Archive for September 2008
Letter to my new friend
I THINK, i think abandonment and adoption permeates us into our psyches in such inexplicable ways…we’re totally confusing to those around us. they see us do things that just don’t make sense to them. i don’t know about you, but I have an over-the-top sense of justice, and a moral high ground and personal expectation that other people first admire then struggle with. i call it borderline borderline personality disorder. the world just seems so crystalline to me – i try so hard and everyone should try that hard! i’m always disappointed how people give up and move on so easily. when i commit to someone, i COMMIT to them. i’m horrified at how flippant everyone is with people’s emotions and how self-centered everyone eventually prooves to be.
i think also that we are such cautious people. we are withdrawn and remote and unwelcoming. we don’t open up easily, but when we do we bare all and give all. it’s a gift. people don’t realize how precious this gift is. other people, they guard themselves in a more constant and less extreme way. they are better preservationists than we are. they therefore walk away with more left of themselves. but for us, for us we have to / need to be this way. because what we need more than anything on the planet is something real. we know small case love, but we’ve never known unconditional love. for us everything is an existential crisis. for us without an identity, everything is a fabrication. we wander the planet seeking something real. we test everything for its honesty.
somehow, we have to find our own truth and have faith that our truths will shine through and people will see us. i crawl under my rock and hide from people, but i find strength in my voice. it gives me a little purpose. like the words you write are beautiful and elegant, i know my words reach people. there is something about us – and sang-shil’s land of the not-so-calm – and other thoughtful KAD’s that nobody can fault. there is the real that we seek in the truth that we speak.
and that’s why there is also something beautiful about our depressions. learning to connect to our emotions and expressing them is beautiful and pure. it’s such a sordid ugly world, but our pain is pure and our hope is pure. we have so much to share. the world is better because we are in it.
so don’t despair.
you are not alone
we are family.
Memento of Korea
I visit the homes of well-traveled friends, marveling at the mementos they have brought back with them. Cultural artifacts they have gathered adorn their walls, reminding them of fond times they have spent in those places.
Interspersed among their mementos are snapshots or portraits of their families.
My walls, however, are bare.
I have been estranged, more or less, from my adoptive family since I was 17. I have done some traveling myself, and never found anything worthy of memories to hang on my walls. I have always been on the move and the transient nature of my existence does not give me the freedom to scar a wall with the commitment of a nail.
The only thing scarred, it seems, is me.
(figuratively and literally)
I forget about my scar, hidden as it is.
The scar is the size of a quarter, mottled like a banana chip, its texture smooth in places, dimpled in others. Dimpled where the stitches entered and exited. What trauma caused this?
I wish my scar could talk.
Maybe my scar could tell me why i have always, always been solemn
Maybe my scar could tell me my name, who I am.
I love my scar.
It’s all that I came to America with.
My memento of Korea.
My Life After Abuse
This is an extremely gross and disturbing video, so you might not want to watch it.
But it effectively illustrates what complex post traumatic stress feels like – something that childhood sexual abuse survivors have to live with daily.
Raw Meat
i am an adult survivor of childhood incest, who has grown up and learned to work around the issues (or so i thought) to my own satisfaction, but apparently not to the satisfaction of others. and so i’ve decided to go public and share with you what those implications are so your awareness can make you a better friend to others than my friends have been to me.
there is in this society a gross lack of empathy that produces insensitive statements like, “get over it,” or “speak to the hand,” or “those with baggage need not reply.” and there is also an over-abundance of armchair psychologists with no more credentials than stacks of self-help books ready to point out where you need to improve yourself.
to which i say, unless you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, you just can’t know how moronic and/or inadequate your recriminations and criticisms are, so i ask:
is it morally right to criticize the actions of a starving person when one is well fed?
