are desperate enough to give in to this type of exchange.  It is not illegal but there is usually no background check and the exchange can be made with nothing more than a signed notarized document. No legal authorities need be involved.

Most people are unaware of the horrible reality of rehoming.  But it is a real issue.  Awareness can prevent a tragedy.  If you are an adoptive parent who is in a situation with a new adoptive child which seems unbearable, there are resources.  Don’t choose a do it yourself solution.

Without Us

It is difficult being a woman.  It is difficult being a mother.  It is difficult being a wife, a daughter or a sister.  Sometimes it is difficult having women friends.  Today is International Women’s Day.

I was in a difficult romantic relationship with a dangerous man. He lived in dangerous ways and he was dangerous for my own self to be with. More than once he physically hit me. I’m not denying that my own behavior may have pushed him over the edge those times but I also know that whatever holds a man back from harming a woman, if he is able to break through that barrier even once, the risk then exists that it will be easier for him to go through that same barrier the next time. So eventually I left his physical presence. I planned my leaving carefully to be able to safely go. I saved money from what was allotted to me for groceries by buying wisely over a long period of time and I left without saying goodbye. After I was safely at a distance, I notified him that I wasn’t coming back.

It took that courage of leaving to put me into alignment with meeting my husband, so I could live in this deeply nourishing place where I feel very safe and am contented. And it took other actions too, like being brave enough to place a personal ad in a weekly entertainment newspaper in St Louis, without which I would have never come in contact with the man I married a little over a year later. Traveling through life is a lot like being in a car where I always know that I can never actually get truly “lost”. All roads eventually go somewhere and one can always backtrack and find a “somewhere” that we recognize. Leaving can be like backtracking to where you were comfortably confident in your own self, after the damage an abusive relationship can inflict upon a person. I know that all experiences – the good and the bad – end up somewhere else eventually. In that there is a great deal of comfort and a real confidence for living through it all.

My family supports the regional women and children’s shelter.  They support women and their children to survive domestic violence and end up in a better place.  They help keep mothers and their children together.  If you have the opportunity to do anything that will keep a mother together with her children, please consider doing so.  The future of our humanity depends on us being here.

Judgment of Solomon

It’s a story as old as the bible.  Two women fighting for the love of one child.  It is the child who actually suffers.  Often the original mother will surrender for the good of the child.  It happens when one woman was the first mother and then another woman steps in and the first mother becomes marginalized.  Whether by adoption or divorce, it is hard to live that reality.  I know, I have.

I was reading the sad story of a woman who was adopted at the age of 4.  Got along well with the adoptive father, not so much with the adoptive mother.  The couple divorced and for whatever reason the girl went with the mom.  This adoptive mother spent years breaking down this poor woman’s confidence by telling her she was going to end up like her birth mother among countless other verbal and emotional jabs at her.

Time passed, she grew up.  In a sense the predictions came true.  She had a son who she breast fed and took care of everyday for 20 months.  Then she had to ask for help.  Her son already knew her as mom.  Now she has a power struggle with her adoptive mom about who actually is the mother of her son.  That is because she went through a rough part of her life and had to ask her adoptive mom to keep her son while she figured things out.

The adoptive mother agreed. Then, less than 3 weeks later, she called the woman and asked if she can give her a certain amount of money per month in return for adopting this woman’s son. She declined.  As an adoptee herself, she said she wasn’t giving him up and that with another 2 weeks, she could be ready for him to come back to living with her.

Only a week later, the adoptive mother called again and said according to her lawyer the woman will be charged with neglect if she doesn’t sign over the rights to her son. Oh, this does remind me of what happened to my maternal grandmother !!

Anyway, fearing she might never see her son again, she consulted with a lawyer at a women’s shelter where she was living and had to face the reality that this was going to happen and it did.  The adoptive mother changed the woman’s son’s name, just like happens so often in adoptions.  While the original mother still has some access to her son, I know, just as the reader probably knows by now – this will not turn out well and the child will be the one who suffers.

The Sad Truth

“That’s something that was, but my parent beat it.”  Nothing could ever be sweeter to the child of an addict.

If you are one, please know this – an addict doesn’t love drugs more than you. They are sick. There is always hope for a recovery.  Never give up hope, even if you have to be pragmatic and realistic about the situation as it is.

An addict is not capable of fully parenting while under the influence.  If there is a significant other in their life that can fill the gap, then it becomes possible.  Sadly, addiction often causes neglect, which can cause the child(ren) to be taken away from the parent(s) by the courts or child protective services.

