Be Ready for the Consequences

Children don't get into the system because they are well taken care of. Even in cases where CPS was out of control, the children get corrupted by the whole foster care system. Though in our case the birthparents had 5 children before they were both 21. At least the birthfather was working his tail off to provide for them, but that meant he ultimately had little time to supervise them in their early years. The birthmother was overwhelmed and still a "child" in many ways herself, so they all learned to do whatever they felt like from an early age. This means that our attempts to provide structure in their lives were undermined before we began. While they outwardly complied when we could force it, they quickly left that when they went on their own and started parenting their own children in the "anything goes" style that ruined their lives. Changing habits, even those established in the first few years of life, is very difficult. Even our youngest, who wasn't quite 3 when she came with us, fell into those same patterns. I am sure the pull of the others helped with that, but I think a lot was already ingrained in her as well, by the relatively young age she came to live with us. Preparing people for this is far more important than many realize.

Count the Small Blessings

I often ask myself (and God) what was the point of all our work with our 4 children if they all were going to reject our way of life and basically return to the roots in their quite dysfunctional birth family. I regularly hear that they are better off than they would have been. While that is clearly a fact, as being stuck in the system (a distinct possibility for at least the older two of them) would be horrible for any child. The thought hit me today that they also all made it to adulthood without having a direct run-in with CPS. That is not an achievement most people would trumpet, but it is a good one for our children. In fact, they all made it to 18 before they had children and the 3 with children were married when they had the child. I am not sure about the 4th, but I have not been told about him having any children. This is an accomplishment for them given that their birth family had 3 or 4 children by the time the parents were 18, 5 children by 21. Not the goal I wanted to celebrate, but you need to celebrate what you can.

What to Write?

I want to put lots of useful information in this blog, but I realize that I can only say so much and will tend to repeat myself. This makes me realize this blog is more of an avenue for me to vent rather than a place to find lots of good information.

I do not seek to tell you the ins and outs of starting to adopt, though I will repeatedly encourage you to consider the possible outcome before you start, rather than blindly walking into trouble.

I am not sure what I will keep writing here, but I plan to note things as I think of them that may help someone else, especially someone on some stage of the same path.

What is Their Real Family?

I think I have written about this before, but I want to stress again that you really should consider why you are treading the adoption path ahead of time. Some do successfully build a family, but I have heard enough stories that our experience is not all that unique.

This is especially true with a sibling group, since they will likely come already being a "family" in their own eyes, even if they have been separated from their original mother and father. Just telling them they are now in a "forever family" will not change the "truth" imprinted on their hearts and minds that their "real family" is not the one they are in now.

If this can't be changed, as I suspect, it will guide the rest of their lives, no matter what you do.

Keep this in mind.

Set Your Expectations

Be very careful of your expectations when you go into the adoption process. You will almost certainly not get the "warm fuzzies" most imply when marketing the area. A few are open and honest about the challenges, but even those tend to gloss over the deep pain that may be involved.

This is often done with the stupid remark that you don't have guarantees with children you give birth to either. While that is true, it ignores a significant part of the issues involved.

I am certainly colored by our experience, but that doesn't negate the point - You will always have to compete, outwardly or not, with another family that your child(ren) were at least once a part of. Even an infant will have had months in the birthmother's body, so develops some kind of attachment.

The questions of "what if" can also easily plague adopted children, as they do with all of us. They may have to struggle with thoughts of how their life would be different if they could have lived "forever" with their birth parents. Fair or not, this is a powerful area to consider.

The best that happens may be that you give them a better childhood than they would have had. Is that enough for you?

Thankfulness is Missing

My daughter, her husband and my granddaughter have been living with us for a few months now, but things are really not much different than when they were gone. Sure, we see them more frequently, but no deep connection really exists. My daughter is still incredibly proud and insists that she can "do it on her own" even though that is quite far from reality.

I am not sure this will ever change. While age may help engender gratefulness, we live in a "take" society and I am wonder if some of the (minimal in recent times) push from society to be thankful for what you did have is not very strong at all today.

So many people "don't want help," but that is really not accurate. They want the help, they just don't want any "strings" with it at all, even verbal reminders about being thankful.

Ironically, after all my wife and I have done, my daughter still doesn't want even a somewhat close relationship with me. I may be seeing things through my own bias, but I suspect she would much rather have a close relationship with her birthfather than she would with me.

Ah well. I do not have the "family" I was aiming for, even really a dysfunctional one. I have children who are glad to take from me at times, but who will not let me be a father at all.

That is quite frustrating, but all I can do is to try to keep growing so I can adapt and be the best I can be.