I think not.
i am a victim. victimization exists and you don’t get over it. you live with it and pat yourself on the back that you’re not in a morgue somewhere. you are a victim and you will always be a victim and you’re proud you lived through it and nobody can take that away from you. you are a veteran of war and every day that you are not dead, you are a survivor. you are always both. victim AND survivor. you process the world and people differently after a hellish experience and that’s totally understandable. or rather, it should be. but in our world, it’s not allowed. to disclose any trauma makes you a whiner. to show anyone your weaknesses makes you disgusting and pathetic. this is a no-baggage-allowed kind of world. A pathological system where victims are partially to blame for their victimization and whereupon silence is defacto and isolation is perpetuated.
when, as in my case, you are adopted from a foreign country, into a strange world where nobody looks like you, into a family where your siblings resent you for just being present and your unstable mother doesn’t believe in affection so your daily life is spent entirely alone and emotionally neglected, and your father who has more than affection for you molests you in the shower, molests you in your bed, molests you whenever nobody else is around, when mothers and neighbors turn a blind eye and you are always being watched by your perpetrator, when your minister molests you and others try to rape you, that fundamentally affects your approach to the world. when you spend your entire childhood in silence due to threats and manipulation, you can confide in no one and are therefore shut off from normal relations with society / friends, and every minute of every day you carry this huge burden, this secret that will shatter multiple lives that you are the sole keeper of. you never know what it is to be a child.
when you were not allowed to express your needs as a child, during that time in your life when you are all about needs and unable to provide for any of them yourself, and worse yet are hushed and programmed to suppress your own immediate needs or inner needs – that cuts you off from participating in the rest of the world and you must just watch and be subjected to everyone else saying, me, me, me. especially when it’s your parents saying me, me, me, and they use you, a child, as a resource to take care of their own needs. your needs are always less important than everyone else’s needs. you no longer even try to express them. you forget how. you tell yourself you have no needs. you become an island unto oneself.
you learn how to get by. year after year after year after year of never-ending abuse with no options available to you save the potential equal horror of some foster family. you do what you need to do. you learn there is nothing anyone can do to you which can’t be lived through. you learn to participate without being present. you learn this while you are still in diapers. you learn no one is going to save you or take care of you. you have no family. you are the only family you’ll ever have.
this is not something you “get over.” it is something you deal with daily, something you try to improve upon, but you can never get over. it formed you indelibly. this is the message i want to get across to people: incest victims are to be applauded for making it through another year, and not to be pitied over the violation of their bodies, because that was a minor assault compared to the comprehensive restructuring of their lives in order to facilitate that abuse. they are to be sympathized with because they live life without having experienced innocence, without having had a childhood, never knowing how it feels to be care free or loved, and growing up entirely isolated, with no one looking out for their interests. monkeys die in environments like that. and the ones who live are never the same. and you would not say to that poor creature – oh come on, get over it – you’re so pathetic. and it is not something any self-help book or spiritual teaching is going to make go away. it is something that has become part of who you are. it is a parallel world that no one but another incest survivor can understand.
so there you are, like a feral child in a foreign land of well-adjusted people who know how to communicate, who know how to express their own needs, who champion their own needs, and who trample all over you because you are mute. and because you are so handicapped, you get exploited time and time again. and you can’t comprehend how most people who have experienced one tenth the trauma you have can act so inhuman, be so self serving, living so purposelessly, so lacking in integrity, so blindly and without conviction. the human race disappoints so much so you wonder if being isolated and feral isn’t somehow better.
it is not true that you seek out powerless situations. it is more that almost anyone who can express themselves wins out because they are always more powerful, because your voice was taken away from you so you never gained any skill in its use. it is human nature for others to get away with as much as they can. they see your lame struggles to assert yourself as tacit approval for whatever they want. they don’t see that you are trying to form the word “no.” it is a silent scream. it is always at this point that your survival skills kick in to autopilot.
so you win and i’m your puppet. but you can never ever do anything harmful to me, because you can’t reach that deep. you play dead. and you live.
