The child protection services is hosting a free 7-weeks class that serves new parents, in teaching them all sorts of wise things. I started it last Thursday along with 7 other families who recently adopted or have just been matched with one or two children.
The class started with two important ideas to keep in mind: you don’t have to be a perfect parent, just a sufficiently good parent for your child. And it is never too late to do better next time – don’t get stuck in guilt.
It talks about a child’s need to go out and explore then come back and replenish emotionally. It opens our intellectual eyes to see clearly and not interpret or jump to conclusions regarding our child’s behavior or reactions. I may draw here my conclusion and takeaways as I have to discuss them in depth with my spouse when I get home. Each of the attending families has only one parent in attending.
I brought up, talking with the other parents, Jackie’s request out of frustration with not getting her way, to go to her foster parents.
Over the last half a year this request has been brought up at night (during the matching period we had to take her back at night). At night she used to stay up very late and watch cartoons. That was not the case in our home. At other times she would cry she wants to go to them until we put a name to her emotion. I asked “you miss them, don’t you?” She thought for a minute and said: “I miss my foster family” but the heartbreaking crying eased. She would be sad and cry, and I would be sad with her. She would say “I miss them” and I would say “it must be really hard to not be able to see them. But in the spring we’ll go visit” and she would climb out of sadness.
Anyway, for now, one of the clarifications I got, validation really, was shared by our psychologist hosting the class. Natural families are like a tower with no door. When kids grow up they fly way, but they don’t have the option of exiting the tower. Adoption built families have a door called adoption. Which is locked, but is a door nonetheless.
And the child may say: “I want to exit” (like Jackie when we didn’t stop at the playground after a full long day). I had told her in the past:
– Mommy and daddy are your family now. You foster parents took care of you until we could come from America to adopt you.
– Your foster family house is not your home. They have taken care of many children who were eventually adopted. Even baby Melisa will be adopted and have a mommy and daddy of her own.
– It breaks my heart that you hurt but I can’t take you back.
– We will visit them, because they are our friends and we miss them too…
What the psychologist said to take courage in and make it clear to them: “there will be days when you won’t like our rules, and days when we don’t like your behavior, but we are family and neither of us will bailout. We won’t leave when it gets hard. You won’t leave when you don’t like us.” And that’s final.