Through the years, my reading and research has shown me how grief can take many forms in an adopted child.
Posts by Jane Ballback
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Brandon's grieving had been going on about four months, and I was getting worried.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You might be wondering how Jaik and Brandon felt about my managing their sports scheduling decisions and playing on the club teams.
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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.”
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While Jaik was busy being “perfect,” his twin, Brandon, was a very busy little guy, getting into as much mischief as he possibly could!
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All young children have some trouble expressing their true emotions. I think this is particularly true of adopted children who feel the need to hide more of what they are feeling in an effort to fit in and not rock anybody’s boat.
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Relinquishing Brandon to the nurses for his surgery was traumatic. In that instant I was overwhelmed with sorrow and sadness for the twins' birthmother.
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Fears manifest themselves in many ways. A fear that is totally inconsequential to one person can be a major phobia to another. My daughter, Stacee, had the typical child’s fear of sleeping in the dark. My son Jaik, had a more serious fear shared by many adopted children — if he was not perfect enough, he would not be allowed to stay in our family. But as usual, my son Brandon taught me the most about an adopted child’s fears.
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Since my children are internationally adopted from Korean and look different from my husband and myself, I’m often asked whether or not there were any huge issues with that as they were growing up.
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Sometimes adopted children act out their fear and grief and some times they give it words. I was so glad that so often Brandon gave it words, because he became my guide into the feelings and fears of his siblings who were not expressing a great deal of what they were feeling. He gave me a really interesting lesson when the kids were in preschool.
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