Do you remember thinking, when you were a child, that you would never do this or that thing that your parents did? I do. I remember thinking that I was always going to understand and appreciate my children as individuals and not try to force them to fit into some a mold of my making. I felt that way because my father didn't like me and I was aware of it from a very early age. I often wondered why he couldn't see the good in me even if it was different from the good he wanted to see.
When I became the parent of four special needs adopted children, I suddenly found myself confronted with children whose personalities were shaped by people, biology, and life experiences that were completely unknown to me. To this day I find myself wondering why my children do this or that thing that seems so odd to me.
Today I heard myself say something that I heard incessantly from my Dad when I was growing up. I said, "What's wrong with you kid?!!" E-Gads. As soon as I said it I cringed. Whether or not there's something WRONG with my child is immaterial. We ALL have things wrong with us and most of us want more than anything to be known for who we are, faults and all, and loved regardless.
It sounds so simple and obvious but it's really not simple at all. If you think about it, we are drawn to certain personalities and repelled by others. We're not friends with everyone we meet. So why is it that we expect parents who adopt older children to immediately feel connected to them? Relationship takes TIME and there's no magic in a certificate of adoption.
The sad truth is that many parents fail to connect with their biological children. I was raised by my biological parents and I've already said that my father did not like me. People generally recoil from the truth of that. They don't want to hear it. But it doesn't do any good to pretend to something that isn't true. To say that my father loved me would be disingenuous.
Parent child connections take work, time, patience and perseverance. It's important that prospective adoptive parents understand that and it's important that their extended family and friends understand it too. The guilt that comes with not connecting to a child one has committed to raise and love can be crippling, especially when there's no understanding that it's NORMAL, that the building of relationship takes time and may never happen, as is the case when dealing with children who are suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder, in which case the parent serves as more of a therapist than parent to the child.
We need to rid ourselves of the cotton candy spun dreams that we hold as parents, whether we're parents via biology, adoption or foster parenting. Those dreams can leave us crippled when we're faced with the hard truth that parenting takes work and magic is a rare thing. :)
I'm writing this today as a reminder to myself and whoever else may be reading that our children aren't meant to be our mirrors or the fulfillment of our dreams. They are unique individuals that need our love and compassion, that need to be SEEN for who they are in all their ugliness and beauty. Isn't that what we ALL need?
©Just Kate, 2009
God in the Grass
1 hour ago
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I always wondered what it was like to be adopted, to be "given" to strangers and expected to call them family right away. Heck I spent most of my life feeling like an outsider in my biological family.
My ex husband was adopted and although he talked about dates and legalities he rarely talked about what he was feeling. Looking back I realize now that whenever we talked about adopting a child he was all gung ho and talked a big game but when the talks got serious he'd drop the ball. I wonder if it had anything to do with his own experiences.
People forget that an unborn baby is hearing the voice of it's mother for MONTHS prior to birth and is born attuned to her voice, to the sound of her heart and breath. He already prefers her voice over every other voice he will hear. :) It's a beautiful thing. An older adopted child has none of that. They are meeting STRANGERS.
Now look at how you were raised in your biological family, feeling like a black sheep, and the way I was so horribly disliked by my father and brother - those are BIOLOGICAL connections that failed - and it's easy to see why adoptive families face such huge challenges. It makes people uncomfortable to admit that families often fail, but it's true. Like everything else in life, parenting requires intention and thought.
Both my husband and I grew up hard in our biological families and when we were children we both had adoption fantasies. It seemed right that we would then go on to adopt older children. We saw ourselves as "rescuers," I think. And we thought that love would make all the difference. Well, love does make a difference and we do love our children, very much, but it will never be the dream we thought it would be. Parenting, no matter how the children come, is a challenge.
And how one is raised impacts HUGELY the kind of parent one will become. I didn't know that my father's rage lived in me until I became a parent and had to tame it. If your ex-husband was aware of how hard parenting might be based on his own life experience, he had a bit of insight that most people don't get until they have already become parents.
I've often heard preachers say that how are earthly Dad's treated us directly shapes how we view God. Would you say that was true for you? Do you see God as a loving being, even though your Dad was not; or do you have a hard time imagining a loving Heavenly Father?
And he loved his son unequivocally. That said he was brutal towards me, and my brother learned to follow his example.
Had it not been for my mother's illness and the fact that she NEEDED ME, I think I would have killed myself. I thought about it constantly, growing up.
Anyway, people are complex, Jay. We are all of us comprised of huge amounts of light and darkness. The good in us does not cancel out the bad not does the bad cancel out the good. I learned that, growing up, seeing the kindness of my father toward others and towards my brother that was never extended towards me. I was the recipient of his rage.
It seemed very like what I saw of God in the bible. I remember being about five years old when I first read about Jacob and Esau and it made perfect sense to me. In the bible God says, "Jacob I loved and Esau I hated." They were brothers and God loved one and not the other even before they were born. I knew that story because I lived it. My brother was a Jacob and I was an Esau.
So I spent my life trying to please and appease God. Loving him was never a problem. I loved my father, too.
The God of the bible is complex. He is a god of vengeance and rage and judgment, and he is a god of mercy, grace and love. I used to believe in that God and I both loved and feared him. I no longer believe in a God that is capable of cruelty, of loving Jacob and rejecting Esau. That God too closely resembles man for me.
That's the best answer that I can give you, Jay. I try to focus on the act of loving. As for God, if there is a personal God, well, I can't say it any better than I did on facebook. If there's a God and I meet him heaven's gate, this is what I hope to hear him say, "Before you were born I knew you. I saw the worst you would ever do or be and I loved you still. Be free of guilt, sorrow and pain. Look, there is your mother dancing in the meadow. There is your father, not in hell but with me WHERE HE BELONGS and is free now to love..."
It takes me right back to the theme of this blog. It's not a given that parents will love their children equally and well. We need to understand that so we can be prepared for it and not feel like failures when we don't feel what we think we SHOULD feel. When the feeling isn't there, we do our best to ACT lovingly. Hopefully the feeling will follow.
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