it is also not true that you have no self esteem or that you hate yourself. for to not end up like the infant monkeys that perished for science speaks a lot about self love and preservation. that all incest victims have not killed themselves is amazing. the positive side effect of living all your formative years in an untenable position is an appreciation for all things that do not cause you pain, and the knowledge that you have inner strengths unknown to most people is a source of pride. but the resiliency of children becomes brittle as you age, and you lose hope as each interaction with the rest of the world fails.
what is true is you have no clue how to form relationships. because you never really participated in the world, in fact, you were barred from participating in the world, you don’t understand how people connect with each other or how they communicate or what makes people laugh or what fun is. you can’t relate to them and they can’t relate to you. you have been sentenced to a life of never-ending isolation. you pantomime what others are doing so they can relate to you, but your message is lost on them. and the message is:
you are privileged and so, so lucky. be kind to your fellow man. be kind to wounded animals and abused children. be generous to those who struggle with skills you take for granted. be less self-serving and make the world a better, safer place.
my disappearance was due to a breakdown. an inner rage and grieving for that innocence everyone else knows that i can never know. rage for trying so hard to live an authentic life of integrity and meaning, doing an admirable job, yet ending up empty handed and alone and abandoned by those i love. rage that the only time i allow myself to trust i am betrayed. rage that i am judged so harshly for my social ineptitude. rage that i am criticized for not managing my life the way a normal person would. disappointed in humanity and its lack of integrity. i looked into the abyss of hopelessness and nearly threw myself at its mercy.
but somehow, the part of me that never gives up came to my rescue again. only this time, i go to therapy to learn how to live better amongst the rest of you, because you can’t do it through self help and you can’t leave it to the clueless. and today i choose to end the silence and express myself.
i’ve been reading and reading and reading other people’s stories on the net and it is so apparent that awareness is so lacking in the general population as to the effects of incest on victims as adults. i just thought it was my duty to let people know they’d met one and that they can’t/shouldn’t fit them into the paradigm of what they know. we had to thrive under unique circumstances and our methods are almost hard-wired into us. that we don’t choose to be victimized. that we don’t seek out co-dependent abusive relationships, but that we are more susceptible and vulnerable. that the victimization was so insidious as to affect every aspect of a person’s life, and that the struggle to adapt in a world where everyone else has the requisite tools, but you are lacking them, should be looked upon with charity instead of the disdain that it is. that the rest of my days will be spent debriefing and learning social skills you take for granted.
*****
and to you “no baggage” people, i will NOT get over it. being an arrogant hard-ass does NOT make you stronger than everyone else, and you have no grounds discounting everyone who has issues. because someone who has no issues like yourself but can deliver “get over it” statements obviously has A LOT of issues.
this is my baggage.
i’m proud of what it’s been through, that i survived.
i deserve respect
Adoptees, were you completely truthful with your adoptive parents?
Growing up, when you were asked how you “felt” about adoption did you tell the truth? Or if you were asked if you wanted to “find” your parents, were you honest with your adoptive family?
I had wonderful parents and, as a kid, when they wanted to talk or asked how I felt about searching, I didn’t want to hurt their feelings so I told them I had no interest.
Answer:
The only people to inquire about adoption were strangers upon first meeting me. Because I was sheltered, my parents were always right there. Nobody ever asked me how I “felt” about it. Instead, they framed the questions in such a way that there was no answer I could possibly say except what corroborated their own conclusions.
For example:
“you must feel very lucky such nice people adopted you, don’t you?”
Meanwhile, mommy and daddy are standing right next to me smiling, nodding, and expecting me to nod too.
People were not really asking me how I felt. People were really praising my parents and admonishing me to feel grateful.With that much pressure and so little interest in what I actually felt, honesty was never really an option.
The truth is, I didn’t know how I felt about adoption.
The truth is, every time that question came up it paralyzed me.
The truth is, I wanted to believe with all my heart adoption was great and wonderful.
Even during all those years I was being abused, I wanted to believe with all my heart adoption was great and wonderful!
