Home
Issues related to Infertility, Launching an Adoption and Post Adoption Issues
continued....
Problems With Our Thirteen Year Old....HELP!
My wife and I adopted our son when he was three days old. We are the only parents he has ever known. We have over the years spoken very gently of his adoption to him being careful not to over due it, and probably erring on the side of not being open enough. Last night after a confrontation, we asked him, "what is the matter?" He said to his mother and I, that he feels like a stranger in our home, that his personality is different than his mothers and mine, and he can see it. So to be like us is impossible. He believes that the conflicts that occur, which we thought we normal, he sees as conflicts of biological differences. He doesn't know what he is suppose to be like, look like, feelings, etc. In his just turn thirteen year old wisdom indicated we needed to know about his biological parents in order to understand who he is. He began asking questions of his birth parents and grandparents. We filled in whatever information we could, but we know it was sparce. He asked to meet his biological grandparent who we know a little bit. It hurt us when Craig ( our sons name) said we are not his real parents and that loving us questionable. We don't believe we have done anything to him for him to have no love for us. He is our son, and we have raised him as if we produced him. We taught him to eat with a spoon, walk, talk, ride a bike and all the other outward and invisable responsibilities of a parent. We also thought we were teaching him to love. This is a scary time for his mother and I, what would you suggest, realizing that there is thirteen years to tell and another adopted girl of eight in our family as well. She has been with us since she was 9 months old. We know her birth parents very well and can see many of their personality characteristics in her. Craig mentioned that as a major difference is understanding their behaviors and the way we respond to them. He doesn't want to talk about his adoption to a counselor, he said he is ashamed. To some extent he lives in a dream world, preferring to believe that biological familes that he knows get along better than our adopted one. We have our faults but so do all families. Where do we go from here? Are there changes that now need to be made? Is this a stage of development and how do we all get through it for the better? Thanks to whoever reads this for taking the time.
Response from Pat:
I'm feeling pretty confident based on what you've shared in your question that what you are dealing with here--scarey as it probably is for your whole family (mom, dad, oldest brother and younger sister)-- is normal adolescent behavior. I don't know a whole lot of families who've had smooth sailing with their adolescent kids, have you? One of the observations I often make when talking to adoptive families about adolescence is that if it is true as is so commonly said that the way babies just "are" (soft, cuddly, sweet smelling, dependent, with huge eyes to drown in and smiles that melt the heart) is nature's way of promoting attachment, then maybe teenagers are designed the way they just "are" (moody, emotional, argumentative, obnoxious, risk-taking, refusing to bathe and living in pig sty rooms) in order to make it easier for parents to let them go!
Here's my two cents worth not just as an adoption educator, but as a mom to three adolescents now 13,16, and 22--via their adoptions as babies...
Think back to your own adolescence. Most of us went through some time when we just couldn't "find" ourselves. That's a hallmark of adolescence. Most of us had at least one friend whose parents seemed totally "with it" while our own parents seemed like total dorks who didn't "get it." Our own parents were so old that they thought differently than we did; they listened to stupid music; they didn't trust us to make our own mature decisions; they didn't like our hairstyles or our clothes or some of our friends. At the same time our bodies and skin and hair and voices were changing and weren't quite right. We were too tall or too short or too fat or too thin or too awkward or too loud or too shy. We "stuck out" in a crowd. We felt individually persecuted by parents who seemed to expect more of us than of any of our siblings. We didn't fit this darn family and we wanted out. Indeed a lot of us who were born to our families did our share of fantasizing about whether it might not be possible that we had been adopted and not told about it or even switched at birth.
