Heartaches/sacrifice: why adopting teens rocks
Adoptive parenting is a maze of emotional mind fields. Adoptive parents become too cautious and over wrought by stress to realize the true power they assume. Some prospective adoptive parents will only consider children of a certain age doubting their ability to “mold” an older child They talk of wanting to be needed longer or being able to grow together with a child as if the length of time matters more than the sincerity of the relationship.
Many prospective adoptive and foster parents have never really considered an older child for some of the aforementioned reasons. They may feel incapable of forming a loving parent/child bond with an older child already “set in their ways.”
They may simply believe that older and larger means bigger and more complex troubles. I am not here to disregard the fullness of those fears. If you have thought about coming forward to foster or adopt it is because you feel called to parent. Many of you have raised or are raising families and the pure rightness of your desire is difficult even for you to explain. You know that there is more to your life than what’s before you and opening your home to help a child just feels right.
Those of us who choose to become adoptive parents have to understand that we are not responsible for our children’s need for us to be in their lives or their chaotic backgrounds. Yet we are choosing to be instrumental in helping them process the ramifications of those backgrounds. Sometime that choice is going to mean bearing the brunt of anger/confusion and fear. When my wife and I invited our children into our lives we incorporated their histories and drama’s. We offered to share their burdens and to love them as best we could.
When your life seems to be in upheaval when you feel you must be on the defensive at all times; it’s hard to remember the damaging impact of a chaotic life history. You naturally become guarded and often hostile in response to the treatment you endure. The feelings generated in the parents can be crushing and debilitating. Yet we must try to remember that all this is our choice and in fact the true reason we’ve made that choice. We want most of all to help our children heal. We want the pain to stop and the wounds to close. We choose to stop the cycle of rejection and disenfranchisement by being true to the definition of the title parent.
We offer to love, honor and protect our children from a world in which they are in grave danger of becoming chattel. A commodity only as useful as their ability to generate income. Children consigned to nobody with little regard given to what their futures might be.
As noble as claiming and bonding is the true gift of adoption is the opportunity for personal growth that is presented to every adoptive/foster parent with each interaction especially the challenges. The behaviors that push us beyond the old borders of our lives offer the greatest lessons. We face our fears and test our values under the white hot glare of adversity and come out better for it. Our children learn that we are different from the others and through that we are validated and proven. It is through these trials that our mettle is tested and we will define our lives work.
If we are lucky each of us will reach many milestones and achievements during the course of our lives they will all pale in comparison to the gifts that we receive for our decision to claim the children that we raise regardless of from whence they came.
