Parenthood and Adoption Realities

Anybody been watching the TV series Parenthood? There’s a storyline about a couple with one child and they decide to adopt a second child, apparently from foster care. I was excited to see a story about adoption in prime time but a little annoyed at some of the realities they seemed to skip over, like the hours and hours of intense training and the long wait and the court dates. It was good to see the struggles this older child was dealing with and how the mom struggled to handle it. I would say it was realistic, except that Julia, the mom, seemed to have zero education that would have prepared her to expect the challenging behavior and at least given her a few resources for dealing with it.

But it is TV-land, where everything is grossly simplified and tied up neatly at the end. In this week’s episode Victor, the adopted child, reached out to his sister, she responded in kindness, and they had a ridiculous finalization ceremony in court. You may recall that I served as a courtroom photographer on National Adoption Day and I assure you, the ceremonies were not at all like on TV. They were joyous though! You can bet that when Victor called Julia “Mom” after the ceremony I bawled my eyeballs out.

The truth is that parenting adopted children can be hard, even if they come into your home as babies. The fact remains that these children have experienced a traumatic loss, even if they left their birthmother immediately after nine months in her womb. But responsible parents educate themselves about the potential differences in these kids and smart parents get help dealing with them.

On the flip side, not all conflicts that come up with adopted kids are simply due to them being adopted! Two of my grandfather’s siblings adopted, two kids each, and only one out of four of those relationships is still intact. I don’t have any idea the history of the children rebelling or abandoning their parents but I know blaming it on their genetics, as my grandparents do, isn’t fair. At least two of them were adopted as infants and I’m willing to bet that parenting had a much bigger role in how those kids turned out. One of my grandparent’s own children rebelled for a time, is that due to genetics?

I’m looking forward to an upcoming conference nearby called Together for Them, which will continue our education and training on parenting adopted kids. This same conference is the one that finally flipped the switch on our decision to adopt. They even have a session on grandparenting adopted kids and I so wish my parents and inlaws could attend.

In other news, we were thrilled to find out that IBESR (Social Services) in Haiti finally released the list of licensed agencies and America World was on it. They have also started accepting new dossiers under their new Hague-compliant procedures. We are praying that our dossier will be able to go with our agency coordinator to Haiti next week for official submission to IBESR. That’s the next step before we can get a child referral.

Meanwhile we are celebrating with our good friends who just received a referral for a 10 month old girl from China. I got to see her photo and she is precious. Someday our little girls will get to play together and walk to school together. I sure can’t wait for that day.

Author: Sarah

Mom of three. Triathlete. View all posts by Sarah