It Keeps Going On

One of the sadder things in our adoption experience is that our children often seemed to have kept only our bad habits, without the good ones taking firm root. For example, I love learning in many different areas, yet only one has followed that path, and he is heading into a spiritual direction that is completely opposed to what we raised them under.

I am also amazed at how many of their current traits they seem to have from their birth family. While a few things could have been caught at an early age, as some were in the birth home for a few years, I wonder if much if this doesn't have some genetic component, however wild that idea seems.

I am not sure what to do or say to continue to help them, as my role as a father is not completely accepted. Being offended or saying its all fine is the normal response. I do realize that parents have to step back from adult children, but knowing I missed out on so much parenting in the late teen years, due to their non-receptiveness means they need more than usual now, though are almost as resistant.

The point of this is to just keep pushing forward and showing unconditional love as much as possible. No matter how much I am rejected, I am still the one that raised them. I made the decision to love them unconditionally a long time ago and that will never change, whatever my relationship with them is!

Another Boomerang

Our youngest, her husband and daughter are all back in our home. After several bumps, this seemed the best thing for them to do and they were ready for it.

It is tough going from a nice quiet "alone" house to one with others in it and not just for a holiday time. While it is worthwhile, it will require sacrifices for my wife and I as well.

More comments on my thoughts on things, colored by this, in the near future.

No Guarantees

I get tired of hearing phrases like, "you have no promises with birth children either." While the intent is good and it holds some truth, it is not completely accurate. Birth children can stray and go bad, but none have another individual who can rightfully have a claim to your role. I have to constantly deal with the fact that another man claims the role of "father" to my exclusion, in spite of my attempt to be open to him.

This has greatly contributed to my alienation with 2 of my children, but is unavoidable. I believe the father is still the one who raises a child, but I have to content with someone else. That is not true when a birth child "goes bad"!

It is a rough path and words that minimize the negative impact don't really help, they just trivialize things and leave people in or open to more pain. It would be much better to deal with the reality that many of the children in the foster care system will never bond with a "good" family, no matter how much they need it.

Tough truth, but better to deal with the truth and learn how to work past it rather than to deny or ignore it and be sideswiped!

Brad

Stirring Up Buried Hurts

My wife and I attended a large local adoption event encouraging those attending to adopt children in the foster care system. While they presented more open-eyed view, I think many still don't realize how rough that path can be.

While I could probably adopt another individual child or sibling group, in spite of our past troubles, I am not sure my wife could do the same. This raised the question of what value the time had for my wife.

While it seemed rather silly, I believe it was part of our ongoing healing process. We have been through a lot and will likely go through a lot more.

She could not handle so much discussion of it at the end of our time there, but I think God used it to help heal a bit more in her life, especially. I probably got sum, but I am often ready to plow ahead whatever happens! :)

Brad

Stopping Comments

I prefer to have comments open in case anyone wants to do so, but it looks like the only ones I get now (except for one a long while back) are from some Chinese spam engine. :(

I am going to be turning them off for at least the short term.

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After investigation, I have some options to limit comments to registered users. Sorry if you want to make an anonymous comment, but I am going to try this to limit the spam links.

I would just delete this post, but I can't find an option to do so. :(

The Need is Great, But the Likely Results May Not Be Good

I heard on the news today about a local "couple" that were sentenced to jail for locking the woman's 3 children in a hotel bathroom for up to 9 months. While I agree that the man and woman involved deserve whatever results they get, I have to think of the adoptive parents of these children.

They are guaranteed to be very confused and messed up and bonding with even an outstanding adoptive family may be incredibly difficult. In addition, they probably will feel a tight bond with their mother and her "boyfriend", in spite of the cruelty the mother allowed and the boyfriend inflicted.

I wish I had idea on what to do about situations like this. Blindly jumping in is not a good idea though, as I would almost guarantee their family will have serious problems when they are teens.

Birth Fathers can be a Mess Too!

All the stories I read about in the past referred to the birth mother reconnecting with her children, yet in our case it is the birth father. Ironically, he pushes for all the involvement to be for he and his current wife, completely excluding the birth mother (as much as he controls things), believing in "blood" when it is convenient and ignoring it (such as for his wife being "mom") when it is not.

He is the one my oldest calls "daddy" and that probably hurts the most, since that was the role I thought I would get to play when building a family. I wasn't even allowed at her wedding because "her father" (her words in a text message) didn't want me there.

It sucks, but it is life. No one really understands, especially not the other children. They don't want to deal with it, so any attempt on my part to get them to consider their own role in things gets me labeled as the one stirring up trouble.