The truth is, I had to search for and settle for breadcrumbs and leftovers of affection and it was anything but wonderful.If I could have verbalized the truth I felt, my truth would have been that having the distinction of being adopted made me feel like the loneliest child on the planet, because I was the only adopted person I’d ever met.
The truth is, I knew no one wanted to know the truth.As for being asked about looking for my birth parents, the only people who ever asked were new friends. I always felt other people were living out some talk show investigative adventure fantasy through me, and I didn’t want to contribute to that. I didn’t want to be a novelty, a freak or oddball. I already felt odd enough as it was. The truth was I was the odd man out. I was the only person of color I knew.
When I actually did consider searching for a moment, I would look at the sea of white faces around me that I didn’t know and think about the impossibility of finding a Korean face, thousands of miles away, in a sea of black hair and black eyes, in a country I couldn’t remember and couldn’t speak their language, and be sad that I could say, “all asians look alike.” They were all aliens to me. The possibility of finding my mother was absolutely futile and hopeless to me as a child.
Still later, when asked that same question, I would reflect on the many years of abuse I’d put up with and how I’d been abandoned to begin with and think, “families suck.” So finally, as an teenager when people asked me, I would say “i can’t handle one family. How can I handle two? No. I don’t need the heartache.”
It wasn’t until my parents died two years ago that I could finally be truthful publicly about how I feel about adoption. It took over a year to wrestle with a lifetime, over four decades, of being a brave solider and suppressing never being allowed to express how I really felt about adoption.
Today I am forty four. Ask me today and I will tell you how I feel.
Adoption hurts.
Are view of interracial adoption different in various parts of the US?
my husband and i are white, we are looking to adopt. the race factor isn’t that big of an issue to us.
we live in central california, and we see bi-racial couples and childeren all the time, and no one seems to be bothered by it.
is it different in other parts of the US? and why
because it doesn’t seem to make a diffence in our area, what is you opinion on us adopting a child of another race?
and does the race matter?
Best Answer – Chosen by Asker
sadly, i think the fact that it’s even up for discussion indicates what an uneasy relationship we all have with the topic of race, much less when we are forced to deal with it’s ism in our lives…
i do not believe racism can be narrowed down by region anymore. we live in a mobile culture, and people with bias have been broadcast from sea to shining sea. and the nature of racism has changed, because it is aware of it’s public face, so its manifestation is more subtle and nuanced. you never can know when you will meet it or what form it will take. but it lingers. it is everywhere. in practice, we have not caught up with the ideal of “we are the world” yet.
even in a cosmopolitan city your children will encounter racism. but in a cosmopolitan city, there too will your children encounter more people to identify with. even in a city, there are regional differences. i live in a major city, but its cosmopolitan has moved to the edges of the urban center, so the center is now predominantly an economically advantaged racial mono-culture, while various races are forced by economics or by choosing community to hug the city’s margins. the racial divide is now a fifteen minute drive by car. it is the inverse of the white flight found during the genesis of surburban developments.
and if you travel to the rural areas, an hour drive by car, race and economic class become even more distinct and separated. i don’t believe there is more racism there, just that it is more obvious.
odds are that, even with your best efforts, you will never be able to offer an experience that can give your child adequate access to their race’s experience, as your race might be the limiting factor for entry into a racial community. no matter how open and supportive you are with your children, you will not be able to shield them from society recognizing and remarking on how different they are from you. this will come in the form of celebrity, curiosity, criticism, hostility, or second class status. and no matter where you live, your child will encounter subtle and sometimes overt racism. nor will your experiences dealing with race differences in any way match or effect you in the same way it effects your child. this will take its toll, but it will be their own private burden to deal with. so yes, race matters. it hurts a lot. it hurts in ways that deeply alter your self esteem, and the subtle variety takes years to recognize and dissect in order to understand why you feel bad.