Now slip into your son's shoes, which fit even more oddly than do those of the adolescent being raised in his family of origin... He's yet more "different" than the typical adolescent by virtue of being in an adoptive family ("Gosh," ask his friends, "didn't your real parents want you?") and no young adolescent wants to be "different." Unlike his friends who were born into their families, his own really could have been a different (in Thirteen-Think translate that as a "better") one. Some elements of his personality, as well as some of his still not fully defined talents may be quite different from those in a family that has a different set of genetic predispositions than his own. What's more, as his body changes, he can't look at his parents and aunts and uncles and older cousins and get any sense of how likely it is that his skin wille ver clear up or his face will ever grow to match his nose or he'll be tall enough (or stop growing) the way kids growing up with their genetic relatives usually can. Like the typical adolescent his interests are totally different than those of his dorky family, and yet his pretty superficial knowledge of the innerworkings of other families makes him wonder if other families are more like those TV sit com families, where even when they fight they all end up "tight" and happy at the end.
Now, here's a typically not-really-deep-down-confident but brash-on-the-outside young man who knows you pretty well. He has 13 years of experience with what makes you tick. And he's figured out where your soft spot is-- the adoption. So when he looks for ammunition to use against you in the parent/kid battles, he's got an easy bomb he can lob: "You're not my real parents. I may not even love you!"
Though your son may be a bit young for this element to be a part of the mix, since the the major task of adolescence is to become independent and separate from one's family, a fear not uncommon among adoptees (and based almost completely on some of those myths about the impermanentand "not real" nature of adoptive famiy relationships) is that the family isn't really forever, and that when they grow up, they're out. The result is that many adopted adolescents do even more "testing" behavior with their parents, almost daring them to say the dreaded words, "Your're not our real son anyway. You're outta here."
Then add a couple of additional layers to this casserole... Your son's adoption is confidential while his sister's is not, and he can see the same thing that you can see--that there are some interesting similarities among birth relatives. Surely this is going to spur some curiosity of its own.
Now, how can you respond to this? Well, first, you need to adopt an attitide of confidence and rock solid dependability. If ever there was a time for consistent behavior from and mutual agreement between two parents, it is now. You need to acknowledge that adoption issues can be hard (they can be for you, too, and he needs to know that.) If ever there was a time for reinforcing the "rituals" that make your family unique (the way you celebrate holidays, the foods you eat, your attitudes about mealtimes, the routine of your lives together, etc.) it is while your kids are adolescents. Now is NOT the time to let the "familiness"of daily life slip away.
You need to support his need for information. Supply as much as you can and ask lots of questions to try to figure out what it is he thinks could be gained from meeting some of his birth relatives now. Then talk to him about how realistic those dreams are. At the same time, you need to be very clear with yourselves about why you would have different feelings about his making those connections when you've already made them for your daughter. There may be some VERY logical reasons why these adoptions are different in this way (e.g. abuse or mental health problems in his family of origin) but your son doesn't know what they are, so his reaction is the typical "it's not fair" of adolescence. At thirteen he's old enough to begin to talk about these things. Keep the door open to using an adoption-informed counselor--especially as a possible source of mediation--but don't force the issue as a way to BEGIN dealing with some of this stuff. To do so could blow the adoption issues quite out of proportion to the adolescent issues.
Books to read? While I wish I could refer you immediately to one of my own books or a Perspectives Press title, I can't! We've got a hole in the catalog when it comes to this age (guess I'd better start writing!) Begin instead with Foster Cline and Jim Fay's Parenting Teens with Love and Logic (wonderfully readable and even funny!)as a general parenting guide to adolescence. If you'd like to read more about adolescence and adoption, I recommend Holly Van Gulden's Real Parents, Real Children.
Your question took me back nine years to my own son's being thirteen. In retrospect I know that this now responsible 22-year-old who is FULLY attached to his family was quite normal, but gosh, those were a hard three or four years of second guessing ourselves daily. Argghhh!
If I can help further, come again!
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:
I'm happy to know, Lisa, that one of my books was helpful in the past, but sorry to find you in one of these valleys so common to waiting to adopt. It's TOUGH to wait!!
I cannot, of course, answer with specifics to a particular state--Georgia or any other--but let me react to a couple of pieces of info you've offered here...
