Tag: Full Time Job

Forgiving Parents

It occurs to me that not only adoptees (who have a multitude of reasons) but probably most people has some issue with their parents that they would be better off forgiving. I know as much as I loved and valued my two parents (both adoptees) some of the discussion points in the graphic above would apply. One of my Facebook friends shared this and I immediately recognized it as relevant to the adoption related issues I cover in this blog and to my own experience of being parented.

My own parents most likely had unresolved trauma – whether they were aware of it or not. My mom seems to have been somewhat aware of her own adoption related trauma. My dad seemed to block it out of his consciousness and believed he probably didn’t want to know the truth about how he ended up adopted (he referred to my mom’s search as potentially “opening up a can of worms” – fisherman that he was).

When my mom married my dad, she didn’t know how to cook or keep a house clean. Her adoptive mother just didn’t have the patience to teach her. Therefore, she was determined to teach her daughters the skills that my dad taught her and that she refined over many years. We had chores to contribute to keeping the house clean, including sometimes washing the dishes and sometimes cooking the dinner. She also worked full time outside of the house and so was tired at night.

My mom was a very warm and loving person but her mother was a bit distanced, as indicated by my mom having to call her “mother.” I was born on my maternal adoptive grandparents wedding anniversary which helped to soothe whatever upset my mom conceiving me out of wedlock while still a high school student may have caused them as my were socially active as a banker and his wife. My dad could really trigger me and his anger was frightening, even though he never laid a hand on us. He was outgoing and sociable. Turns out his genetic father was too.

Certainly, my parents did the best they could with what they knew and the limited resources they had. My dad’s adoptive parents were poor and so we always had this extreme contrast with the wealth of my mom’s adoptive parents. My dad’s were very influential in my life, even into my adulthood. The cultural norms when my parents were adopted in the 1930s were sealed records, name and birth certificate changes and presenting one’s adopted kids as if born to the adoptive parents. To my adoptive grandparents credit, both of my parents always knew they were adopted but not much beyond that. The deaths of my adoptive grandparents revealed only some names but those gave me my start in reconnecting the broken threads of our cultural/genetic origins.

To my understanding, any parent who manages to get their children to adulthood relatively “intact” physically, mentally and emotionally has fulfilled their duty as a parent. Anything extra is grace and/or luck.

When The Deck Is Stacked Against You

When my sons were young, I seriously worried that someone might disagree with our parenting of them and take our sons away from us. On occasion, I even warned them that their behavior put us all at risk. That was before I learned my parents adoption stories and before I joined an all things adoption which includes foster care group. Since then, the horror stories I have read about Child Protective Services makes my concerns of yesteryear seem less paranoid. I remember a Simpsons episode where the children are taken away from Homer and Marge over some coincidental events and given to the Flanders. Since our family was watching the series on dvds at the time, I used that episode to illustrate the dangers to my young sons.

So today, I read this story –

My biological mom is now sober, almost off probation and holding down a full time job, while keeping her house clean. Child Protective Services is telling her that unless she serves every single meal at the dining room table with the whole family, she’s not in compliance and my 6 year old sister is at risk of being taken away from her. Please try to tell me how Child Protective Services is not organized with the intent to steal kids from capable parents. Even when incapable parents turn their lives around and do the work required of them to become what their kids need to thrive, the system itself fights against them with arbitrary demands.

I can relate to this comment because it is much the same in my family (and we have the added challenge that my youngest son doesn’t believe the food that my husband and older son eat with me is actually fit for him to eat and so, I make provisions to include this one in some aspect of what the rest of us are eating (at least what he can accept as food LOL).

We have a maximum of 1 family meal per day as both my hubby and me work. The boys have breakfast together, though the older one often chooses to skip breakfast, lunch is at school and dinner is together, if my husband gets out of the clinic early enough. Sometimes one of the boys is angry and chooses to eat alone in his room to cool off, sometimes we eat in front of the tv. Sometimes my kids even eat outside in the park.

Someone else notes – we are the rare family who eats dinner together nightly but breakfast??? Lunch??? Not everyone is up together or home for lunch.

That pretty much describes my own family. We do have dinner together and I grew up with dinner at the dining room table but my dad was not always there because he worked shifts at an oil refinery. Everyone is on their own for breakfast and lunch in my household of today.

This is NOT the first time I have read they will go to your kid’s school and ask them questions –

They can prove where the kids are eating their meals by asking the kids at school without your knowledge or permission! I told my kids – if someone is at your school who you don’t know and they start asking questions, don’t answer them until I’m with you! No matter what they ask you say – “I’m not answering any questions without my mom here with me, you are a stranger.”

One suggestion is to get this demand in writing and consult with an attorney about it.

Someone else acknowledges how wealth inequality factors into these kinds of cases – they push all kinds of 1950s era respectability on poor moms, while the richer ones can feed theirs charges nuggets at the drive thru daily. And don’t get me started on substance abuse being leveraged against some parents, while the richer ones proudly boast how much wine they need just to be around their kids.

It’s not where you eat that makes you a family, but how you interact, and dinner is absolutely not the only place to interact by even the smallest stretch of the imagination.

One person admitted – They had issues with my kids eating crackers from a little cup on the floor, dropping one and then picking it up off the floor. It was a reason they gave for removal.

The response was – Have they never heard of the 5 second rule? Lol In all seriousness though, kids need to be exposed to a certain level of germs in order to build up their immune systems. Eating a cracker off the floor is not even the tiniest bit concerning. I’m so sorry they did that to you.

And I will add – I am not the germ free spotless kind of mother. And my kids have been healthy as all get out. I believe it is because I allowed them to be exposed to a certain level of germs. I believe that is actually true. They say if there is too much disinfectant and sanitizer involved, the kids are more vulnerable to illness.