Family traits

I've been a mother for 36 years, and I have always loved it.  I've never wanted to be anything else more than I have wanted to be a mom. I loved taking care of my children as babies.    I've loved watching my babies grow into strong, healthy, beautiful adults.

All families have certain things that make them alike.  Several of my children have the full, rounded face of my husband's side.  A few of them have the high cheekbones that belonged to my grandmother, who I loved dearly.  A couple of them have the dimple in their chin that belonged to my father.  Some have Bill's blue eyes.  A couple of them have my green/brown eyes.  And some have my height, which the boys of the family are not crazy about!  Sorry, guys!

When Bill and I got into our 50's, we adopted several children.  I can remember thinking one or twice that something was wrong with a couple of them in particular, because they were too thin, their chest bones didn't look right, and other various things, before catching on to the fact that because they had different DNA, their bodies just looked different from the seven babies I gave birth too.  That brought me a lot of relief - more than someone who doesn't have both biological and adopted children might realize.

It's funny how some of the adopted and some of the biological children have some of the same traits:  Luke has a birth mark that almost matches two that Spencer has, although in a different places.  Tommy has a freckle in the same place that Mary Susannah does.  I really enjoy that!

While I had noticed these things, they were never brought home to me as hard as they were this morning.

Luke came to us as a little baby.  Well, he didn't exactly come to us that way....He was my oldest daughter's foster child in the beginning.  It was because I loved his big sister - the same big sister who moved into our home as a foster/adoptive placement (seven years after Luke was) last month, that we got our foster/adopt license.  Because I wanted to adopt his siblings, I took care of Luke most of the time he was in our daughter's foster home.  I thought we would adopt all three siblings, and I wanted to bond with the baby.  In the end, the older two siblings were returned to their mother, and we adopted Luke.  He was 12 months old when he was made our adoptive placement, 18 months old when the adoption was finalized.

Luke is a 'cute in a funny way' little guy.  He has lots of quirky things:  Ears that stick out and don't match.  Eyes that completely close when he smiles.  And a funny little ball in his belly button...

I used to kiss that little belly button when I changed his clothes and diapers.  I would run my finger over it and tease him, asking him where he got that bubble.  It's a hard little round ball, set into his belly button.  I just figured that when he was born, the cord didn't fall off right, or maybe the doctor pulled on it or something.

A little over a year ago, we got a call that Luke's siblings, including that older sister we got our license hoping to adopt many years ago, were back in the foster care system and had been released for adoption.  If you follow my blog posts, you will know all the heartache and trouble that has gone on since then.  But God is good, and the sister and a new little sister were placed with us as foster/adoptive placements last month.  We will finalize the adoption the very first chance we get.  It takes about six months.

Little sister, who I call Miss S until I can publish her name, sometimes has a hard time.  She was taken from her parents about the time she turned four years old.  We are her third foster home in two years.  She has trust issues.  She acts out a bit.  Knowing I am going to be her mommy, rather than a temporary foster mother, spurs me to work harder than usual with her.  I am going to be responsible to God for the next twelve years of her life.

So when she spent a whole morning crying and throwing a tantrum before school recently, I knew I needed to get to the bottom of this.  I spent the whole day going over in my mind the research I had done.  One thing I remembered was that when you adopt an older child, you sometimes need to go back to babyhood with them, and do some of the parenting things the two of you have missed together.  So even though I would not normally give in to tantrums, I decided I would dress her each day, just like she was a toddler instead of a six year old girl fully capable of dressing herself.  We've been doing that for a week or so.

This morning, I was dressing her before school.  As I pulled up her little leggings, I saw it -

Miss S has a bubble in her belly button.  Just like Luke's.  It was amazing - the thing I thought was a "misstep" in Luke's little body is actually a family trait.  It nearly brought me to tears - something only a mommy will understand.
Had Miss S never moved in, if Luke had not had the blessing of having at least a couple of biological siblings in our home, we would not have known that family trait.  Miss S thought that was pretty fun, to have a belly button bubble like Luke's.  Luke was not so impressed.  Maybe it's a male thing?

Such a little thing.  Such a big thing.  I'm so glad, as their mommy, to get to know it!

