Angry

During the first few months of placement, you may discover that your older adopted child is always angry.

But take a minute to think about how you felt when you read their case file. Weren't you angry? Angry that the birth parents abused or neglected them? Angry that the system didn't protect them? Angry that they were moved too many times? Angry that nobody stepped in to help earlier? Maybe even angry at God for allowing it all to happen?

So they are angry. But is it not logical? Doesn't it makes sense that they would be?

Emotions are tricky, especially for boys. I have found that with my sons, fear, sadness, insecurity, frustration, grief, abandonment, and all inner pain is masked in fiery anger. When they are feeling any negative emotion whatsoever, it is released in anger.

So when parenting these children, they key to survival is looking beyond the anger. Redefine the anger for what it is -- asking, "is he afraid? Is she sad? Is she going through a stage of grief? Is he anxious?" Endure the anger, but when it is over ask yourself what triggered the outburst, what the underlying emotion really is, and how best to address that issue.

The Characteristics of Children from Foster Care Redefined

I am working on a series of characteristics of children who are adopted out of foster care. The characteristics are listed in negative terms so that they can be redefined later. I am thinking about children who are placed in adoptive homes after the age of eight as I develop the list, though it certainly can apply to children adopted during an earlier stage.

If you have any to add, please let me know.

Immature

Angry

Selfish

Liars

Hungry.

Thieves

Ungrateful

Manipulative

Unlovable

Disrespectful/Rude

Self-Protecting

The Child Protection System

Before I began my journey as a foster and adoptive parent, I was sure that I knew who children needing protection from. I assumed, as do most, that children needed protection from their parents, period.

But now that I have been through our journey of the last several years, I am coming to understand that once children have received protection from their parents, they may spend their teen years needing protection from themselves.

We have two sons who have chosen a rather tumultuous adolescense. I say chose because they made small choices along the way, but with their disabilities, I'm not sure how much of what they did was actually a choice. But their choices, and ours, led them into the "Child Protection System."

The "Child Protection System" intervened because we were unable to keep them safe at home. This isn't because they were being abused and neglected -- we, in fact, were the ones that were the recipients of the abuse. But since they could not live at home, someone needed to take care of them.

Their stories are told, in way too much detail, sporadically, in my personal blog, but the conclusion so far has been this. One of our sons was put into structured environments to protect him from his own choices as a result of FASD. He functioned very well in a place where he was told what to do consistently from sunup to sundown. As soon as he was placed in a less restrictive environment, he couldn't handle it. He is now wandering around our town, has quit school within weeks of his graduation, and is unemployed. We don't know where he is sleeping.

Our other son is in a boys ranch and doing very well there. He is in a place where very large guys can restrain him when he gets angry or violent. He is receiving OK grades, working 25-30 hours a week, and maintaining very well. My theory is that he is doing OK there because he feels safe . . . not safe from us, but safe from himself. He knows that if he looses it, he is not going to be arrested or kicked out -- because there are big guys that will remove him from the situation before it gets out of hand.

I am coming to believe that there are many young people who do not feel safe from themselves. They are afraid of what they might do if given enough freedom. They have proven, again and again, that to be somewhere without those built-in guidelines, means they can't handle themselves.

My conclusion is that it is OK for some kids to grow up in group care. They don't feel safe anywhere else. What is NOT okay is for those kids in group care to have no one. Maybe recruiting families to be there for them WHILE they are in group care is the answer.

So I've come to a new point of understanding. It isn't always the children who need protecting. There are occasions when it is the parents. And sometimes the children need to be protected not from other people, but from themselves.

Children with Special Needs

A very interesting view from Chuck Colson on children with special needs.

The Only Criteria for Parental Relationship

According to the INS in this article is DNA testing and a genetic link. Apparently, it doesn't matter, if I have claimed a child and raised them as my own, believing them to be mine, if I want them to join me in the U.S. they have to be related by blood.

While this is not directly an adoption issue, it is certainly a demonstration of our culture and how they define the parental relationship and it is disturbing. No wonder it's hard to convince potential adoptive parents that a blood relationship does not define parental love when society certainly demonstrates this bias.

Al Anon and FASD

I came across this chapter from Al Anon -- the group for people who have a loved one with an addiction. I am amazed at how much it applies to those of us who are parenting a child with FASD. I only have to change one word to make it completely relevent -- the word alcoholism becomes FASD.

In Al-Anon meetings we hear the three Cs describing our powerlessness over [FASD]: we didn’t cause it, can’t cure it, and can’t control it. We begin to learn the basic Al-Anon premise of taking our focus off of the [child] and keeping the focus on ourselves. Hard as it is to look at our own part in our problems, acceptance of Step One brings relief from impossible responsibilities. We were trying to fix a disease – and someone else’s disease at that!

How I wish I would have known from the beginning what I know now... it would have saved so much grief.

The Serenity Prayer and Adoptive Parents

Lord, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

As an adoptive parent, all three of these pieces are significant.

First of all, there are many things about our children that cannot be changed and we must accept them. We can't go back and change their traumatic histories. We can't change their genetic makeup. We can't change their organic brain damage or mental illness. We can't change their personalities.

Then, we have to have the courage to change the things we can. We can't back down and walk away when children need confronting. We have to work on behaviors, learn what we can about various issues, try different approaches, and work to change what can be changed.

But I think the greatest need for adoptive parents is the wisdom to know the difference. Meeting a child when he/she is 4 or 8 or 12 or 16 doesn't give us the background we need. We struggle for a long time to discover the difference between "can't" and "won't". We don't know if our children are being oppositional or simply can't do any better.

And discovering whether it's "can't" or "won't" is a difficult process for both us and our children.

I'm going to start praying the serenity prayer daily as I attempt to parent my hurt and healing children. But my emphasis is going to be a plea for the wisdom to know the difference between what I can and cannot change.