Drugs are often the choice of the addict because there is a bad pain that they need to dull.  Then, the drug takes over their life.

My first marriage was destroyed by heroin. I wish I could have made a difference. Eventually I realized that I was not helping the situation and left with my daughter.  In an ironic twist, after our divorce, he refused to pay child support. I struggled as a single, working mother doing low wage work and having to provide not only food and shelter but daytime child care and medical services. Her paternal grandmother had cared for her while I worked from the time she was 3 months old.  I was offered an opportunity to make real money driving an 18-wheel truck.  I didn’t know if I could do that work but I was desperate enough to try.  I always thought my daughter’s time away from me would be temporary.

I never agreed to my ex raising our daughter.  His mother turned her over to him.  Had he not remarried a stronger woman than I was, with a daughter of her own, and had they not had a daughter together and were able to give my daughter a family, I would have intervened once I was strong enough financially to support her.  We did have visits.  It wasn’t much but I did what I could to stay connected to her under the challenging circumstances.  Recently, I learned some sad truths that her childhood home was not as happy as I would have hoped for it to be.  It is her reality and I am some cause of that.  I fully accept my responsibility.

It is my lifelong sorrow that it never happened for her to return to being raised by and living under my own roof but she survived and we remain close. Though I don’t forgive myself for not being there, she understands that we were all doing the best we knew how. At least that.

I understand the pain of any mother who loses the opportunity to raise her own child, however that happens.

 

Historic Reforms Keeping Children With Family

Only today thanks to a piece in the most recent Time Magazine, I discovered that one of the reforms I often advocate here became law in October 2018. The bipartisan legislation allows states to use federal funding to help struggling parents before resorting to putting children in foster care.  Congress recognized that too many children are unnecessarily separated from parents who could provide safe and loving care if given access to needed mental health services, substance abuse treatment or improved parenting skills.

“If we can get more children being raised in a family-like setting, either with their parents or extended family, it bodes well for what happens in this country in the long run.”
~ William C Bell, Casey Family Programs

Nearly half a million children are currently in foster care. After years of decline in numbers of children in foster care, the number has risen steadily since 2012, with anecdotal evidence and expert opinion linking this increase to the parallel rise in opioid addiction and overdoses. Family First provides struggling and overburdened child welfare agencies with the tools needed to help children and families in crisis, including families struggling with the opioid epidemic.

Young people involved in the child welfare system do best in families, in a safe and stable environment that supports their long-term well-being, according to research. The passage of Family First took a large step toward this vision by restructuring how the federal government spends money on child welfare to ensure that more children in foster care are placed with families. The law also provides more support for critical services, such as mental health and substance abuse treatment, in-home training and family therapy that can help prevent the need for foster care in the first place.

The law gives states and tribes the ability to target their existing federal resources into an array of prevention and early intervention services to keep children safe, strengthen families and reduce the need for foster care whenever it is safe to do so.  It also provides federal funds for evidence-based Kinship Navigator programs that link relative caregivers to a broad range of services and supports to help children remain safely with them, and requiring states to document how their foster care licensing standards accommodate relative caregivers.

There will no longer be a time limit on reunification services for a child in foster care preparing to return home, and a child returning home will now have access to 15-months of family reunification services beginning on the date the child returns home.  It’s a start.

 

Better To Have Been Aborted

It may surprise a reader to know this, but many adoptees actually wish they would have been aborted.  That is how painful it is to be given up for adoption and doubly painful if the adopting parents prove to further damage an already damaged soul.

I am pro-Choice and pro-life.  Not pro-Life like most of those are.  They are only pro-Birth, truth be told.  They are not willing to fund adequate financial support to struggling mothers so that they can keep and raise their children.

The world has enough people already.  We do NOT need to be fruitful and multiply any more.  In fact, we have not needed to do that for a very long time.  The population explosion first occurred on a small scale and with a relatively moderate intensity in Europe and America, more or less between 1750 and 1950.  Enough is enough.  If a couple wants to have children and is willing to fully support raising them, I’m all for it.  Otherwise, trust women to make the best decision and stop stressing over the babies you imagine they have killed.

I fully understand what it feels like for a child to be born into this world unwanted and unprepared for. My maternal grandmother never had any other children because of the shame and guilt she felt at having surrendered a child for adoption. She died too young and I fear what happened to separate her from my mom haunted her for her entire life.

