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Adopt: Ask Our Expert: Patricia Irwin Johnston

Issues related to Adoption for Pre and Adoptive Families...Continued

I have a question for PatInfant or Toddler!
Dear Pat:
I am hoping for input on what factors to take into consideration when deciding to adopt a toddler vs. an infant. My husband and I are registered with a local agency which places infants. We are just beginning the home study process. Up to now we have been getting emotionally ready to become parents of an infant, even thought we expect the wait to be 1-2 years. We just recently became aware (through a family friend) of a healthy 18-month old little girl who will be available for adoption in another states within the next several months. The state is terminating parental rights, and the birth parents were 16 at the time the little girl was born. She has been with the same foster parents since the age of 2 weeks. We are seriously considering pursuing this adoption, but fear we don't know all of the ramifications of adopting a toddler. We are worried about the transition both for her and for us in terms of bonding and entitlement. As we are out of state we can not make the transition as smoothly as we would like. There are pros and cons to every situation, and we wonder what issues we may not have thought of. Can you help? Sincerely, Sarah

Response from Pat:
Sarah,
You are wise to want to be well prepared for your adoption-whether you adopt an infant or a toddler. And you are absolutely correct that adopting a toddler is very different from adopting a newborn. The biggest different, actually, is that while toddlers are cognitively and emotionally mature enough to have concrete memories of their past lives and past parent figures, they do not have the langauge skills needed to be able to work thorugh their grief and fears and ambivalencies about this with a counselor. That's why carefully planned transitions are so important in toddler adoptions--even more important than transitions for children who are of school age or children under a year of age.

A few reactions to the sepcific situation you describe.
First, some pros and cons.
The biggest pro in choosing to adopt this child who has already been identified as available for adoption is, of course, the speed. It would take much longer to adopt a newborn, and in doing so you will of course be opening yourself to the probability of being disappointed several times along the way to a successful placement. In this case you are dealing with a concrete reality. What you see is what you will get.

The con, of course, is that this child has already formed an attachment, and it is not to you. That means that you must expect that there is going to be a period of time that is awkward for all of you (but of course each situation is so unique that it's impossible to predict just how awkward that period will be.)

The fact that this child has been with the same foster family since two weeks after her birth is GREAT! This means that she is likely to have formed a secure attachment to them, and secure attachments are much easier to transfer than areto building attachments in a same-aged child who has never learned to trust and attach. BUT, the fact that this child is so bonded will also mean that she is likely to grieve, so your major task will be to understand and support that grief and not to take it as a personal rejection of the love you and your family are ready to give to this little person.

Good transition if VITAL to the process of transferring attachments smoothly, and despite the fact that you live in different states it is worth the sacrifices you will need to make to ensure a good transition. You need to put demands on the agency to act in this child's best interests to hep you do a smooth transition.

Look back at questions and answers posted to my column over the last several weeks and you will find a Q&A about the transitioning of twins from one state to another. But, the very best and most thorough source of information for you about what to expect from the process of adopting a toddler and the steps in insuring a good transition are to be found in Mary Hopkins-Best's new book Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft

After reading that, won't you please come back to the forum and let us know what decision you made and how you reached it?

Pat Johnston
Perspectives Press, The Infertility and Adoption Publisher
Visit our web site at http://www.PerspectivesPress.com
PO Box 90318, Indianapolis IN 46290-0318 USA
phone/fax (317)872-3055, e-mail ppress@iquest.net
Treating Adopting Parents as Idiots!
My husband and I are in the middle of the homestudy process for a public adoption. We have filled out lengthy and invasively personal forms of autobiographical information, handed in our SIX reference letters, doctor's forms and police checks. At our first interview with the social worker last week, she informed us that we would have to attend six information sessions after our approval as potential adoptive parents. The reason for these sessions? To teach us about childhood development and selecting equipment for babies!

I find this attitude highly insulting: surely, if we are approved as potential parents, we can be trusted to know or learn about parenting and selecting a crib! We are highly educated, highly intelligent people, with a demonstrated ability to work with children and learn new things. I keep thinking that pregnant women don't have to go through this kind of treatment, why should I? Somebody please help me to be less bitter and angry: my personal interview with the social worker happens in two days, and I don't want to blow it by being antagonistic!