i will not speak about my own experience at this time, but i will share the story of an african-american male adopted friend. his well meaning caucasian parents adopted him believing their love and understanding would cancel out the race factor. he was considered too white by the black minority where he grew up. he was considered too black by the white majority where he grew up. (this was a liberal, open-minded community) and though his parents tried to be color blind and provide a color blind world view for him, the truth was his world was color focused. because even if there is no hatred and the society is accepting, the fact is that people still address and relate to people of color differently. it wasn’t until he was in high school where some african american sisters took pity on him and helped TEACH him how to fit in better as an african american male that he began to stop feeling like an alien. all of which was to the detriment of his place in white society and to his relationship with his adoptive family, both of which he rejected to be more fully black. he spent his adult life very angry over having been put in this avoidable situation, and it wasn’t until a nervous breakdown that he finally came to terms with his adoption and forgave his parents.
this is a stark example. however, most of us transracial adoptees have parallel paths. i believe, if given a choice, most of us would have preferred to be placed in a home that matched racially.
here’s some interesting commentary on YouTube:
struggles for identity
struggles for identity 10 years later
When and if you met/meet your real mom, what did you want to know?
Answer:
To her i will ask, “what were the circumstances behind my conception, birth, and relinquishment? I want to know the beginning of my story and be able to tell my children about this history, so they may have a stronger link to their heritage.”
secretly my heart will be bleeding and i will be asking, “why did you put me in the hands of strangers? why did you not do what it takes to keep me? how could you have a happy day in your life after having given away your flesh and blood?
but all of the above is just a fantasy. there is not even a breadcrumb from which to find my mother, much less ask her any questions.
to know you have been abandoned is the worst feeling in the world. i wish i didn’t have to replay this meeting in my head over and over.
i wish this question/pain
didn’t exist/didn’t need to be asked
to/for/by anyone.
A question for adoptees?
Question:
Hey, I go on the general pregnancy and parenting board which often
brings up questions from the adoption section that I sometimes look in
on. I hope you don’t think I’m butting in, I’m just asking this out of
curiousity, feel free not to answer if it’s too intrusive a quesion!In my life I’ve only known 3 adoptees (two with the same adoptive
parents, both adults in their 30’s, and the other one is with seperate
adoptive parents and is a teenager). The three people I’ve happened to
know were all adopted as babies, and they’ve grown up always knowing
they were adopted, being fine with the fact they were adopted, and
seeing their adoptive parents no differently to how everybody else sees
their biological parents, and none of the three have ever had any
desire to want to find their birth parents. So I’d always just
(probably ignorantly) assumed this was the case for most adoptees (well
I know a lot do try and seek out their birth parents, but I mean I
assumed that most adoptees grow up feeling happy and natural with their
adoptive parents). However I read a lot of questions and answers on
here from adoptees who appear to be very unhappy in their situations. I
was just wondering, if these people who are unhappy tend to be people
who were adopted at a later age? Or, even if you were adopted shortly
after birth, is it actually very different from growing up in a
household with biological parents? Or is it that teenage adoptees clash
with their parents in the same way non-adoptees clash with theirs, but
put the issues down to having been adopted? (I’m not saying I think
that’s the case at all, I’m just wondering). I always read a lot of
answers, in response to questions saying they’re thinking about giving
their baby up for adoption, from adoptees saying please think twice and
give your child a chance to know its biological parents etc. Do you
feel like you have a hole in your lives not knowing your biological
parents, even if you’ve been with your adoptive parents since birth?I just want to say I’m sorry if these questions are personal or if they
cause any offence, they’re not intended to be at all, I’m just seeking
to gain knowledge over something I know very little, but I know your
lives are none of my business so only answer if you want to, sorry
again!