I am a woman who chose to have an abortion. The timing was wrong, the father was wrong to make any kind of commitment and the pregnancy was not developing normally.  I am grateful I could go to a clean clinic, where I received counseling and good treatment.  It still haunted me.  I had a child before the abortion who I am forever glad I kept (even though some circumstances at the time of her conception suggested I should not have – I knew she would be just fine and she was/is).  I am a woman who went on to have two very wanted sons when I entered into a marriage to a good man who wanted to be a good father and he is.

Birth Order

My husband and I are both first borns and I see the personality traits are present in us.  We both have a middle and a youngest sibling of the same gender that we are.  Siblings are raised essentially in the same environment, so it could be assumed that we might be more like our brothers and sisters. Yet it appears that the same home environment makes up only 5-10% of our personality.  Many of us would agree that we are somewhat or very different from our siblings.  Genetic factors have more impact on our personality, maybe as much as 50%. Nurturing, how we are cared for must matter a lot.

Does birth order matter in adoption ?  That is a question that I came to this morning’s blog with in mind.  Does it matter if children are adopted out of their birth order ?  My mom was the first born of her original mother and also the only child but was the youngest in the home she was raised in with an older brother who was also adopted.  My dad was the first born and the oldest in the home where he was adopted.  He grew up with a younger brother who was also adopted.

One study concluded that the rearing order of the children had little impact on personality except for conscientiousness, which was higher for children who were raised as first-born. The child’s sex had more impact than did rearing order.

Most adoptive families do not consider the impact that rearing order will have on infants who are first born to their biological parents, if they enter an adoptive home as the second or third child. If a child is an infant, it is assumed that such a child will have the characteristics associated with the rearing order in which they are placed.  More often, adoptive families want to know the impact of adopting children out of age order on the children already there— especially on the oldest child or on several younger children when adopting an older child.

Sibling rivalry and the need for attention are very real factors in any multi-child home.  I have seen it up close and personal with my two sons and have experienced a misplaced idealism upon my own reality that simply was not real by my youngest sister.  I have seen frequently that the younger children often look up to the oldest.  I have experienced first hand that parents expect the oldest to be an example of a “good” person – whatever that means in any family’s context.

Here is one reality some adoptive families face – maybe you have a larger age gap among your genetic/biological children.  So you chose to adopt a child who can fill in the gap in age differences. Neither the oldest nor the youngest child’s position in your family is displaced by this decision.  However, in any adoption of an older child, the chronological age of that child can be quite different from the child’s emotional age due to the trauma they have experienced.  The reality you may find is that this new “middle” child is more like the youngest child in the family.

In any adoption – it is all about your expectations as an adopting parent. If you adopt a child who fits nicely into the age range where your children are right now, this newly adopted child may not blend in as well as you anticipated.  Some precautions will be necessary when adopting an older child or when adopting a sibling group.

The Basics of Adoption

Raising an adopted child is not the same as raising your biological children.  That is the first thing to understand.  I can just imagine my mom’s adoptive parents (a banker and a socialite) saying something like this – “If it were not for us, you would never have had the kind of life you’ve had. Just always remember that.”  And there is truth in that.  My mom would have grown up in abject poverty.  She was able to go to a university for a degree because of her parents’ wealth.  I was able to take a special summer session as a student at Claire College, Cambridge and see the country of England, thanks to my mom’s adoptive mother.

Different isn’t always better. Also, more money doesn’t always mean happier.  My mom had a difficult relationship with her adoptive mother who used a lure of money against her frequently.  I can see she used money to control my mom when that (to control my mom) was not truly possible.  I do know how blessed my adoptive grandmother felt to receive her two children.  But as my mom grew up that feeling seems to have mutated into something controlling and judgmental.

I will honestly admit, I am grateful I was not adopted. Though I didn’t know family beyond my parents, at least I knew who my parents were. I did not have the name I was given at birth taken away from me. I did not have to pretend to belong when I knew that I didn’t. I was not abused but no one ever tried to convince me I was special because they chose me for adoption. I did not feel abandoned or rejected. My parents believed in honesty and truth.

No one tries to make me feel better by telling me my life could have been worse.  Or that I would be dead if these people didn’t adopt me.  That’s putting a huge burden on a child to meet the adoptive parents’ expectations.

Adoptees suffer a primal wound by being separated from their original mother. Many have symptoms of PTSD. Many adoptive mothers never resolve their feelings of inadequacy due to not being able to conceive naturally. Adoptees are often overwhelmed by feelings that they need to search for their genetic lineage. As adults, adoptees often experience difficulties in achieving a successful romantic relationship.