Next week, as I am heading into a new job but back into the same work, I'll be thinking a lot about some of our recent conversations here regarding adoption and if people should do it or not. I know I did this once before, but I think it is time for some positive stories.
Does anyone who reads my blog have a happy adoption story? A situation where you adopted kids who have leveled out and NOT caused as much heartache and grief as some of us have shared here?
Or are those people off reading happier blogs?
For those of you who have large families, don't you have a few who are fairly cooperative and doing well?
How about ending our year with some positive stories .... I think they will help those contemplating adoption as well as me as I head into recruiting and training new families.....
So what's the GOOD word?
15 comments:
The good word is that if people think they want to make a difference they can. Biblical perspective, we are called to serve and relationships are the work of God- even if they can be inconvenient or troublesome to our earthly expectations, through Christ all things are possible. We adopted a sibling group of 3. Our #1 question was if they would be self sufficeint because we did not want to be parents of disabled adults. guess what?! they are not looking like they will be on their own. over 6 years later, my 13 and 14 year olds have significant processessing problems and conceptual deficets. guess what?! we are okay with that. we love our kids and know that they need our stability. even on the worst day in our home it is the best place they can be and we are blessed to be parenting them. is it easy? not always. there are resources available and we get out of life what we put into it. if people are on the fence then maybe they do not have the guts to step out of their comfort zone and provide a home for children in need. if you have room in your home, if you have room in your heart, these kids need families and there is not much greater purpose in life than giving love. plus, if i am miserable everyone else should be too...haha, it is a rewarding experience and i know that God chose me to be the parents of my kids. through thick and thin i will see that i can be the loving mother they never had. is that too much to ask? what is my purpose in life? who said things would be easy? if foster care or adoption were easy everyone would do it. if you have the interest, you probably have the heart and go with your gut and make a difference. one child at a time. parenting is hard work and our rewards are in heaven. we need to open our hearts and homes to the children and trust that we can accomplish great things with love. in the end, what else is there? good luck claudia, i bet my ramblings are not what you had in mind, but i applaud you for your service to the adoption community and think you do a wonderful job! keep it up!!
The good word is that if people think they want to make a difference they can. Biblical perspective, we are called to serve and relationships are the work of God- even if they can be inconvenient or troublesome to our earthly expectations, through Christ all things are possible. We adopted a sibling group of 3. Our #1 question was if they would be self sufficient because we did not want to be parents of disabled adults. guess what?! they are not looking like they will be on their own. over 6 years later, my 13 and 14 year olds seem incapable of that. guess what?! we are okay, we are good! we love our kids and know that they need our stability. even on the worst day in our home it is the best place they can be and we are blessed to be parenting them. is it easy? not always. there are resources available and we get out of life what we put into it. if people are on the fence then maybe they do not have the guts to step out of their comfort zone and provide a home for children in need. if you have room in your home, if you have room in your heart, these kids need families and there is not much greater purpose in life than giving love. plus, if i am miserable everyone else should be too...haha, it is a rewarding experience and i know that God chose me to be the parents of my kids. through thick and thin i will see that i can be the loving mother they never had. is that too much to ask? what is my purpose in life? who said things would be easy? if foster care or adoption were easy everyone would do it. if you have the interest, you probably have the heart and go with your gut and make a difference. one child at a time. we need to open our hearts and homes to the children and trust that we can accomplish great things with love. in the end, what else is there? good luck claudia, i bet my ramblings are not what you had in mind, but i applaud you for your service to the adoption community and think you do a wonderful job! keep it up!!
Excellent question.
Some of the best parenting advice ever offered to me was to focus on the positive. When my little foster son (who became my forever son) began to exit the honeymoon phase and show some really REALLY challenging behaviors I remarked to this friend how difficult things were becoming. She encouraged me to focus on the positive. So I do. He's smart. He's talented. Any sport he tries he excels at. He's come far, very far, recently. Less challenging and more enjoyable. We went through some intense Parent Child Interaction Therapy, and that made a HUGE difference. I also kicked an emotionally unstable husband/daddy out of the house this summer. Little guy's issues have improved since then. He now has a daddy who is doing better as a weekend dad and a home that is calm and happy. There's so much I don't blog about on my blog, because ex reads it. I wish I could blog more, because I love the support I get from this.
