I have been blogging for a while now and reading back over the blogs that I have written I realise that I have somewhat focused on the negatives that we are experiencing, and thinking about that I guess it’s not too difficult to see why this is so.
I have found writing the blogs to be quite therapeutic and it’s the challenges that we are faced with in our parenting that I have needed to get out of my system and to deal with in my writing. I realise that it is this stuff that we seem to focus on and consequently it can feel like we are always either dealing with it directly or else analysing it and discussing it and trying to work out how we should/could be coping with it better.
However, it feels that all this negativity in my blogs – and indeed in most of the blogs of other adopters, who are no doubt blogging for the same reasons – needs to be addressed, as in fact our lives since our sons moved in is full of so much positivity that I feel I have somewhat mis represented our experience, and in a broader sense the experience of adoption in general.
This is especially so with regards to one of our two sons who has been wonderfully uncomplicated and actually very easy to parent. He just seemed to settle into our lives with incredible ease, no drama and apparently no cause for concern – which is of course exactly the opposite of what we are told to expect.
He is an amazingly resilient soul and seems to have been effected very little by his traumatic start in life, he may well be storing up his problems and we will have to deal with them further down the road, but as time goes on and we get to know him better we are less sure that is going to be so.
Since the day he moved in he has been a delight to have around, he is smart and loving and polite and just very well behaved, he is popular at school with his teachers, his many friends and also with the parents of friends who are always so complimentary after play dates.
Of course he is not perfect and he does challenge us in his own way, but we do strongly believe that it has nothing to do with his past and is no more than you would expect from any child. He can be very strong willed and at times he is frustratingly over confident and stubborn, which manifests itself as him believing that he is never wrong and he is certainly not afraid to express that – which can be hugely annoying, but seeing as I’m a bit like that myself I’m sure many would say that it is Karma and I am just getting what I deserve.
One of his biggest and best qualities is his ability to make friends, he is inclusive and very fair in his play and other children immediately respond to this. His younger brother can be very difficult (and consequently is the subject of most of my blogs) and he struggles hugely with friendships and indeed he provokes his big brother pretty much constantly, this is mostly dealt with with quite grown up reserve and even if it does result in retaliation from our oldest it never gets too out of hand.
I also think that only presenting the negatives of our younger son – who is most certainly challenging and can stretch our patience to breaking point and beyond – is misrepresenting a reality as he is also sweet and charming and loving, he has moments of such tenderness and gentleness and he can be a total joy too and we are no less thrilled by his presence in our world than his brother’s.
They came into our lives and stole our hearts within seconds and regardless of any difficulties we face there is not a single day that has gone by when we have not rejoiced at how lucky we are to have been brought together and how perfect the fit is.
We are a family and it’s a family full of love, laughter, fun and so, so many positives.
As all parents know it can be tough, but my goodness our lives are so much richer in so many ways since ours sons moved in and made us the family that we are and it is very evident that the positives outweigh the negatives in every way possible.
I hope that in this blog, that message is loud and clear.
