Heavy Thoughts on Adoption

I needed to update this post – I didn’t get the inspiration to write this recently.  In fact, I wrote the bulk of this post prior to actually getting Sunita.  I only posted it recently because I finally finished editing it (with some help from hubby as usual).

In a pre-sin perfect world, the best place for a child is with their biological parents.  As an adoptive parent, I fully believe that statement. But we don’t live in a perfect sinless world and there are too many children out there who need homes.

If only every child could grow up with the mother who birthed them and a family full of love. Those who are adopted are not “lucky”.  I hate it when people think Sunita is lucky to have us and to live here or to have been “saved”.  We are blessed to have her and she is blessed to have us, but her forever family (us) has come at great cost.  She, along with all adopted kids, have lost an essential part of being human.  An adopted child lost the mother  and father who gave them life, their history, the line of relatives that give families “glue” and commonality, along with the more practical, useful things like medical/genetic history. Now, not to be too blue, Sunita and other adopted kids are often well-adjusted and truly happy.

But many adopted kids do suffer from a typical set of stumbling blocks.  Because of orphanage life being what it is, Sunita like many others, was physically behind (the research seems to show that for every 3 months in an orphanage there is a 1 month delay in all aspects of growth and development).  At a year old she was at about a 9 mo old level and was wearing 6 mo clothes.  Often they are also emotionally delayed, just as kids can be physically or mentally delayed due to external sources.

This can often take the form of attachment disorder (AD). Orphanages often make this worse.  Kids who have intermittent care (often from a cycling order of caretakers) can fail to make strong bonds. This translates to these kids having a difficult time truly bonding with their adoptive parents.  Only time will tell if we will battle with this – at this point we are feeling good about our chances of avoiding it.  Sunita had bonded with her caretaker at the orphanage and seems to be thriving here.

I have included this quote and website because I think it does a good job of explaining what we will continue to be vigilant for in our adopted child’s life:  “It can take the form of a persistent failure to initiate or respond to most social interactions in a developmentally appropriate way—known as the “inhibited” form—or can present itself as indiscriminate sociability, such as excessive familiarity with relative strangers—known as the “disinhibited form”" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_attachment_disorder).

As a preventative we decided to try and do as much of the caretaking ourselves to help form those bonds (as suggested in many adoption courses and books).  What this breaks down to is this: we became her everything, leaving little room for other people. We probably came across as selfish or acted like we didn’t trust our family and friends.  We just needed and still need to be the only ones who fulfill her needs to help the bonding process.  I can look back now after almost 8 months and see how challenging and rewarding this has been.  This has also been the hardest part of our adoptive process.  It often feels as though we are having to continually tell the people we love and who love her that “no, you can’t love her like that yet”, and that is HARD (even though our family and friends have been pretty good about it).  Very worth it, but hard.

Adopted children also often have stronger and more painful identity crises then the rest of us “normal” folk. After all, they have to not only become “not us” AND they also have to become “not their birth parents” to get to themselves. And who the heck are they really??? Talk about not fitting!  Any parent of any teenager will understand the depth to which their child seems to “not fit” (and not want to fit with their families at any rate).  But for me, that is borrowing trouble for a future that might not arrive so I won’t worry about it now.  But if your child is there, I so have compassion for you (whether home grown or adopted, the teenage journey can be rough).

“In adolescence, the adopted child is likely to have an increased interest in his or her birth parents. This open curiosity is not unusual and does not mean that he or she is rejecting the adoptive parents.” (http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/the_adopted_child).

Those of you who are near and dear, please know YOU can always respond by letting our child know it is okay to have interest and questions in their past before us, and when asked you should and can give what information you have about the birth family with sensitivity and support.   Please never make them into the opposition.  We plan on sharing as much as we know with our adoptive children, even if it isn’t a nice story.  Not only do we plan on always trying to be honest with our kids about their histories, but we will also grieve with them for what they lost and encourage whatever attempts they may have to learn about their birth parents and homeland.  I refuse to feel the threat that we will “lose” our children.  We will have raised them and for better or worse, we will always be family.

At this point you may be asking yourself, why would I choose to adopt if these are my feelings?

God gave me a dream when I was in high school that this was my call.  Thanks Abba, Father.

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