This blog is part of the blog series I have been writing on What A Potential Adopter Needs to Know. I have spoken to several potential adopters as well as adoptive parents, and this blog series has been long desired.
Difficult people can be found in every area of our lives, but I have found that the mere mention of adoption stirs up an array of emotions due to assumptions, personal experiences. and their belief system. Writing blogs, books, posts and comments brings out those emotions in my readers, and even in those who have not read anything I have written, but comment and give book reviews based on their inner anger regrading their adoption experiences.
DIFFICULT PEOPLE: Keep in mind you are venturing into the adoption realm, a realm of heated conversations, strong opinions, various degrees of power and touchy subjects. Dealing with people can be difficult but add the previous issues, and you may find it extraordinarily difficult. Tread lightly when expressing your opinion. Everyone is coming from a different set of beliefs, expectations, experiences, intelligence and understanding. These difficult people can even be professionals like therapists, nurses, and social workers (just examples of professionals you might deal with).
Difficult people can also come in packages you do not expect. As an adoptive parent, we have been complimented a great deal for our ‘huge hearts’ and our desire to adopt so many children. Shockingly, we have been judged heavily, often by the very same people who have once complimented us. We have also been judged by people who believe our children’s lies and fabrications built around their inner struggles and made up realities. We have been judged because of the rules we tried to put in place to keep our children safe and growing. Everyone has an opinion, especially about a topic such as adoption, and they are not afraid to share it.
WHEN YOU’RE THE DIFFICULT PERSON: Parenting cannot be from fear or anger, or our own baggage or PTSD from childhood or infertility or other distractions. We need to have our head in the game and take it seriously. That does not mean you cannot adopt; it means those things should be appropriately and therapeutically dealt with before adopting because it can rear its ugly head when trying to parent a child having less than desirable behaviors and/or attitudes. For example, several of my children had fits of rage/ anger that required patience, understand, compassion, forgiveness and an inner strength that I never knew I had until bombarded with such a confrontation. A parent coming from an abusive upbringing herself, with a father who had fits of rage due to his alcoholism, may be triggered by her own adoptive child’s fits of rage. Her PTSD will be triggered, and she will put herself in danger of either abusing the child (excessive or inappropriate punishment) or furthering her PTSD in another way.
In my previous post, I mentioned things a family can do while waiting to adopt. Becoming trauma-informed and understanding more about how the brain works during times of trauma are number one. These ideas and tips can help you become prepared for the challenges of being an adoptive parent.
LANGUAGE: The words you say can help a child through their difficult moments or they can exacerbate an issue. Learn appropriate language and teach the child this language. For example, replace ‘real mom’ with biological mother or whatever seems comfortable for you both. We have had deep discussions with our children about what our role in their life is, versus the role of their previous mother(s). Keep in mind that they will have a certain level of attachments to each mother, foster mother, previous adoptive mother or otherwise even if the previous parents do not deserve it. For example, a drug addicted biological mother might get more respect than you.
HOLIDAYS: Acknowledge to your child on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day that they might be thinking a great deal of their biological parents. It would be quite natural to struggle in this area. Do not take it as a personal insult, but a natural step for them to work through. Most every problem we have run into being adoptive parents, we have been able to turn into a teaching moment of some sort. They need help processing the array of feelings – hatred, love, anger, resentment, bitterness, etc. A counselor or therapist might be a good idea if you feel you cannot handle these types of conversations. Holidays of all sorts can be difficult. Our daughters struggled during the Christmas season. What should have been a joyous season, was just another reminder of their neglect and abuse with their biological parents. One daughter always remembered getting a beautiful stereo for Christmas, only to sold for drugs a month later. It broke her heart at a very young age.
SUPPORT: Now is the time to recognize and identify who is supportive of your decision to adopt – keep in mind, this may change. This will be an ongoing challenge for you and it’s important to have a realistic perspective of the people who surround you regularly. Friends may come and go as you find yourself absorbed in different challenges and frustrations.
HAIR CARE: If you know that your child will be a different ethnicity than you are, it is important to the child that you are educated in this area. Before you get nervous and stressed out that you will have to do hair extensions and fancy braids, it may just mean that you have salons or friends that you can call on for these services and for advice on hair care products.
FIND PROFESSIONALS: This seems obvious. You will need a pediatrician or family doctor and a dentist, but you may also need or want a psychiatrist, psychologist, counselor, therapist, or neuropsychologist. You will probably want local professionals but I have traveled through several states to get to an adoption expert and specialist. It can be worth the travel, to find someone educated and experienced in child trauma and adoption.
