What Do You Wish You Had Known Before You Adopted? - Weekend Wisdom

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Dawn Davenport  0:00  
Welcome to weekend wisdom by creating a family. We can wisdom is our short form podcast where we answer your questions. By short form. I mean, it's going to be five to 10 minutes. So let's just jump in today's question is about what that I wished I had known before I adopted, we are in the process of deciding whether to adopt, we have decided to give up on fertility treatment. As I listened to your podcast, I thought it would be good to ask you what you wish you had known before you had adopted. But I tell you what I will do you one better, I'm going to share with you what our online community thinks and include my own thoughts as well. But that way you get the opinion of more than just one adoptive parent. And if you're interested in joining our online community, you can join it at facebook.com/groups/creating a family. So we polled the group. And here are the eight things that we kind of as a collective group of adoptive parents wish we had known before we adopted number one, attachment can be hard. And I mean, it can be really, really hard. Here's a quote, attachment can take a really long time to create in a brain that has been affected by trauma and early life stress. My son, who was adopted at age two and a half joined us coming from a position of loss, not from our perspective of gain. So number two, parents can have a hard time attaching to Here's a quote from that I had read all of your resources on how my child adopted at 15 months might have trouble attaching, but blew off the part when you said that parents also have to bond with the child. I have felt such intense fear and anger at myself, for not feeling totally and completely in love with this child. I wished I had spent more time understanding my own attachment process. And here's another quote, the problem with attaching might very well be my ability to attach to my child, not my child's ability to attach to me. Yeah, I did listen to the creating a family shows on this and I read your blog on attachment as a two way street. But I just never in a million years thought it would apply to me. All right, number three, attachment doesn't depend on age. Here's a quote for that one, I adopted two siblings, aged two and five, the five year old has settled beautifully and bonded with both my husband and me. But the two year old continues to not be attached almost 18 months later. So many things go into a child's being able to attach including early life experiences drug or alcohol during pregnancy, etc. And age is only one factor. I wish I had been better prepared for this fact. Number four, personality conflicts are real. Here's a quote for that. Children come with a very own set of personality which may not fit easily with my personality. This child doesn't seem to jive with my normal style, and knows where my every button is located and pushes them often. I think that's an important one. And I would just say that I have always felt that also gives us power as adoptive parents. If I recognize that this is a fit issue, then I as the adult, if I recognize it can work on fitting with the child, there's always ways that we can look for and try to find similarities in ways that we can mesh. So I've always found that the recognition that what I might be experiencing is a fit issue is the personality conflict issue is it gives me power, meaning by that was just my own personal thought on that one. Number five, I wasn't prepared to feel such pain for the birth mother. The quote for that one is I was caught off guard by how much sadness I would feel for our child's birth parents at their loss. It left me feeling almost guilty. Number six of the things we wish we had known, a match with an expectant mother does not equal and adoption. Oh, that's a good one. Here's a quote from that one. Just because you have a match with an expectant woman and have a good relationship with her does not mean that the adoption will necessarily go through. My adoption lawyer told me this, but I didn't really believe it would happen with our situation. I wish I had protected my heart more until after the revocation period. The number six thing that we wished we had known and that is it's hard to dig out of adoption debt. The quote for that one is it's a bad idea to go into debt for an adoption because the stress this debt adds to your life as a new parent saps a lot of the joy out of life and causes a lot of conflict between a couple and the seventh thing that we wished we had known before we adopted is that love is wonderful in our redo two quotes from that one. First quote, I never imagined even with all the preparing that I would love this child so much so quickly and so intensely. It is so worth every bit of pain and questioning just to be her mom. I think I protected myself before we adopted so I wouldn't be disappointed. I wasn't anticipating this much love. And here's another one. I knew it'd be hard as in very, very hard thanks for this wonderful podcast a responsible agency and reams of reading. I was well and truly warned, and I'm glad I was. But I wished I had known that the hard parts wouldn't turn out to be the whole story. I wished I had known what it would feel like to hold my daughter's hand. I wished I had known how much joy in life she would bring and how she would make us laugh. I wished I had known. I'd feel weirdly grateful for even the annoying things like playdough clogging up the vacuum and Legos everywhere and glitter all over the kitchen floor. Because we had waited so long for them. I wished I would have known the fist bumping Hallelujah Chorus joy I feel the first time she overcame her fear of water and dove into the pool at swimming lessons, and then came up with goggles askew looking for me in the bleachers to see if I saw it and her huge proud smile. I wished I had known what an honor it would be to walk with her through grief, and how much her courage would teach and humbly I wished I had known how honoring her birth family and putting together her life book would draw us together instead of pushing us apart. I wished I had known that becoming a mom through adoption is still becoming a mom. And no, we are the ones who are blessed is not just a cliche, and having a kid to love is still the luckiest luckiest thing, no matter how you come by that honor. I don't know about you. But that last one gave me goosebumps. And I've read it a couple of times and it still does. Well. I hope this answers your question of what we would wish we had known before we adopted. Before you go let me tell you about our jockeyed being family free courses that we offer. These courses are sponsored by the jockey being Family Foundation, and we are so appreciative of them. They're terrific. They're free. You can use them as continuing ed if you need it if you don't just use it to become a better parent. And you can find them at Bitly slash J B F support next bi T dot L y slash J B F support. Thanks for listening to this week's we can wisdom if you like it. Please tell a friend to subscribe to the creating a family.org podcast if you subscribe. We can wisdom automatically drops into your feed on Sundays.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai