From One Adoptive Parent To Another

As an adoptive parent, I spent a lot of time trying to access the ‘right’ support, help and understanding after adoption.  Just because a judge bangs the gavel does not mean the issues go away.  

Those of us in the foster care and adoption world know that. The problem arises with the system of help that does not understand.

As I have written about before, I adopted three times, all teens. With each adoption, I had different concerns, questions and uncertainties.  

After the consummation, your child placing agency and case worker go away, which from an adoption perspective is a good thing. It allows you to begin the process of finding some level ground as a family. However, I also believe that the significant of the judge banging the gavel starts a new process that can compound previous issues.  For example, yes, the child now knows you are not going to give them back.  However, the trauma, or anger, or whatever the issues were previously are still there.  I think about adoption often as a pre-arranged marriage – strangers coming together and learning how to live under one roof.  Further complicating this can be other siblings in the home as adoption isn’t typically one family with one child.  

You spend time trying to balance the needs of your new child, while also expecting your other children to understand. I think sometimes we, as adoptive parents, expect too much out of our natural children, or in my case, my step-children.  I know I did.  I wanted them to understand why our new son was anger, or didn’t communicate, or didn’t follow the rules, and more importantly, why we used a different approach to parenting than we did with them.

Adoption is complicated, and I know how I felt, it has to be a thousand times more complicated for the youth.  

At the age of 13, my son joined a new family. I worried every day if I was doing the right thing. I worried if he was in therapy enough; after all, he had been in therapy the whole time in foster care.  I tried to find a family counselor to help us transition to a family, but easier said than done.  My insurance had many family therapists, but they were better working with children of divorce than an abused and neglected child who now has this
new family, and folks that were all hoping, and expecting, this would be a happy transition.  (Don’t get me wrong, it was happy, but it wasn’t easy).

In hindsight, the things I believed in 2005 are not necessarily the things I believe now.  I look at all of my children and think through adoption, I have stripped their identity. They have a new birth certificate that says I gave birth to them. I wasn’t even in the same state when they were born.  

Their history and family are where they came from, we can’t change that.  

And what I’ve learned as the 13, 14 and 13 year old’s I adopted have become 22, 22 and 19, is that they will want to know their family, regardless of how bad things were.  

That was their family, their place of origin, and while I am in the role of mom, they had another mom. I’ve learned that cannot be erased by the change of a name or a new birth certificate, or a new family. And honestly, maybe we shouldn’t try to erase it. It might make us feel better, and protective, and there is a time for that – during their impressionable years – keeping them safe is priority. But, as these kids transition to adults,
the past is the past. I’ve learned you have to help your children find their answers.  

You hear about that in classes and in trainings, but when you become a parent that protects your child, it is tough.  

The bottom line is you always second guess yourself.

So, how does this fit into accessing services and support? The big thing is to connect with others who have been through it and understand. Secondly, I wholeheartedly support adoption transition counseling.

While this isn’t an official title, to me, it is a counselor/therapist that understands the dynamics of a prearranged marriage – a stranger adopting a stranger, and the human nature that transitions these strangers to a permanent family. Then, this counselor/therapist also has to understand trauma symptoms and effects as well as child abuse and neglect. Quite simply, this person has to know where the child is coming from and help
you balance that with the philosophy of natural consequences in parents, especially with other children in the home. Another thing that is easier said than done.  

However, during my journey, I have met some wonderful counselors/therapists that get it, and some that don’t. And it is imperative you find one that will listen to you. Think about it this way, we aren’t going to change the child overnight, it is about us as parents changing our approach, our goals, and focusing on baby steps.  

Those two words – baby steps – are the best two words I heard when at times I wanted to pull my hair out.  

Those two words brought me back to reality, and helped me focus on the small things, the important things.

From one adoptive parent to another, find folks who have walked in your shoes. Keep pushing until you find the right counselor/therapist that will help the family unit, not just focus on the child, and focus on baby steps. It can take years to undo what it took years to do – so for children who have lived years in chaos; it may take that long to change it.  

Baby steps.