Adoption Seminar

We went to the adoption seminar yesterday. There was a wealth of information provided on what to expect after bringing the child home. I'll share a couple of things that stuck in my mind and some that stuck in Teri's mind.

First of all, there is a huge difference in raising a biological child and an adopted child, especially if that child is adopted internationally and doesn't share US cultures. This class did a lot to help us look at adoption from the eyes of the child. As Americans, we may go over and visit an orphanage and we might think that those are sub-standard conditions. We might believe that the care for the children is not very good or that they aren't fed often enough to be healthy. While this may be true by our standards, the children don't see that. In fact, the children only see their home, the only home they know. They may have felt rejection before or may have been pulled from several homes through their life but nonetheless, the orphanage is currently what they know to be home. Now, let's take a 4 year old. Image your 4 year old. Someone comes to your house and takes your 4 year old away. You will never see your 4 year old again. What feelings do you think your 4 year old will have? Fear? Nervousness? Hopelessness? Longing for home? Yes and more. It's like being kidnapped by a nice family.

What this means is that it could be a long time before the child will trust us, open up to us or even love us as we will love him. Certain discipline styles may not work with this child. For example, "time-out" would only make the child believe that we are abandoning him again. Not like our biological children, who have had a lifetime of knowing that we aren't leaving, this child may be traumatized or very scared if he thought we were leaving him again. Even if that is as simple as saying, "go to your room." It's important to do everything we can to allow attachment to take place. If that means instituting something new called "time-in", which is like time-out only we are with him, then so be it.

We also have to understand that in an orphanage, a child may share a room with 8 or 12 other children. This means that when he comes home, we may have to sleep in the same room with him for a few months to show him that he is not alone. This child will be wondering for a long time just when we are going to ship him off to another house or reject him in some form or fashion. It is up to us to ensure him that he is part of our family forever. This means that our biological children might be upset with us if the child doesn't get in trouble for some things that they normally would get in trouble for. But we have to take into account the child's history and culture before we make disciplinary decision, at least in the beginning.

Something that stuck with me is that these children will likely eat and eat and eat. This is because their bodies have never felt what it's like to be "full". So they continue to eat because they haven't yet figured out that there will always be food available for them. Once they figure out that there will always be food and what it feels like to be full, they will go to regular eating habits as our kids have. But to ensure this, we have to allow them to have snacks when they want them until they are confortable in the fact that they will always have food. In an orphanage, they don't always have food.

This was an enlightening experience. We learned that raising a child who is adopted from another country will be drastically different than raising our own. We aren't catering to the child or giving him special privilages. It may appear that way if you compare it to the raising of our biological children but that's the mistake, don't compare them to raising biological US children. It will take a couple of years before they adapt to US culture as well and can be raised on equal planes.

Though different needs exist for this child, he will forever be "OUR SON, A KECK, OUR DAUGHTERS' BROTHER." And so we will do whatever it takes to make him realize that he is forever in our family.

That's it for now,
JK