So for those of us attempting to support our children who come with a range of trauma and problematic starts in life; we spend a considerable amount of time observing – thinking about and trying to work with their coping mechanisms…
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My siblings and I grew up being told by many around us what good parents we had and I guess we have always accepted that at face value…
I admit that I am an older mum, but my brain hasn’t gone to mush. I am not stupid, in fact I am quite clever – so why does the playground expectation and language floor me every time?
‘I thought these are your real parents, no?’
‘So you are not real brother and sister then?’
I guess most adopters have experienced questions such as these being asked of us or our children at some point. It’s frustrating to say the least and at worse it can feel insulting and indeed be quite painful, even so I am surprised at some adopters reaction to it.
I left my nearly 10 year old daughter at home, on her own, for the first time last week.
I knew she was tired and that a 10 minute walk to collect her sister from a local playdate would be met with moaning and groaning, so I gave her the option of staying at home whilst I popped out…
I was at a meeting with non adoptive parents and somebody brought up the fact that their child had screamed ‘I hate you’ at them the day before and how hurt she had been by this, almost all of the other parents said that they had experienced the same and the group went on to discuss how difficult it is to hear and how hurt they had been.
Both our sons have indeed declared their hate for us in fits of anger – as well as the possibly more dramatic ‘you are not my parents anyway’, but neither my partner or I had been hurt or upset.
I underestimated how hard parenting is.
I love my child dearly and parenting him has turned out to be both more wonderful and more rewarding than I could have ever imagined but also much much harder than I ever thought.
It’s hard, testing work and it’s difficult to navigate.
We sense a change.
A small change, but a real change and – fingers crossed – a fundamental change. Although of course we could be wrong – we certainly have been before….
We think we are seeing signs that our younger son’s anger and the screaming and shouting that are a consequence of that anger are being controlled. They are still there, still part of our lives, but it’s somehow feeling different. There now seems to be a desire from him that was clearly not there before, a desire to bring our ‘battles’ to an end. It’s clearly a struggle, but a struggle that maybe he is winning. Slowly, gradually he seems to be taking control.
….I’d share some of the books that have helped our family along the way as we wrestled with tangled feelings and attachments, not adoption books per se, just beautiful stories. So, this is not exactly a review, not exactly a blog, just some thoughts on the healing power of story.
Why is it apparently so difficult for parents to ask their children if they are gay?
Time and time again we read or watch accounts of young men and woman coming out and saying that their mother or father said that they had realised for a long time.
Realised, but had said nothing.