Answer:
i will pick up from a line in the video (posted below)
“i always felt entirely and utterly alone.”
i was adopted a few months prior to my third birthday.
my earliest memory is the plane trip to america.
it was as if someone went into my brain and surgically erased all that i was prior to adoption.i am told i laughed at cartoons by myself.
but all i remember from the plane ride forward is being terrified.
this terror would be explained away as shyness.
i never in my entire life felt happy or natural with my parents.nobody knew this.
i kept it to myself.
i was a good, obedient kid.when asked about biological parents, i would say i had no interest.
because i didn’t. i didn’t harbor those kind of hopes as they were
interferences that would disturb the peace. i had to file that interest
away, lock it up, and throw away the key.and, quite the contrary, my teenage struggles had to be about
everything BUT adoption. because adoption was a not recognized as an
issue, by me or my parents, then i wasn’t free to subscribe any
conflicts to it or use it as ammunition. i talked about adoption as
little as possible. i wanted the topic to disappear. i worked hard to
make it disappear. i tried so very very hard to accept my situation.it wasn’t until my own children were leaving home and my parents died
and i didn’t have to think about others first, that i began to
recognize the detached feelings i held within me had something to do
with the disruption of my childhood. that the adoption really was an
issue, and that being abandoned had everything to do with everything.
you ask about a hole in our life? yes. an abyss.it is more than a hole because you can never verbalize it.
you are just a kid and these feelings are confusing.
you don’t even know this is why you never talk with your parents, why no conversation is real. you just know not to go there.
and in subtle ways, they let you know not to go there.
they let you know they can’t handle the truth of your feelings.
you smile instead.
and be a good girl.you can never get relief.
because you don’t want your parents to feel rejected.
you don’t want them – anyone- to feel even an ounce of what you feel every day.you become the guardian of everything that oppresses you.
this feeling? i don’t believe this feeling is age dependent.
i think we all feel that hole – that yearning, that loss. for some like
myself, it takes decades to acknowledge and work through.
Adoptees: have you mostly gained or lost in being given up and adopted?
In what ways?
Best Answer – Chosen by Asker
what have i lost?
i’ve lost so much, it’s barely fathomable.
my culture, my history, my identity. i was emotionally deprived and sexually abused. i lost my innocence. i lost my childhood. i was always an alien, being the only minority i knew. because of my abuse, i made choices that affected my entire adult life, not realizing i had more options. i never had a sense of belonging or love. i grieve the loss of my pre-memory mother. i sometimes imagine i can feel her holding me. that is the biggest loss of all.
all the arguments about adoption providing a better life just don’t hold water. my birth country is now a major first world economy. the status of women is increasing as the economy increases. they have excellent schools and high tech jobs.
here in america, i have been a ship without a rudder, sad and extremely isolated – by my looks, by my experiences, by my lack of significant or meaningful connection to anything.
what have i gained?
well, they say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. i almost killed myself, so i must be really strong.
what i have gained is a terrible insight into the mind of a pedophile, the pathology of adopting for the wrong reasons, the perspective of a target of racism, and the glimpse of the american dream from the very bottom. i have conquered all and made myself a success and earned respect. and i have learned that none of that matters.
what matters is how you touch people, one on one.
what matters is knowing you are loved.
and to never, ever, abandon anyone.so the biggest thing i’ve gained is a value system based on caring for the emotional well-being of others and respecting human dignity.
but if all this pain was the prerequisite to this knowledge i have, then i’d rather have gained nothing. all i really want is to be embraced and cared for and experience one moment of being a child in its mothers unconditionally loving arms.
- Asker’s Rating:
- (((almost human)))
Thanks for your honesty.
To Adoptees: Any Advice for an Amom?
Question: To Adoptees: Any Advise for an AMom?
We adopted our daughter as an infant. She is 2-1/2 years now. I have heard so many times about how Adoptees aren’t happy that they were adopted and it worries me how my daughter will feel as she grows older. I would love to know what I can do as an AParent to either help her not feel this way or help her through feeling this way (does that make sense?). I want nothing more than her to grow up to be a happy, healthy, and well-adjusted adult…but yet I’ve heard so many people say that’s next to impossible for an adoptee and, as a mom, that scares the crap out of me.Not sure if this is needed for a good answer or not, but our adoption is semi-open with no visits with the BMom; however, if/when our daughter shows interest in getting to know her BMom, we will then do everything we can to make sure she gets that contact.