MONEY:Prepare your finances the best that you can. Save rather than spend. Say no to the extras like Fast Food and impulse buying. If there is a choice of insurance benefits that you can carry, choose the one that includes psychiatric, counseling, and therapy. It’s better to have it than to need it and not have it available to you. Children cost money to raise, that’s no secret, but a child with trauma can stress your finances.
INTRODUCTIONS: Everything will be brand new for the adopted child. Many experts, including Dr. Ronald S Federici urge adoptive parents to stay at home with no visitors for a short time – a week or perhaps even a month. Let the child get to know you, his new surroundings, rules and expectations. Bonding with just you, enables them to view you as the parent and get to know you in that role. Slowly introduce to family members – perhaps even have them wear name tags when relatives are visiting. Do not allow family members to hug or kiss the child at first, but to shake hands or just talk to them and get to know them. It can be overwhelming for strange people to be hugging a child.
RESEARCH ADOPTION AGENCIES: Ask friends who have adopted, join adoption groups in your area either via Meetup, Facebook, through a local church (even if you are not religious this group may not be religious) or the old fashioned, word of mouth.
How easily it is to talk to the social workers, case workers, and supervisors they work with – availability, supportive, personable, ethical, turnover of workers, typical time it takes to get a child placed, matching process of child,…
What countries do they handle adoptions with?
What is their process?
How much will it cost – is there a breakdown of the fees?
RELEVANT CLASSES: Is there a class you can take to prepare you for adopting? Besides the mandatory class you may have to take required by your agency and/or state, are there any other classes you can take to help you prepare for the demands of traumatized children? Keep in mind, that even adoption is a trauma – there had to be loss, sometimes several, before the child came to you. i.e. loss of their biological parent, loss of their biological relatives, etc. even if newborn at placement because they may mourn the loss of the voice of their mother, the one of whom they listened to for nine months in the womb.
EVERYTHING WILL BE NEW: Everything is new! It’s a new culture, environment, home, family, relatives, school, commute to school, teachers, expectations, rules, chores, bed, …. Give them time to learn, adapt and accept it all. Easy on the punishments or discipline even when you feel they should know better or they will be quick to rebel, resist and resent you.
Path through the woods. Beatiful summer forest background
Waiting to finish the steps to adopt or waiting for a match can be excruciatingly painful. The desire to be a parent is a strong one, but there are some things you can do to not only kill time, but be better prepared as an adoptive parent. Here is a partial list.
READ, READ, READ: Don’t be afraid to read the ‘tough’ books – you know, the books that say what you don’t want to know – the books that address difficult behaviors, bonding, trauma, and Nature vs Nurture controversy. Reactive Attachment Disorder is prevalent in the adoption community and is well worth your research.
BUILD YOUR LIBRARY: Build a library of adoption books – children’s books, self-help and parenting books will help to have on hand when necessary. I will be offering an Adoption Journey Book as a ‘Baby Book’ for older adoptive children who are already out of the baby stage.
ENJOY LIFE: As you can imagine, children change your life tremendously. Take advantage of the opportunity to be free from such responsibilities and do things to keep yourself busy – organize your home, travel, visit far away relatives, take a college course, develop your business, read, or do something that will not only pass the time away, but will relieve the stress of the ‘waiting’ process. If I had to do it again, I would have researched treatments for children with trauma such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy), EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) otherwise known as Tapping Therapy, CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), and Neurofeedback Therapy and taken courses to be certified or better informed. This would have helped me not only handle my children’s trauma appropriately, but help give them an avenue for healing.
LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH:Work on your relationship with your spouse or significant other. It is imperative that you parent together, in unity, with respect for one another. In other words, you need to be on the same page. I encourage couples to make a verbal and/or written pact that no matter what the children do or say, you will not be torn apart, but only drawn together closer. I will offer a free download on my website, as this is vital to a healthy relationship. Be aware that some children have learned to triangulate and manipulate those around them. For example, they will give the primary caretaker a difficult time and treat the other parent with the utmost respect and love. If the latter parent does not believe and support the primary caretaker (often the mother), it can create disagreements and a great deal of hostility. Mothers also tend to be the target because an adoptive child might see you as replacing his/her ‘real’ mother. Help the child work through this confusing time and acknowledge the biological parents in your conversations when it seems appropriate, especially on days that remind them of their biological parents, such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.
READY OR NOT?:Getting out of high school was liberating. We all remember that feeling of ‘finally being able to do what we want.’ Of course, then real life hits us like a brick and we realize why our parents never felt such freedom. Freedom is subjective. Many of our classmates chose not to have children because they wanted to experience that freedom – the ability to go where they want, do what they want, travel, save, build a career. They didn’t want children to weigh them down.