Response from Pat:
Sue, I hear ya! Most of us who have gone through the homestudy and parent prep process after infertility have felt like you are feeling now at one time or another. Feeling so out of control of our family planning in the first place, it's really difficult to lose such control of our privacy to a social worker (often younger than we are and frequently not even a parent himself, let alone an adoptive parent) who gets to "approve" us as parents when people who are fertile don't have to get permission. I wrote the should-we-adopt book Adopting after Infertility for families feeling this way--as I had felt many years before.

The anger and the bitterness are a part of the six losses related to infertility (see earlier Q&A for details) and they are something to try to get THROUGH--hopefully before baby arrives, though that isn't always possible. Since that's the goal, though, let me offer another thought or two that might offer you another way of looking at this.

After sharing how you you feel that parents should be "Trusted" to learn what they need to know and then zeroing in on the infant care classes that are the required next step in your prep process you said, "I keep thinking that pregnant women don't have to go through this kind of treatment, why should I?"

It's true that the rest of the world doesn't FORCE pregnant women to take child development classes and infant care classes. But I've got to tell you that there are an awful lot of us experienced parents out there both by birth and aodption who wish that everybody WAS required to do this! What we expect parenting to be like and what it actually IS like are quite different. Additionally, though these classes aren't required for parents by birth, most pregnant parents-to-be DO take childbirth prep classes and hospitals routinely give new parents instruction in changing diapers and feeding etc before sending mom and baby home.

In fact, in this day and age, parents by birth aren't resentful of these things. They WANT to do them. They seem to consider enrollment in a prep class a badge of honor, the thing to do, and hospitals these days actually COMPETE with one another based on the quality of their pre-birth, siblings-to-be, and early parenting classes. Doing this kind of getting ready is a part of the process of changing roles: from nonparent to parent.

Your coming baby needs you to be focused not on your ubnderstandable anger about the losses of the past but on HIS NEEDS upon arrival and upon your family's bright future together. I hope that I can encourage you to read Launching a Baby's Adoption: Practical Strategies for Parents and Professionals, which is designed specifically to help families over the particular hump you are facing and to help them to leap foresquare into the normalcy of family life!

Hang in there, Sue!

Pat Johnston
Perspectives Press, The Infertility and Adoption Publisher
Visit our web site at http://www.PerspectivesPress.com
PO Box 90318, Indianapolis IN 46290-0318 USA
phone/fax (317)872-3055, e-mail ppress@iquest.net

Response from Pat:
Children are almost always ambivalent about the arrival of a new baby. It's a normal part of sibling relationships that children sometimes feel jealous of one another--because one was born to the family and the other was "chosen", because one is older and gets to do stuff or because the other is given special treatment because he is the baby, because one is a girl and the other is a boy. Kids FIND things like this to explain why they currently feel they are not the center of the universe. Adoption is just one more element to that. Just as you can count on your born-to-you children to find something to pick on one another about or feel sorry for themselves about, count on an adoption to become that element sometimes: "I'm special because I'm chosen" or "I hate him; he's not our REAL brother anyway" will become part of the ammunition in the sibling wars.

This isn't a good reason not to adopt. More importantly, in trying to decide whether to expand your family to include children both by birth AND adoption, you need to be very aware that there will be some things about adopting that CAN cause some legitimate friction if parents don't think about them carefully ahead of time and plan for them. Adopting a child with special needs, for instance, may take a great deal of the family's time and money and emotional energy, and other children are sometimes rightfully resentful of this when parents don't do a careful job of meeting everybody else's needs too. Children who arrive beyond infancy nearly always bring along with them more emotional baggage from their past experiences than adoptive parents expect to be the case (see Adopting a Toddler by Mary Hopkins-Best, a new article on the Perspectives Press web site.) Dealing with this can also be a source of frustration to siblings. Also, an adopted child will be genetically different from the other three, who may well have some physical traits, some personality traits and some abilities in common that are related to their genetic connection rather than to their cultural connection. Parents in mixed bio and adoptive parents need to think about these kinds of things and be especially proactive about building a sense of cultural familiness than fosters belonging based on community rather than on genetics.

Families who have built blended families like the one you are considering for the most part feel very pleased with their decision! Explore further by linking into the resources on this web site. There's a child out there who would love to join your family circle full of hugs!

Pat
Perspectives Press, The Infertility and Adoption Publisher
Visit our web site at http://www.PerspectivesPress.com
PO Box 90318, Indianapolis IN 46290-0318 USA
phone/fax (317)872-3055, e-mail ppress@iquest.net

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