Time for Some Truth

If you enter into adoption thinking only of how wonderful it will be to have a child or how much of a blessing you can be for a child in need, you WILL be sorely disappointed.  Don't get me wrong, it IS wonderful to have a child (or in our case more children).  And you ARE or WILL BE an incredible blessing to the child.  But you also need to realize that there will be days, weeks, maybe even months when everything seems upside down or backwards and very little seems to be going right.  Times when you only get glimpses of that bliss you imagined in the beginning.

It is frustrating to find words that your child can understand.  Frustrating for you and for them.  Likely they want very much to understand you and to do what you want them to do, they just don't know what you want.  They also can't express what they're feeling or what they want, and THAT is frustrating.  It takes months to get to a point where you can communicate effectively.

Even when you think you're communicating, you will find gaps in language ability that you don't expect.  For example, your child gets in trouble for "touching" another child in school.  When asked why he touched the child, he said the other child touched him first.  The other child denies touching him.  Here's the problem.  They bumped into each other and then your child touched the other child by putting his arm around him and giving him a pat on the shoulder.  Your child sees the bump as a "touch" and his "touch" as friendly, but the other child does not.  Neither does the school.  So your child not only gets in trouble for "touching" another child but for "lying" about what happened.

Culture shock is something else.  I can't tell you how often we hear, "But in Ukraine it is different."  Yes, in Ukraine it is or was different.  Your family was unstable there.  Here it is not.  You were unsupervised much of the time.  Here you are not.  You were abused and neglected there not only by your birth family but by the people who were supposed to care for you in their stead.  Here you have plenty to eat, clothes appropriate for the season, toys to play with, hugs and kisses as well as limits and consequences.  School is different here.  Expectations are different here.  The language is different, ways of doing things are different.  Yes, it is different.  The sands are shifting under your feet, but there is solid ground.

As they navigate all these differences, you will be surprised by the defenses that come up and the behaviors they choose to help them deal with all the changes.  One might become completely obnoxious which, when paired with impulsive behavior, gets him in trouble at school and at home.  It also alienates other kids.  So you spend a lot of time at the school having conferences with the teacher, counselor, assistant principal, mentor, and ESOL teacher about his behavior.

Or maybe she talks incessantly, narrating your every move, asking questions that if she just observed and thought about what she saw she wouldn't need to ask.  Or she insinuates herself into everyone's business, taking over any show of affection to another child, bossing people around or acting like the parent.  Or she fusses every time she has to wait 5 minutes for you to finish preparing dinner and fix her plate.  Or she plays for 3 hours in the middle of the night.  Every night.  For months.  So you never get a full night's rest.

And then, of course, there are the revelations about their life prior to you.  You just can't prepare yourself for what you might hear.  Some memories that they share might be sweet and beautiful - like climbing cherry trees and eating cherries until they can't eat cherries anymore.  Or gratitude for a nice lady who fed them when they were hungry.  Other times you will hear that the reason the lady fed them was because their birth mom took off for several days and left them alone with nothing.  Or you'll hear about someone pulling a knife an stabbing someone.  Or you'll hear about beatings when birth mom was drunk.

I haven't even mentioned medical and developmental issues.  Sure you get some medical information on the child/ren in country, but you really don't know what you got until you get home and have them evaluated.  And what constitutes "healthy" in Ukraine is vastly different from what is considered "healthy" here.

You will likely have medical and developmental issues to address that were not noted in their medical history - if you even have a medical history.  All three of ours operate on a level significantly younger than their chronological age.  Two are not even on the growth charts for their age.  Two likely have fetal alcohol syndrome and the complications that go with that.  Two likely have ADD/ADHD.  One may be mentally delayed.  None of this was in their medical files - such as they were.

And this leads to therapy.  Lots and lots of therapy.  Speech therapy.  Occupational therapy.  Physical therapy.  Vision therapy.  Counseling.  Evaluations.  Appointments.  Life revolving around getting each one's needs assessed and met.  Hours in the car and sitting in waiting rooms.  Coordination of schedules and getting virtually nothing else in your life done.

IF you have other children (as we do), you enter another level of complication.  Their lives are now upside down, too.  They spend hours in the car with you trucking everyone else around.  They don't get to do some of the things they used to do.  They don't have as much individual time and attention.  And even if they were excited and supportive of the adoption, they also didn't know how deeply it would affect their everyday lives.  So not only do you have to manage your own emotions, you get to help them manage theirs as well.

That's not to say that it isn't worth it.  It absolutely is.  But until you are in it, you just can't appreciate how completely exhausting it is - mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  All parents go through this to some extent, so in some ways it is no different from anyone else's parenting journey.  But in other ways it is TOTALLY different, and others just can't understand the unique experience of adding these kids to the family.  They think it is the same when it absolutely is not.  They may not mean to, but they dismiss expressions of difficulty with tales of their own parenting woes.  Or they come back with platitudes such as "this, too, will end."  Or my personal favorite, "It hasn't even been a year yet."  As if I'm not aware of how long it has been or as if everything will magically resolve at the one year mark.

I know this is a depressing post, but that happens to be where I am right now.  This is hard.  Yes, it will get better.  And I know that.  But RIGHT NOW it is HARD.  And I want you to know, if you are considering adopting, that there are times like this.  I have read several adoption blogs where the writers never mention anything negative at all.  I don't want this blog to be like that.  I want to be real.  And right now it is hard. . . .But it will get better!