From my experience, children are not always the blessing people say they are and nor are they a weight to consider a burden. They are somewhere in the middle. They are a weighty blessing. They are a responsibility that we must not take lightly whether we choose to have biological children, or we choose to adopt.
Adoption is not the same as having your own. Let’s face it, you do not have to fill out scrolls of papers, hire an attorney and have a home study done in order to get pregnant and give birth to a baby. Adoption is something that you seek out and strive for. At times, the red tape and politics of it all can seem daunting. For example, there are thousands of children freed for adoption, but it seems to take forever to find a child. My husband and I had no preference on gender, age, race, ethnicity, emotional stability or number of siblings and yet, it took a year and a half to find two boys freed for adoption. I’d say that there needs more of a collaborative system to get these children out from behind the curtain, but there have been many attempts and organizations that have taken on that challenge especially with the use of new technologies such as the internet.
It is a system that needs revamping nonetheless, but if you are willing to ride the rapids, these children need forever families. This brings me to the point, are you ready to adopt? Things that can hold you back are numerous and not worth listing. The reasons are usually personal in nature or simply fear based. The unknown always carries fear with it, even in exciting ventures such as adoption.
Adoptive children do not want to be the Second Choice. They want to know that they were and are, wanted. Knowing this, you still may have a difficult time helping them feel wanted and worthy of your love, as they may have been rejected more times in their lives than you can count on one hand. That being said, if there are any issues that remain undealt with, it will come to the surface, and the child will either feed on them in order to manipulate you or will use them as a reason to feel unloved. For example, if there are infertility issues, healing is important for many reasons. And another example, if your little boy died, there needs to be healing, because this child will never be able to fit into the shoes of your little boy the way you want him to. Additionally, if you are adopting a child to be a playmate to your child, be prepared for the children to not get along and not have the same bond you might have wanted or expected. In other words, be careful of your expectations. These children are coming from loss, rejection, abusive and/or neglectful situations or death of parents, numerous placements, and many other difficult situations. These children are going to need your support, understanding and consistent discipline, not your pain and unrealistic expectations.
These children are going to need your support, understanding and consistent discipline, not your pain and unrealistic expectations.
The decision to adopt is a personal one. No one can make that decision for you. In my case, adoption was my first choice. I never wanted a biological child and considered it only for a fleeting moment when my doctor told me that it was ‘now or never’ as I was getting older. We all have our journeys that bring us to the thoughts of adoption. Interestingly, if you begin telling others of your decision to adopt, you will get many conflicting opinions on whether or not you are ready or whether or not you should adopt, but it is a personal choice, to be made by yourself and/or your significant other or spouse. As much as I was certain I wanted to adopt and it became our life’s choice, people still felt the need to tell me that I have enough children and should not consider adopting again. I am not sure why people felt like it was their place, as I never asked for any help or sought out government aid or anything else that may have made them feel as if it was their business, but everyone has an opinion and many choose to share it. Much like an author weeding through feedback, weigh the unsolicited advice and either consider it or throw it out, based on its weightiness.
Below is a letter to Christian Workers and Pastors. Please use as you feel suitable. Mail or email this to your own church or a church you know struggles in this area. Christians want to be welcoming. Jesus was. But sometimes they fall short. Many people do. They’re no different.
Dear Fellow Christian Workers and Pastors:
Where is your mission field? Have you ever encountered an adoptive family or an adult adoptee? Perhaps not. Many adoptive families have stopped going to church; not because of their lack of belief or anger at God, but because they find they aren’t understood and that can jeopardize the success of the adoptive child. We need to surround ourselves with people who understand us and if we cannot find those people, we do life alone, and speaking from experience, that’s not fun. I now specialize in helping these families be understood.
My husband and I have adopted thirteen children. We adopted from the foster care system, adoption disruptions, internationally and privately. Our youngest child transitioning into our family was newborn and our oldest was sixteen years old. Each of our children, whether from a sibling group or coming by themselves, have their own story. Their story consists of their background, why and how we chose them, their life with us and their life now as adults (in some cases) as well as their perception of it all. When our children walked into our home, we had big dreams for each of them, just like any good parent has for their children, but these dreams were clouded with unimaginable difficulties, and in my opinion, preventable difficulties.
I wrote and published PHOENIX BOUND: An Adoptive Mom Shares Her Struggle Raising 13 Traumatized Children to share with everyone willing to listen to the struggles associated with adopting children burdened with rejection, fears, insecurities, RAD (now renamed DTD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, attention disorders, attachment issues and mental health issues. My greatest dream is that my book be part of a curriculum or used as a reference tool for students at the being educated for helping professions such as yours that find themselves working with the adoptive family dynamic. “Why?” you ask; because it can be the difference between an adoption surviving and an adoption disrupting.
