There are lots of ways in which my story is an open book. But while there are many aspects of motherhood and my life that I’m very open about, there are also elements I don’t believe belong just to me. The lines I draw are fuzzy, but it’s important to me to preserve the privacy and stories of my children since they don’t belong solely to me. This is one reason why I don’t often talk about the struggles of my kids in a specific way. Those stories with their tragedies and triumphs belong to my children for them to choose how they want to share and express them. This creates some ethical dilemmas for me as I strive for honesty in relating what real life is like in our home without sharing details that don’t belong to me.
So you’ll have to forgive me in being a bit vague in what I share here, but it feels like the time is right to give you a peek into what it means to me to be the mom, the teacher, the coach, the cheerleader for a child (or two) who has some struggles.
First of all, I fully recognize that the issues we face in our house are relatively minor compared to what many other parents are facing. On the outside my kids look “normal” and are able to function with their peers. I also recognize that the stories of my children are very much in process. They are all still very young and the extent that my life and theirs will be impacted has not yet been determined. The reality is that through tears and research and evaluations we were able to find a diagnosis for a child’s quirks and it has changed our perspective on that child and has given us great empathy for other families of kids with quirks.
There are lots of things I could say about the struggles of being a parent of a child who seems “typical” to other people. It’s a bizarre position to be in to feel like you have to aggressively convince other people that this wonderful child you adore has a problem you wish they didn’t have. You become an advocate who is willing to fight to be sure your child gets what they need although it would be easier in some ways to keep pretending maybe they don’t need anything at all. It’s odd how in this situation even encouraging comments can feel like invalidation. It’s great when a child does well in a certain public situation, but that may not be the reality we’re dealing with at home. It can make you feel like you’re the crazy one when it’s hard for other people to see the total picture and it’s exhausting and feels privacy violating to try and explain it all to every Sunday School teacher or distant relative or family friend who asks.
But then there are the times people DO see the quirks. A grocery store meltdown or preschool breakdown or family gathering fiasco. That’s when the mother bear in me comes out. I want to protect this child from the judgements of the world and I want people to see this child the way I do.
I wonder if there’s some amount of my strong feelings that are related to adoption. I feel like the adoption narrative is that when you take a child out of a difficult environment and give them love and consistency and good nutrition, then their response is supposed to be entirely positive. As a society we expect them to be grateful and fully healed of whatever life experience and pain they came into our homes with. I imagine that when people observe a child who didn’t respond that way, there’s confusion or pity or the elevation of that adoptive parent to saint status or the assumption that the adoptive parent isn’t doing everything they can to help.
Abandonment, abuse and neglect leave scars on a child’s heart. Losing a culture that’s familiar with all its sights and sounds and smells is a major grief. Spending your first nine months of life existing in a toxic bath of the drugs and alcohol your mother took into her body is not something that an organic diet and lullabies can always (if ever) fix. I don’t want to paint a bleak picture of adoption, but I think it’s good to be prepared and expect the unexpected. That way you can be pleasantly surprised (as we have been!) when a child seems to cope well with this history. Kids are very resilient especially when given an environment that encourages them to thrive. Many of us know adults (or are adults) who grew up in difficult environments and we know those childhood factors don’t have to prescribe the adults we must become. But it’s important to see that a child’s story doesn’t start the day they entered their adoptive family.
So does that mean adoption isn’t something worth doing? Is it still a risk worth taking when we know our kids may struggle with emotional or behavioral problems or with any number of diagnoses and labels?
I hate feeling like the fact that there are adoptive children who struggle can scare people off of adoption. A child’s issues are absolutely not the full picture of who that child is. And we are not inherently better people because we choose to love our kids with struggles (although loving them often does make us into better people).
I don’t love my quirky child because I am a good person. I love that child because I find that child entirely lovable. Yes there is frustration. There are challenges and struggles that make me feel wholly inadequate as a mother. There is anger at the factors entirely out of my control that potentially contributed to this child’s issues. But a child is not defined by the label they need to receive the help they require.
I feel for these children who wait to be adopted because of the labels placed on them. If someone could have looked into the future and written out in clinical terms the problems we’d face with our quirky kid, would we have still signed up for this? But that’s not who this child is. No one could have predicted the intense affection I would feel for this child. The smile that wins your heart. The big bear hugs that squeeze the breath out of you. How this child would see me laying in the dark, wiped out with a headache and would come quietly sit vigil over me while the other kids kept playing. I have seen how my fierce devotion to this child is matched only by this child’s fierce devotion to me and our family.
We see the light at the end of the tunnel as an appropriate diagnosis and therapy leads to results. More than anything, we see how it has been a game changer for us as this child’s parents to understand better the needs that exist and the different way this child processes life. Irritation has turned into empathy and frustration has turned into problem-solving. But we also know that bigger issues may still be waiting for us with this child or any of our others. And that’s okay. We love them not because they are easy or because we are inherently good, but because we understand what it means to sometimes be loved when you are unlovely. And because we firmly believe we have the best kids in the world— the kids meant for us— with whatever gifts and struggles they may bring to our family.