You will have to learn to keep quiet in a case like this. I am not sure exactly how I will walk it out, but it is so ironic that I cannot have the open relationship I strongly seek with my children because another has gripped their heart and minds. Ironically, though he proclaimed to be committed to "letting them make their own decisions" in the past, he is very controlling and will definitely "buy them" or do anything in his power to get them to move near him.

Nothing I can do but sit and watch. Make sure you know what you may be signing up for!

The Tough Challenge for Adoptive Fathers

Fathers have a really tough job in our society already. They have many expectations placed on them, yet have limited abilities to enforce anything they do and are often not supported when making the harder decisions.

This is even more of an issue for adoptive dads. It is quite easy for his children to reject him, instead desiring a "perfect dad" vision they have in their minds. At least that was true in my case. Ironically, my children's birthfather helps them do things that are very destructive to their life. My wife and I tried to teach them to restrain their impulses and that is now being actively undermined.

It is not surprising and many children rebel against their parent's rules when they become adults, yet factoring in a birth family makes it even more challenging and an extra way to reject the parents.

Happy Father's Day to the true fathers! May you find something to anchor yourself to whether the rejection!

Why are You Adopting?

I would strongly encourage anyone starting down the road to adoption to really evaluate why you are taking this step. Make sure you know what you are planning on.

What do you hope to get out of this?

How do you want things to be in 10, 20, 30, or 50 years?

What will you do if things turn out as you expect?

What will you do if they turn out differently?

The adoption route is not "just the same as giving birth to children. While it may seem like you are picking your children, you will almost certainly end up with a lot less input on this than you think and you will likely end up with a lot different child than you may expect up front.

These questions don't have a right or wrong answer (at least none that I am going to cover now), but they are worth some time to think deeply on before you proceed.

Brad

The Point of Things

This blog faces a challenge beyond that of just writing things steadily. Knowing what to write about is a bit more challenging than I thought going into this. My own experience has been very frustrating, to put it mildly, but what is the point of just noting the problems and troubles endlessly? While venting may help for a bit, ultimately that is not a good strategy.

This is not meant to be a general guide to adoption either. Many other sources cover that in far more depth than I could. This is meant to present my thoughts, from the perspective of an adoptive father of 4 siblings that came from the US social services system.

I have done a couple of "here's some ideas" posts, but I am not sure what more to say. I suppose just writing about my thoughts as I continue to work through things with my adult children is the point. Hopefully this will help someone else down the line. Perhaps its value will be in many years, when all the posts can be viewed as a stream, rather than as a specific "I have to actively track this" forum.

Many other adoptive fathers are sure to go through this. I do those starting out the process to really think through the issues. Get good reference books, like Adopting the Hurt Child and Parenting the Hurt Child. Those books cover many of the things we faced. As bad as things were, I don't think they were that bad, but I can certainly relate.

This is not the easy road many will proclaim and the "you're a saint" encouragements will only last for a while, while the trouble will go on. These children do need help, but it takes a special man to provide it and to still keep his marriage intact.

Build your life on prayer as well! I could not have survived this without a deep relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ. This sucks far too much for that.

You will have some successful times, but you will also have many tough times. Have something more than you to rely on!

You May Never Reach Your Goal

While the goal of many in adoption is to build a family, I want to remind everyone that you may never do so. I took a trip to see my mother, picking up my youngest daughter and my granddaughter along the way. My wife and I gave my daughter and her husband some things to help them out as well, making me tow a trailer to where she lived a few states away.

My daughter and her husband said they appreciated the items (especially the older washer and dryer). The three of us (myself, daughter, and granddaughter) went to see my mother. This was a quick trip and I drove them back a couple of days later.

On the way back, I loosened my internal restraint against talking about anything serious and being a "father". Unfortunately, I ended up bringing out a lot of hostility from my daughter, showing me that she still holds a great deal of deep anger, blaming me for many things. (Some of which were my wife's doing, not mine.)

This showed me that it doesn't really matter how many "good things" I do, I will almost certainly be judged by her perception of what I did or didn't do when she was growing up. These views she holds may or may not be true, but they definitely color her view and keep her from establishing a normal relationship where the other party (me in this case) can make mistakes, but be worked with to correct them.

One of the complaints was that I talk through things too much. That is one of the ways I work through issues and I think it is usually better to work through things than to just stuff them, even if you have to take a break from talk to let people get focused again.

This meant that I was unable to even resolve any issues. Talking about many things was "bringing up the past" (especially hers) even though that had a definite impact on where we were today. I am not perfect, but I want to work things out. I am not allowed to do that.