Best Answer – Chosen by Asker
My greatest advice for any Amom is to be totally honest with your child, and to be totally forthright about all you do, both attractive and unattractive. To me, a mom is “real” or “not real” based upon that criteria, which has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with how much respect I can have for a person, and especially, how much I can TRUST what they say to me. Trust, as you know, is a big issue for people who have been given away.As an adoptive child, I would have loved to have just heard the truth from my parents: I wanted you out of selfishness or lonliness or (you get the picture) and you brought this or that to my life, but now I realize this or that and I appreciate you as not as a thing to fulfill my life, but I now appreciate you as a person for x real reasons. But it has to be real. Because we know b.s. when we hear it.We want real relationships with real people who we can really count on who love us for who we are. Is that too much to ask for? It seems like it’s pretty rare…
Part of the problem with my own Amother and, unfortunately, too many of the Aparents whom I encounter on-line, is a stubborn unwillingness to admit fallibility. A refusal to paint themselves in anything but a soft warm light. Now, I realize no humans are perfect. But when Adoptive parents set themselves up as such, the adopted child is forced to develop a bullshit meter. And I have no idea WHY it seems like so many adoptive parents seem to over-compensate, but it doesn’t make them easy to be around – as acquaintances and even worse to live with as their kids. All this could be avoided, and a wonderful relationship established, if Adoptive parents were more real with their children and left their rose colored glasses at the adoption agency…
Yeah, we want chill parents – not hyper vigilant super parents…
Visits with the BMom need to be a regular event – how regular is whatever the Bmom and you feel comfortable with, but it needs to be something everyone can count on. It needs to be as constant as long days in the summer and dying eggs at Easter, and pumpkins in the fall. Irregularity will cause total chaos! To have anything less will put too much pressure on your child to be the deciding factor of who, what, when, how much everyone’s lives get disrupted and feelings get hurt. That’s too much of a burden for a child of any age, much less those who can’t express their feelings yet.
It would be also a great mistake to treat your adopted child as if they were your natural child, because that has an element of denial to it, and kids pick up on that. They know they’re different. Don’t ever underestimate your child’s innate intelligence! Again, treating adoption with anything less than the reality it is will only make the contrast seem more stark than it already is, and make them trust your judgment less.
On the other hand, to over-emphasize their adoption interferes with having a normal life. What we adopted kids want is a recognition of their own challenges, but with a steady reassurance they can count on someone. They don’t necessarily want or deserve to be reminded constantly about how “special” (abnormal) their situation is.
As a parent of two awesome, well-adjusted, critically thinking citizens of the planet, I feel that elevating adoption above regular natural births is a little disturbing as well. I’ve read some of those children’s books, and while they are ego-stroking, I don’t necessarily feel they have a handle on reality, and I feel too many of them brush some of the concerns little children have right under the rug. A little kool-aid can really disrupt your children’s own critical thinking process, confuse them, and cause them to make bad choices for themselves as they grow. They NEED to be exposed to reality. But they also need guidance so they know reality is something they can live with successfully.
You and any other adoptive parent have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to worry about if you take the time to dispense with whatever stupid parent roles you read about in books and spend the time actually getting to know your kids and having a real relationship with them. They will have to one day deal with all the question surrounding their non ideal beginnings, and it may or may not bring up a lot of pain for them. But if you’ve been real with them, then that will give them added strength to get through it.
Relax. Be honest. Be empathetic. Be a friend.
Stop being an Aparent!Then, you’ve got no worries.
- Asker’s Rating:
I was so impressed with your answer…thank you for taking the time to type it all out. I think I’ll print it for future reference. The second to the last sentence really got to me…Stop being an AParent! Before I knew it, I was crying because you are so right…my daughter deserves a PARENT! Wow!