More natural cleaners

One of the biggest pains about getting relicensed for foster/adoption is some of the standards...
I can do the invasion of my home with social workers coming to check out whether I have fire extinguishers and safety caps on all my outlets, checking on my trash can to make sure it has a lid, and wanting a fire escape route hanging on my walls (how DO you make that attractive?).

But the biggest pain to me is that all medicine, even the headache ones that I HAVE to have on a regular basis, my herbal remedies and itch creams have to be locked up in a box.  And that all my cleaners must be either locked up or out of reach of a child.

Even though the kiddos I'm adopting right now are 15 years old and 6 years old, sitting the Ajax on top of the fridge really wasn't safe enough, the caseworker told me.  I laughingly said if the girls were so determined at the age they are to harm themselves by climbing on top of the fridge to eat Ajax, then they might be beyond my ability to help them!

But I really, really want them to stay...

So I am after finding natural ways to replace even my Ajax, which is about the ONLY unnatural cleaner I buy.  I use essential oils and vinegar for just about everything!  And I don't want to have to find a key or climb on a chair every time I want to scrub out the sink.

So with one of my last visits to the Dollar General, I bought several boxes of baking soda.  Do you know they keep that in the cleaning supply isle now?
Then last night, I poured it into a glass jar, and added Tea Tree Oil and Lavender Oil, and shook it up.  This morning, I tried it on the bathtub before I took a bath.  It worked pretty well to clean the tub, but I think I will add some salt to it to give it just a bit more grit.

I found a wonderful cleaner on Pinterest: warm up vinegar and mix it half and half with Dawn dish washing detergent.  I was floored by how well that truly cleaned.  But guess what - dish washing soap is toxic, so CPS isn't going to go for that sitting around under the sink.   Once I run out of what I have already mixed up, I'm going to heat the vinegar and add a soap nut to each bottle, and see if it works just as well.  I think the kids could eat the soap nuts and be okay, although I am sure they will much prefer the all natural Popsicles in the freezer, right under the Ajax sitting on top.  They aren't crazy, you know!!

Parenting the Older Adopted Child

The adoption of an older child can be a hard thing, especially when they were not abused, but the victim of parents who abuse themselves with drugs. This will usually cause the parents not to be able to create a safe environment for the child, and eventually, Child Protective Services may have to step in and remove the child to keep him or her safe.

This was the case when two and a half year old Angel-Leah came to live with us. The only true physical abuse that happened to her was that her birth mother took drugs during her pregnancy, causing Angel-Leah to be born addicted. She was removed at birth and placed with a relative for three or so months, then returned to her birth mother. Although from the little I truly know of the next two years in her life, it was not stable, it was still filled with much love, as her extended birth family are very close, love each other and spent much time together.

After her birth mother’s drug addiction caused her to put Angel-Leah in a very unsafe situation, and the police had to rescue her, Child Protective Services stepped in once again. Again, she was placed with a relative for a short time, but soon was placed into foster care – my foster home. In the middle of the night, two year, seven month old Angel-Leah walked into my door and straight into my heart.
We had finalized the adoption of our eighteen month old son Luke only eight days before Angel-Leah came to live with us. Luke had never lived a day with his birth mother, having being removed at birth, too. Between Luke and I, there was no “first mommy”, I was the only one he had ever known. But Angel-Leah continued to see her birth mother for another year before parental rights were terminated; making her three and a half years old before the final last visit was made, ending their mother/daughter relationship.

In the eight months between that final visit, and the day we were finally able to finalize her adoption, I agonized over what to do. I knew her birth family loved her, and Angel-Leah was grieving over losing them. I wanted her to grow up mentally healthy, but there was no one in my own immediate family that I could go to for advice over whether to have an open adoption or not. Added to that, just six short weeks after we finalized her adoption, we were asked to take her five month old, full sibling birth brother, knowing he would probably end up as an adoption placement, too. I studied, researched and joined some adoption online lists to glean wisdom. In the end, I opened their adoptions to their extended family, in that we see the grandparents, aunts, cousins and others, and we write letters and send pictures and exchange presents with her birth mother. So far, this has worked out well. The birth family has accepted Luke as part of the package, and includes him in anything they do for the other two children.

