My three adopted children are now young adults. Learning to be an adoptive parent was one of my greatest endeavors. Determined to the best parent I could, I talked to experts, read everything I could find about parenting adoptive children, and when I was "in over my head" I worked with a gifted child psychologist, who is also adopted.
I wasn't a "perfect" adoptive parent. I stumbled, I learned and I laughed. These are my experiences, tips and a touch of wisdom.
Through the years, my reading and research has shown me how grief can take many forms in an adopted child.
Brandon's grieving had been going on about four months, and I was getting worried.
If I had only adopted my son Jaik, I could not have blogged about my experiences with him for very long. He was the “silent opposite” of his twin brother when it came to verbalizing, acting out, or dealing with any relinquishment or adoption issues he might have.
But Rather a Lifelong Experience.
People are always surprised that my children had deep and profound
feelings about their relinquishment because they all arrived so young at
five months old.
In this post I’m going to put my discussion about adoptee grief in the context of six basic emotions that I introduced in another blog post called “Emotional Literacy.”
I’m going to come back to this topic because it is so
important that all parents — including adoptive parents — to understand
their own emotions around this issue.
If you think deeply about adoption, it makes sense that one person’s happiness was the result of someone else’s loss. When adoptions are “closed adoptions,” as mine was, it is often times difficult to even think about the circumstances of your child’s birth mother.
You might be wondering how Jaik and Brandon felt about my managing their sports scheduling decisions and playing on the club teams.
Whenever I had an experience with my adopted children that perplexed
me or caught me off guard, I would learn to call those “Adoption
Moments.”
While Jaik was busy being “perfect,” his twin, Brandon, was a very busy little guy, getting into as much mischief as he possibly could!