I think that the good word is that people keep pressing forward and doing their best. Sometimes the best doesn't look best until you are on the other side of it. For example, I was so hung up on having a stable two parent home I could not see what ex's issues were doing to the kids. Now that he is not a part of our daily lives we are all so much more calm. I felt like a failure when my marriage fell apart, but now I see that it may have been just what we needed to get to the good.
To me the good is also the enormous capacity of the human heart to love and change. It's remarkable and scary. Especially if you are just a little guy caught up in the whirl of adults all around you who make terrible choices. Love happens, change takes place, even if it's just little bitty bits at a time, it's good. One day we will all be on the other side of this and see how our love impacted others.
11.5 years into our adoption journey, and three of our adopted kids and one bio kid are now adults. One of each is still a teenager. A few years ago I thought we were going to be more of a failure story than a success story - but things have changed.
More of the story here if you want to read it - http://www.attachmentandintegrationmethods.com/2010/12/30/a-happy-adoption-story/
3/5 of our adoptions have been great. It is the 2/5 that have turned our lives upside down and inside out that give me pause. However, I think I was not realistic or prepared for those kids.. I think I had no idea the effects of abuse and neglect on a child, nor was I willing to contemplate that we would get one of "those" kids. We thought (wrongly) that there were ample resources to get help for troubled kids and that with love and stability, even the toughest kids could be turned around. I did not have a real understanding of RAD, PTSD, or FASD. I do blog the realities (somewhat) and I appreciate that folks like you and Cindy do as well, because I think that if folks go into adoption without understanding the POSSIBILITIES of what they are getting into, the # of disruptions will be much higher, which is beneficial for no one.
I definately see our adoptions as succeess stories. They all have had their rough patches--and since my youngest is 4 I know that I have many more challenging days ahead. But I would do it all again in a NY minute. Even down to the placement of Rob's sister w/ us who wound up not being legally adopted but is still in my heart my daughter and very very much a part of our family and our lives.
Ours is a happy story and a happy ending. Our 12 year old son Bobby joined our family in third grade after two disrupted adoption placements and residential treatment. Thankfully we listened to our hearts more than the written disclosure info and had the help of good therapists, social workers, teachers and foster/adoption support groups to enhance our efforts. I wrote about it on my blog here http://mamadrama-timestwo.blogspot.com/2010/02/disruption-as-blessing.html
Yes, there are happy adoption stories out here....smile. I adopted six children ranging in age from 5-17 with two of them being labeled MMR. Today they are almost 10-22 and yes there have been struggles and moments that are overwhelming but all of them are doing great. Yes, I have had some destruction in my home but it's not from angry moments...it's just children being children. These children all have a past and they have years of healing to do but how they handle that healing process depends on the child. Most days flow just like any other family and then you will have the times that you realize things are surfacing from the their past. For most of my children it has been learning new ways to respond to situations. It's not always easy but life isn't always easy. I didn't set out to make a difference...I simply wanted to be a mother. The other part just follows. To those who are considering adoption...please do not let people frighten you away from your decision. The stories that are shared are very real but there are also stories of lives that are pretty normal. Ask a mother of a two year old who has been very demanding all day,her new born has been screaming, her husband really needs her attention at this moment and the dog just threw up all over the new carpet. Life has it's moments...half the battle is learning to hang in there and tomorrow or the next day will be better. There is a saying that I have on my wall that reads..."PRIORITIES, a hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of carI drove...BUT, the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child!"