First, since you've read some one of my books (Taking Charge of Infertility?, Adopting after Infertility?) you are probably familiar with the decisionmaking process I recommend to families in the midst of either treatment or alternative family building process (see chapter three in either of the above mentioned books.) It involves multiple steps for creating and using a personal plan, and those steps are
* Personal reflection about the various losses (I identify six) which are a part of infertility and how important, based on your indidividual nature and the family and relgious culture in which you grew up, each of those losses
* Sharing your discoveries about yourself with your partner
* Taking an "inventory" of personal resources: time, money, emotional energy and physical capacity
* Gathering information about each of the options you find of enough interest to merit exploration
* Discussing ways to blend your separate needs and wishes in order to select a course of actions which does not compromise the desires or values of either of you and represents either a consensus opinion or a synergistic decision
* Building a detailed plan for ursuing that course of action-- developing strategies, assigning tasks, allocating resources, SETTING A TIME FOR EVALUATION
* Following the plan by pursuing a the course of action
* EVALUATING AND ADJUSTING THE PLAN AS NEEDED
If I'm reading between the lines of your short question correctly, Lisa, it sounds as if, after following all of these steps, you and your husband decided to pursue domestic (as opposed to international) adoption, of an infant (as opposed to an older child), privately (as opposed to through an agency.) In the process of pursuing this plan, one barrier you discovered was that in your state you cannot advertise--a strategy which has proven to be particularly successful with many families who adopt privately. You've followed many other good networking procedures with minimal results early on, but you have now experienced six months without even a tickle. Do I have it right?
If so, it sounds to me like a RE-EVALUATION of the plan is in order. That's part of the process of creating and pursuing a successful plan. Two kinds of re-evlaution are possible. I recommend that you and your husband careve out a piece of uninterrupted time together--at least one full weekend day with no laundry and shopping and other household or personal chores in the way--go back and pick up the papers and other resources and revisit the plan.
First, you absolutely DO need to follow up on the strategies you've already tried. Figure out which kinds of networking letters were most productive to you before and do those again. Also try to figure out what kidns of contacts you have NOT made and make those. If you are not in an infertility or adoptive parent group locally, I strongly recommend that you make contact with one and begin to pick the brains of the couples who've adopted successfully about what has worked best for them. If you have retained an adoption attorney, ask him or her to refer you to some of his more recently successful local clients and pick those brains, too. You should also figure out very specifically the complexities of adopting across your own particular state's borders and, with this info in hand, consider making outreaches to any non-agency independent adoption facilitators in states where those are common (California and Illinois are two) about whether or not they can be of help (in the context of your monetary, physical, emotional, and temporal "budget".)
BUT, depending on the extent of your frustration and your concerns about the amount of time that has gone by and which you feel is left to you on your personal family building clock, you probably need to look again at your overall plan to see if each of it's elements still holds fast--that what you want most is to be parents, and independent adoption of a baby looks like the best route--or whether there is something there you might want to reconsider.
For example, it sounds as if you are partially hampered in your state by the non-advertising issue. Might that mean you should examine agency adoption more carefully? Should you revisit international adoption as an option? Might you consider adopting a toddler as opposed to an infant? What about adopting an infant transracially?
It would be wonderful if making a plan for grappling with the hrad issues in our lives was always successful the first time through, but just as the treatment plans were not successful in helping you give birth, first adoption plans don't always work, either. The process of being as "in charge" of our lives as we can possibly be demands that we remain flexible and that we understand the necessity for reworking our plans to achieve success (measured by our own satisfaction with the outcome and no one else's!)
Want to explore more details? Post again!
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
Email Page to a Friend | Feedback | Adoption | Adoption Wiki | Parent Profiles | Infertility | Adoption Information
© Adopting.org 1995-2010. This site should not substitute personal professional, legal, or medical advice. The accuracy and personal applicability of this information is not guaranteed. By using it you agree to the terms of service, including jurisdiction and limitation of liability provisions.