These precious children have been brought into a chaotic world of abuses, neglect and trauma and have learned to manipulate and lie as a survival technique. Often, by the time the adoptive parent realizes they need help, their child is in crisis mode and the adoptive parent feels lost and confused. The lonely adoptive parent desperately seeks help, often looking as crazy as the child feels. They are desperate because of the deep love and concern for their hurting child, their frustration with the process of seeking appropriate help, the responses they often get from professionals, and the fear they have for their child. Yes, sometimes they fear the child due to their child’s uncontrollable anger and trauma that has reached a level of Fight or Flight mode, but more so, the parent is afraid FOR their child. When children get to this point, they are capable and willing to destroy everything they have ever loved and worked for. This is when most professionals enter the picture. It looks like a mess, but the real mess is deep inside the child’s heart. Compassion, understanding at a deeper level and a supportive approach would be invaluable to the child as well as the adoptive parent. PHOENIX BOUND shows the reader that support and help for these hurting children has not improved through the years, despite our growing knowledge and understanding as a nation of adoption issues and struggles.
If you care about the future of these hurting children, take a look at my book, PHOENIX BOUND. It is a must read for anyone currently working in, or going into, the helping professions. It is an investment in the lives of children that should be healthy enough to give back to their world but often too crippled by their perceptions, challenges and lack of educated trauma-informed support to offer the world much of anything except a continuation of their chaotic world.
My children WANT to be understood.
Adoptive parents and professionals need to come together as one to aid in the healing process for these precious children. They didn’t ask for this pain.
Check out these videos, and more, that I created to help others understand.
Halloween and the Adopted Child The pros and cons of celebrating Halloween
Many children, as well as adults, love Halloween. They love the one day a year that allows them to bring out their evil side or be someone or something they are not. The decorations, parties, costumes, and the spooky events are exciting. For others, it is just fun to pretend they are a superhero, a worker in their favorite profession, an object, or an Indian with a papoose. Halloween can be a lot of fun, but not for everyone. We ask ourselves, ‘Should I celebrate Halloween with my adopted child?’ Here are some things to consider when approaching Halloween with your adopted child.
Respect Beliefs: If your child is not adopted yet, it is respectful to be considerate of the child’s biological parents’ belief system. It may also be against the child’s belief system, and in that case, it should definitely be respected.
It is real: For some children, especially those adopted from other countries, evil is very real to them. The boogie man has snatched children in the night to kill, enslave, or force them to be child soldiers. They also may believe the ocean has a boogie man under water waiting to snap necks. Evil and the fear behind it may have been a large part of their belief system.
It is creepy: The decorations may seem harmless and funny to you, but to a young child or a child from a difficult culture or family situation, it may be traumatizing. Our children have seen dead people on the side of the road in their home country. They were also aware of the Boogie Man who truly existed in their country. When walking into a department store after Halloween decorations had gone up, they screamed and ran to me crying, completely terrorized. We stopped going to the store together in the months leading up to Halloween. It was too much for them. I found ways to shop by myself.
Evil Exists: Whether you believe in evil or not, many of these children have lived such evil. Many of these children are from some very hard places. They may have been physically abused, sexually abused, or seen things that children should never see in their young lives. One of our children watched the family dog being killed on the kitchen table. Another one of our children was pushed out a second story window.
Begging: Adopted children often come into your home with a sense of entitlement and Halloween can bring this out to a greater level. Others have used begging tactics for survival in their home country or family situation.
Stealing: Adopted children typically struggle with stealing. It is a compulsion they have stemming from their survival mentality deep within them. Candy wrappers, in our home, have been found in heating ducts, tub drains, shirt pockets, behind furniture, and on the ground outside, despite our attempts to get them to throw away the wrappers. Locking the Halloween candy up in a ‘dessert cabinet’ can help, but it is not always enough to curb the issues.
Sugar: Many children are affected negatively from sugar and dyes, and Halloween candy is full of them. Pay attention to your child’s behavior before and after sugar. Be knowledgeable of the affects of sugar on the human body and particularly in children. Some people have chosen to continue in the events of Halloween, but then allow their children to pick out ten pieces of candy, donating the rest to an organization near them.
Poor Behavior: Whatever the reason, whether it is stated above or not, Halloween may bring out the worst in your child’s behavior. It may not be worth the effort when you begin to experience unmanageable behaviors.
Angie K Elliston and her husband have been married over 20 years. Together they have adopted from the foster care system, adoption disruption, internationally and privately. Their oldest child at adoption placement was 16 and their youngest was a newborn. They are committed to one another and the challenges of adopting children from an array of backgrounds and trauma.
