We like to talk about adoption in happy terms. What a blessing it has been to me to get to parent my amazing kids and I’m SO thankful adoption makes that possible. It has been a beautiful event in the life of our family, but we can’t deny that it has its origins in pain. The pain we experienced as an infertile couple. The pain our children’s first families experienced in losing their kids. The pain our children went through when they lost all that was familiar to them.
When we started the adoption process we learned about these kinds of losses through our adoption education. We grieved our own and we felt such compassion and empathy for our kids and their families even before we met them. We knew pain was involved, but we looked forward to the joy that would come when we would become parents and be able to give a child a home.
What we didn’t anticipate was the heartbreaking pain we experienced about a year before bringing our first son home.
We had a homestudy, read the books, paid the fees, waited and waited and waited. Finally our names were next on the list and the call came. Would we be willing to take two brothers- two years-old and six months? We had only expected to take one child, but we prayed about it and said yes. For three months we had their picture on our fridge. We sent it to all our friends and family in our Christmas card. We told everybody what their new names would be. We worked on readying their room and prepared to travel when their paperwork was finished. And then just a couple days after Christmas we got another call.
Their mom’s financial situation had improved. She had returned for the boys. The agency apologized.
We were devastated. We hadn’t even considered this possibility. We thought these kids were destitute and needed us. We never once thought about a mom working to better her situation so she could go retrieve them, as though the orphanage was a daycare. In our unselfish moments we were thankful they could grow up with their mother and hoped all the prayers we had prayed for them had caused The Lord to intervene and truly do what was best for them.
We picked up the pieces and the agency said we could choose another child. So we picked a beautiful toddler boy. There was something about his eyes that just called out to your soul. If you can have a “love at first sight” moment in international adoption, that was what we experienced. And a month and a half later the phone rang again.
His mother had felt family pressure that adoption wasn’t right. She didn’t want to take him back, but her father was threatening to cut her off if she didn’t.
And we found ourselves grieving again. This time we grieved for a child who was returning to a situation where maybe he wouldn’t be loved and cherished the way we longed to love and cherish him. After hearing NO stories from other adoptive families about this kind of loss, we had experienced it twice. It didn’t feel right and we had no one to walk this road with us.
This is what is called “loss of a referral” or “adoption loss”. It’s what happens when you have been told you will be adopting a child, but the situation changes. This could be because a birthmother changes her mind after her baby is born, a parent returns to claim a child from an orphanage, or because a child dies while waiting to be adopted. All of those heartbreaks will be unique to the circumstances, but they have some similar challenges.
It is hard to grieve what was never truly yours. You can feel like an idiot for getting your hopes up. The pain you feel when you first hear the news gets magnified over and over as you have to tell your family and friends that plans have changed. There is no sense of closure.
I have experienced the loss of two biological children prior to their births. I can’t say that adoption loss is easier or harder, only that there are strong similarities. If you have experienced miscarriage, you may have comfort to lend to the family who experiences the loss of a referral. They need to know they have a right to grieve, the pain will lessen with time, and that God orchestrates even our toughest moments for His glory.
While the losses we experienced in the adoption process were so heartbreaking in the moment, we look back now and see how if we wouldn’t have gone through each of those steps, we never would have been in the right place at the right time for our son. When we got that second call about losing another referral, the lady from our agency ended it by saying, “But we have something special for you. A baby. And it’s as close to a sure thing as we can offer. We feel so badly that you’ve gone through this. I’m sending you his picture.” And we got a picture of our little Josh, crying and holding his arms out. He says he was reaching for me. I am honestly thankful that God used whatever means necessary to bring Josh into our family.
While we have not experienced it, another heartbreak we witness in adoption is disruption. If you haven’t run across this concept yet, be grateful. Disruption is the reason I argue so strongly for pre-adoptive parents to be educated. Disruption is why I feel so strongly about respecting birth order in your family. Disruption is why I want adoptive parents to know what resources are available to them and have safety plans ready if their child comes with serious behavioral problems.
Disruption is when an adoptive parent decides their adopted child can no longer be part of their family. These kids end up in foster care, or in the saddest of situations, back in their home country. This was brought to light in 2010 when a woman attempted to send her son back to Russia with a note saying, “I no longer wish to parent this child.” People were shocked, and rightly so. But this woman is NOT alone in looking for a way out of a situation that feels desperate.
I will not begin to judge the families that choose disruption. The situations I know about involve safety issues that any of us would find terribly challenging and for the protection of other children in the home something had to be done. I have a lot of sadness that a child who had previously been abandoned by a birthfamily has now been abandoned by an adoptive family. I can’t imagine the scars on top of scars that leaves. I am also grieved for the other children in the home who may have experienced abuse at the hands of this sibling. Whenever disruption happens, it is heartbreaking and a last option for a desperate family.
So in the hopes of avoiding what is a terrible reality, let me speak strongly to you. If you are considering adoption, you need to think long and hard about the worst case scenario. What if this child doesn’t love you or openly rejects you? What if this child physically or sexually abuses your younger children? What if this child steals from you or from your friends and family? Tells their school lies about you that get you investigated by Child Protective Services? What if this child roams the house at night, taking things from siblings and eating or hoarding food? What if this child has a rage that they turn against you when things don’t go their way? What if you no longer feel safe in your own home and you watch your children live in fear, too?
These are the stories I hear that lead to disruption. How can you minimize the likelihood of this being your story? Know your abilities and your resources. Know what you are willing to risk. Know what your safety plan will be before this child comes home. Know as much as you can about your child’s story and risk factors. I implore you to read the stories of disruption and don’t tell yourself why this couldn’t possibly happen to you.
I have heard a lot of stories of disruption. More than I wish I’d ever had to hear. Of those stories that I know, the VAST majority involve an older child who has been victimizing the younger children in the home. It is the worst scenario you can imagine and obviously would bring out the protective mother bear in any of us. I stumbled across a website for “rehoming” children- finding new homes for kids who had been internationally adopted- and without exception their information ended with “this child needs to be an only or youngest child in the family.” You can only imagine why.
Brian and I loved our days working with older kids, but we realized when we became parents that we had to put the needs of our children first as a matter of wise stewardship of the lives given to us. We have chosen to only take kids younger than our youngest as a matter of protection for our kids and to prevent the possibility that we would have to disrupt a child from our home. I know that this is not how God calls all families. I have especially seen success stories when it has been a foster adoption where the parents had time to see how these kids would do in their family and had access to the child’s history. I am not saying that I know what’s right for everybody, just that when we asked ourselves what our strengths and weaknesses were as a family, we knew our best service to all our children (present and future) would be to do what we could to protect our kids while also opening our home to children we could commit to without fear of disruption.
Orphaned children need families and our hearts rightly break for them. All families have capabilities and resources, weaknesses and risk-factors that need to be examined prior to adoption. While we may want to take on the neediest situations, we need to be sure we’ve considered all the ramifications. Disruption hurts everybody involved and needs to be avoided. Avoiding disruption starts before that child ever enters your family.
Adoption can be such a beautiful experience, but there can also be pain in the journey. We know God has not asked us to live a life that avoids pain, so we seek to obey his unique call in each of our lives and find our joy in Him.
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