Parenting

It’s hard work, parenting.

The struggle between parents and teenagers is as old as humanity.  Adam and Eve had their hands full with Cain and Abel, that’s for sure.  And most of us will end up with a happier ending than theirs.

What adoptive parents often learn the hard way, though, is that parenting kids who have experienced loss or had painful histories can increase the challenge.  A lot.

To put it bluntly, our girls arrived in our family with a lot of heartache.  A lot of baggage.  A lot of expectations, some not entirely realistic.

It’s still hard for them to talk about what they thought life would be like, and how different it really was, and how those unmet expectations colored their reactions.

Many times, I have no clue what is going on inside those pretty heads.

We can’t imagine.

We might try.  But really, deep down, we don’t really want to acknowledge how hard it might get.

It’s easy to attend the training sessions and listen to the stories of other parents, and think “Oh, I won’t have to worry about that.  My kids will be so thankful to have a home and they will be amazing and grateful and they will love Jesus and learn English and be honors students within the year.”

Keep dreaming.

It’s really easy to think “these kids have had nothing, I just want to give them what they never had, I want to shower them with love and stuff.”

Step away from the cash register.

It’s even more common to hear a little voice in your head say, “If I say no to them, they will hate me and they will regret joining our family.”

Ouch.

But you are not the only parent to think that.  DON’T give in to that fear.

At some point, your kid might say to you “I wish I was never adopted.”

Be ready for that.

And don’t believe it.

Kids born the old-fashioned way say stuff like that too.  The difference is that with them, you both have the roots of a lifetime of trust, you somehow feel like shared DNA will get you through it.

I’m here to tell you that in this, there is no difference with an adopted kid.  If anything, as parents, your commitment to an adopted child is greater.  You have *chosen* this child.  You have made a commitment to be the parent that their natural parents, for whatever reason couldn’t be.

That’s huge, people.

You’re signing up for a big responsibility.  Perhaps you already did, and now it’s not going quite as smoothly as you imagined?  Perhaps your family encounters struggles that are different.  Perhaps your adopted kid(s) aren’t quite as shiny and happy and grateful for the opportunity as maybe you expected.

It happens.

Perhaps they push the limits.  Really hard.

Perhaps they say really hurtful things.  Disrespectful things.

Things that you would not tolerate or accept from kids born into your family the old-fashioned way.

Perhaps you’ve tried some traditional parenting models, like we did.  And perhaps some of those techniques backfired, like they did on us.

Y’all, these kids have different needs.

Big needs.

They need love, but not the rainbow and unicorn kind of love.  They need unconditional love.  You can provide it, but they will not just inherently know they can count on you.  The will not inherently understand that a parent is reliable, will always be there, will always love them no matter what.

In some cases, they have never seen what true love looks like.

They might expect it to take the form of total freedom and an open checkbook.  They might expect that love means you let them do whatever they want.

That’s not love, guys.  That’s not love at all.

I’ve heard adoption professionals say “they just need love.”

Well….if you have a very broad definition of love, which encompasses counseling, and education, and clear, consistent limits and boundaries, and an environment where trust can be learned….then yes.  Absolutely.  They need that kind of love.

They need love in the form of “We love you so much that we can’t let you do that.  Sure it would be easier for us to give that to you and not have this conversation.  I understand how hard it must be for you to believe that we don’t love you.  I know how embarrassing it must feel to tell your friends you can’t have your own laptop. But we made a commitment to you to keep you safe and help you learn to keep yourself safe and healthy.   To keep you safe, sometimes it means we have to make some decisions and have some conversations with you that might not be the most fun for either of us, but we do it because we love you that much.  It’s hard for you.  It’s hard for us.  But it’s important.”

This reminder is as much for me as it is for other adoptive parents and the people who know and support them.

We’ve been at this for a while, but we still have good days and bad ones.  We still make a lot of mistakes.  And we still do things that might feel horrible at the time, but that we know are right in the end.

What does love look like to you?  Leave a comment…

Photo credit: Glenn Briggs (a long-time friend, and all-around talented dude.  Check him out.)

We’re on vacation.

Jealous?

Yeah.  Me too.

When it was just Mark and me, we could do pretty much whatever.

We took some vacations that were pretty intense, like England in late September, 2001 (yes, a week after 9/11).  We took some vacations that were more laid back, like a completely unscheduled week on Edisto Island, SC.  And we took a couple live-aboard dive boat vacations.  Eat, sleep, scuba-dive.  Bliss.

But we’re learning that vacations with the girls are different.

First, trips with kids are just different.  That’s kind of a given.  Trips with teens are a different kind of different.  Again, a given.

But trips with teens who were adopted at an older age?  Uniquely different.

Why?

Because kids from challenging backgrounds and hurt places form expectations and process things a little differently.

Expectations

Kids from “normal” backgrounds have probably been traveling with their families since before they can remember.  There are certain things they just know, like what to expect on a long road trip.  Lines.  Everyone crammed into a little hotel room.  Rain. Slow restaurants.  (I’m not saying they deal with these things gracefully…)

Kids that didn’t grow up with us?  They don’t have this foundation.

Their expectations are influenced by things they experienced before joining our family.  Family vacations were not part of their reality , so all they knew was from watching TV and movies: something is always happening, and it’s usually spectacular or hysterical.

We know life isn’t like that.  My girls will say they know that too.  But before they lived with us, when they saw things like that in the movies, somewhere deep inside, they thought that’s what real family vacations were like.

Overstimulation

We are vacation warriors.  We want to soak in every possible attraction our destination offers. We don’t want to miss out.

Fast forward to our first real vacation with Mash.  At our “one-year-family-anniversary,” we took her on a carribbean cruise.  Six days, five ports, three broken curfews, two days confined to the cabin, one destroyed mom.

She thought it would be The Suite Life On Deck.  It was more like Titanic.

Looking back, Mash remembers the good stuff, but it was way too much for her, even after being in our family for a year.

We made the same mistake with Lena.  Spring break Road Trip To Florida.  She’d been in America for 3 months.  That was stupid of us.

We should have known better.

The social workers try to prepare us that kids who have grown up in difficult circumstances.  The explain that kids who have spent a lot of time in the highly structured environment like an orphanage or in completely unstructured environment like the streets have a hard time adapting.

They tell us to not over schedule, to pick our battles, to set expectations up front.

But when you have a teenager who’s trying to balance teen boredom and need to individuate and push boundaries and grow up but also adapt to a new family and connect with people they’re not really entirely sure they can trust and are thrown into multiple new situations in a day and not know what’s expected and what’s appropriate and what’s not and where to go and how to act….?

Heck, that would be too much for me to deal with too.

What does this mean?

If you have adopted kids….keep these things in mind.  We didn’t. And we paid.  And we’ll pay this week, I’m sure.  Just hoping that we’ll get a repeat-customer discount.

If you know people with adopted kids , support them be extending patience and grace.  Don’t question or judge when the kids react differently from yours or when we make different parenting choices.

If you ride on airplanes, try to show patience to others (and yes, i’m far more guilty of this than all the rest of you combined.  This is for me, too).  When you see kids or teenagers acting out, please try to pack the judgmental glares in a TSA-approved zip-loc bag and cram it in your carryon. The situation might not be quite as simple as you think.

Have you taken a family vacation that didn’t turn out quite like you’d planned?  Leave a comment…

p.s.  Lest I appear to be complaining, I’m not.  It’s beautiful down here and I’m truly thankful for my precious in-laws, their willingness to share their time-share week with us, and their generosity in taking care of things in The Fort while we’re gone.  Thanks, guys!