Parenting After Adoption

When my husband and I prepared for adding to our family through older child adoption, we did our homework by talking honestly with other families, who had experienced a wide variety of scenarios, as well as reading, reading, and reading. Just as we did when preparing for the birth of our first child.

As with our daughter’s birth, our son’s homecoming was not quite as we had envisioned. Though we certainly knew better than to expect sunshine and roses, we were not fully prepared for the raging rawness of our son’s grief. And though it was spelled out plainly in the books and we were certain we understood, the reality of living with a child experiencing attachment difficulties and fear was a whole new experience.

One of the mistakes we made was not having adequate respite care. In hindsight, I really don’t know why we didn’t make arrangements for at least our children already in the home to have a place to go when they needed a break from the intensity and chaos. Instead, we tried to do it all ourselves, never asking for help. I am certain friends and family would have come to our aid, and at one point, inept help would have been better than no help at all.

Another mistake was trying to view parenting after adoption as the same as parenting after the births of our other children. It simply was not the same. Here was a child with a history we did not know, and may never fully know. He had been shuffled from his home to an orphanage then to another country and home. He was from a culture different from ours and spoke a language I could barely speak. I learned several months ago that he was completely terrified of us.

Once we followed through on nurturing ourselves and shifted gears in our parenting style, we began to make progress, but it was a major paradigm shift. I don’t know if we are even completely “there” though we have definitely come a long, long way since those early months.

In a week or so, we will have two more children joining our family. Though living in a different orphanage, they are, as my long-time readers know, in the same country where we adopted our son who is already home with us. They have been in their orphanage more than twice as long, the adoption process has taken twice as long, and they are older than when our son joined us. Needless-to-say, we are worried that their transition and adjustment will be much more rough than what we experienced before.

I take comfort in knowing that we have learned so much from previous experience in adoptive parenting.

Copyright © 2008 Becky Wilson. All Rights Reserved.

Adoptive Parenting, Adoption Parenting, Parenting after Adoption, Attachment, Attachment in Adoption, Adoption Education, Respite Care, Adoption Grief, Adoption Loss