Perhaps I am wrong, but this shows me that I cannot be a father. My own father and I had plenty of disagreements, but I would never treat him like I have been, because he was always still my father. Yelling, yes. Holding him guilty of all my problems, no. In fact, I would have loved if he would have worked through many issues with me. He never did want to talk much out.

Ah well. I am sure I will refine my views over time on this and find I am off in a few areas, but the clear point that any good I do can be swept quickly away because I annoy her seems pretty discouraging. I realize some of this sounds like normal teens, but this is built on a base of being rejected by all 4 of my children and having someone else step in to claim the "father" role even though he is a "Disneyland dad" at best - all gifts, no discipline or encouragement to do what is right.

Don't plan on being a father, if that is your goal. You can definitely have an influence, but you may never get to be a father. That is an unfortunate reality.

It is a Journey, not a Destination

One thing I keep reminding myself on my journey is that my travel is just that. I am taking part in a journey, one that may not have an end in this life. It is really rough to be alienated from any of my adopted children, but I cannot control that so I must just keep walking forward.

I do wish I could find a way to reconnect. I want to have an adult relationship with all my children, but I can't do anything to even advance that, so I must wait for them to make the moves.

Make sure you are in this for the long haul if you start down the adoption trail. You may avoid all these problems, you may not, but you need to be committed if you want to make it through successfully. Your children need that from you even if they seem to reject it!

Brad

Shopping for Children

Though it has been a while, I still remember the distaste I had when flipping through the books listing children that were available for adoption. Part of me enjoyed looking at the listed children and wondering if my wife and I could make a positive difference in their lives, but I also remember how much it caused us to rule out many children.

Fight this concern if you are going through the process. You need to be a very "educated consumer" if you are going to adopt, especially if you are adopting children from the system.

Some random thoughts:

- While the listings may note some things, learn to read between the lines. They are often like home listings, which hide the flaws or make the flaws seem like bonuses by misnaming them.

- The child(ren) on the page will need a lot of work. You will not find a "perfect match" that doesn't have any problems you can't handle. You won't be able to handle everything, especially since you won't be able to think of everything up front, but you need to make sure you believe you can handle what is listed!

- The system will not tell you all the problems. Children are removed for a reason, so the birth home had to have some strong troubles and those are often caused by things like mental illness, intense anger, etc. Don't let anyone downgrade serious concerns like these. Mental illness issues can cause far more trouble in your life than physical ones. I think part of this is because they aren't always noticeable.

- Watch out for "mild" things like variants of autism (such as Asperger's Syndrome) that don't seem like a big issue, but need to be understood and addressed. I have read that highly skilled technical people (including Bill Gates) may be an "Aspie", so it is not as bad as the autism label makes it seem, but it can lead to many challenges raising a child. In our case, I wish I had known it before. I have many of the traits that fall in the category, so I know someone can be fully functional with them, but it certainly made raising at least one of our children more challenging than it needed to be.

- Step back from any "deal" you have qualms about. Your job is not to save the "tough cases" and you need to remember that. We are not talking a hurt pet here, we are talking a human being with many issues that must be worked through. You cannot work through them with the child if you don't have the ability to do so. Love is not enough, all by itself.

I may write more on this later.

Brad

Bonding is Vital!

One of the most important things adoptive parents must do is actively bond with their children. This seems to come easy for some parents, but is more of a struggle for some of us. We don't get the normal infant years where we carry a nursing child and do other things that helps make a deep bond with our child. Even if they come young, we will have missed out on much of the early bonding that most families take for granted.

Some of this is time. Some is physical contact. Both were a bit at odds with how I was raised. While my parents spent time and weren't afraid of appropriate touching, they were more private individuals and we definitely were not a touchy-feely family. My own personality is much more of a loaner, so I tend to isolate myself more, something that is not as helpful when raising children.

I mentally wrestle with how much impact this had on my children. While they definitely had many convinced that I was the source of their problems and would certainly blame any shortcoming, I am not convinced that this was the entire issue.

Still, I wish I had wrestled on the floor with them more when they were young, focused more time with them, etc. As with most parents, I would redo some things if I could and I would put this at the top of the list.

I am not sure if it would have provided the bonds I wanted though. They had enough things keeping them in their own little world, but I do wish I could have tried it more.

As I noted before, don't wallow in this. You can't change the past, but we can try to help others do better in the future. That is my aim here.

So work on bonding, even more than you would with children you had given birth to. Getting through the walls your children erect will be a challenge, but it is worth it, for their sake!

Brad