I worry a lot, but I think ours is really a success story. 4 years ago a sibling pair age 11 and 13 with undiagnosed RAD and bipolar (and a host of other issues) came into our home. They proceeded to rage, intimidate and create chaos. Now 4 years later, their adoptions are final, the youngest is attached to us and doing well in school. The oldest is not attached, but he no longer physically rages and we were able to keep him in our home safely. He struggles, but I no longer think he'll be dead before age 20. I think the whole family, including myself, is stronger for the experience.
Mary in TX
Brenkachika - have you thought about opening a second more private blog? You have a lot to share and I hate seeing you not able to blog about it.
Mary in TX
tomorrow we are travelling 8 hours to see our daughter Rachel aged 23 at her request
She was adopted aged 8, came to us as 7th placement aged 4 1/2, ran away from home aged 17 wouldn't pick up her phone to speak to us for a few years after that, now she wants to see us, has been in the same job for more than 2 years, has been paying off a mortgage and is engaged to her boyfriend of 5 years
she taught us so much about ourselves (mostly stuff we wouldn;t have chosen to learn!)and we had to accept that we weren't able to change her into the daughter we wanted
She was the only one of our 5 children who didn't get their money reward at age 18 for fulfilling this list - not smoking, not taking drugs, not getting drunk and not getting pregnant or getting a girl pregnant
She failed on all accounts, but we are now so proud of her and the way she is coming to terms with her past
We have adopted four children from foster care. Our first adoption were siblings, two and four. They are now 11 and 13. Out second adoption is our youngest (now 4 1/2. She came to us as an newborn. These three are well adjusted and bonded with us. Our final adoption is out 21 year old. We have known her since she was 13. She asked us to adopt her when she was 17. After much though and prayer, we gladly did so. She went through a difficult few years and still struggles. She got pregnant at 19 (baby is 8 months old now) and is pg again. I have no regrets about adopting a teen, even though there have been challenges. We believe that she has FAE, but it has never been diagnosed. She wants to be a part of our family and is remorseful for things that have been done. That makes a huge difference to us. Our family has been blessed through adoption!
We've had a wonderful adoption journey. After raising 4 biological children, we have a six-year-old daughter that came to us at 4ms. Her bmom is a heroin addict and has many mental health issues. I suspect she is somewhere on the FAS spectrum as well. Although our daughter has some sensory issues, feeding issues and occasional rages, overall our life is fairly typical. We've continued to foster as long as we've had her. Last spring our twin boys arrived via foster care. They were born pos tox, and there are many maternal mental health issues. They have been diagnosed FASD and there are feeding issues, pulmonary issues, neurological issues, vision problems and many delays. We have no idea what the future hold for our little loves but we don't have to know. Good knows and He will provide what we (and they) need as comes. We have and will continue to have ongoing contact with both birth families. Although this is difficult at times, I think the benefit to the kids is immeasurable.
We are well and truly blessed by our adoption journeys and I feel as though they are success stories. It isn't always easy and we have really struggled through many things and continue to do so, but our lives are so much richer for having known these children!
I am glad to hear some postive adoption stories. Ours is a very postive story. My husband and I have been married for 29 years. We have adopted 17 children ages now 3- 31. Most of our children were adopted from the foster care system at ages 11 and up. Several being 16 and 17. Our older adopted children, all 6 of them that are no longer at home, who are now ages 19- 31 have all done very well.Every child we have adopted has had their ups and downs but no arrests, no teen births, no drugs or anger issues.They support themselves And we are pleased to have 5 beautiful grandchildren. We see our adult children usually every couple of days. With the exception of one who lives out of state. We have learned so much more than when we started. And I feel many times adoptive and foster parents are not really trained for this adventure. We have had lots of help along the way, wonderful behavior therapists and a GREAT Adoption Attachment therapist. We could not have done it with out them!
I have adopted 4 girls separately. They are now 16, 13, 12, 11, the youngest adopted at 6. There have been some problems with stealing and learning disabilities, but all is going super great at the moment. My kids such talented, unique individuals. Sometimes as a single mom, I get angry and impatient, but then they surprise me with some new interest or idea. I'd say my adoptions have been very happy.
Mimi
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