One thing I quickly learned is that the birth mother/child bond is not easily broken or forgotten. Even before I adopted Angel-Leah, I knew that I would always be the second mommy in her little mind. That birth mom is still between us, and it seems like in Angel-Leah's mind she is always gong to be first. But we still have a good relationship, because first or not, a little girl still needs a real true, acting mother, and I'm it. It's been difficult for me at times not to just blurt out the hard truth in ugly terms, but I keep biting my tongue and giving her the truth in small bites as I think she can take it, because to blurt it out would damage her, and that's not what mothers are supposed to do. She's hurt my feelings many times and made my older birth children mad when she tells me I'm not her real mother, or she wants to draw pictures or make books of her and her birth mother, but I'm the adult, and I remember what she's gone through, and I work through it with me and her, and then work it through again with my other children.

I have held on, and just parented her like I parented my other children through the ups and downs and the sibling squabbles. It’s different, and yet somehow the same. We are making it. There have been hard times, but it's been real worth it. It's been good for me and good for my birth children. We have grown through this experience, and we are blessed. Angel-Leah is thriving, and I feel a sense of accomplishment raising her that is different – not better or not worse, just different – than the sense of accomplishment I have had in raising my birth children. I’m not the first mommy, maybe I’m not the most loved mommy, at least that’s why she thinks in her little mind, and yet I’m the mommy who has the joy of raising her, of seeing her learn and thrive and grow, the mommy who gets the little kisses and hugs and who fixes the skinned knees and bee stings.

This is a doable thing. I want to encourage anyone who is considering adopting an older child, that although it’s going to be a different relationship than one you might have with an infant, it’s still a rewarding, worthwhile thing to do, and you will be blessed beyond measure if you can look beyond a typical mothering role to allow the child to have a sense of hanging onto that first mother. The fact that the child has another mommy she loves is not truly a threat, if you can see beyond and around it. It’s just the truth of an older child’s life, and that child is still one of God’s creations, and worthy of your healing love.

Adopting an Older Child

Most of the time, when people think of adoption, they think of a new, sweet baby that they will bring home from the hospital. But with the cost of private adoptions soaring until they are out of reach of the average family, more people are looking towards foster adoption with the state.

It’s the rare child, though, that is adoptable from birth through the state. The birth parents usually have their child removed from them for good cause, and then they have a year or just more, depending on the state, to work the plan the state lays out to have their child returned to them. Once the parental rights are terminated, there is also an appeal period before the child is released for adoption. Here in Texas, that appeal period is 90 days. If you are a foster parent, as well as an adoptive parent, then you have a good chance of having a child in your home from the very beginning, but there are many, many children who become wards of the state as older children. They are needy, hurting, vulnerable children who need forever homes just as much as a newborn infant, but some are not as likely to find them as quickly as a newborn is. A look at the state websites for children eligible for adoption (adoptuskids.org is one) will reveal thousands of children in need of homes. Most of the children on these websites are the harder to place children, because the healthy young ones are usually adopted by their foster parents, or there are already homes lined up to take them before they ever have a chance to be put on these sites.

Adopting an older child is different from adopting an infant, and has a unique set of challenges to it. Most of the time, these older children have lived at least part of their lives with their birth parents, and no matter whether they are treated well, or very, very badly, they have formed the bond that ALL children form with their parents, and will carry the lifelong trauma of being parted from them. This can be very hard for the new family to understand. They have sometimes waited many years to adopt, and they love the child and want nothing more than to give that child a wonderful happy life. They can’t understand why the child does not respond to that love and desire, and put the past behind them, and be happy in the present and future.
But if an older, adopted child is not allowed to release and verbalize their grief at losing their first family, they will internalize it, and it can make the child mentally unhealthy. The new family needs to understand that this is important, before they take on the challenge of this older child. They need to understand it as it is, and not be threatened by it. The fact that there were parents that are remembered before the new parents is the child’s truth. If the new parents can understand that, and meet the need of the child in allowing them to grieve, then the bond between the newly adopted child and new parents will grow stronger, and the adoptive parents will have done much in helping the child grow up mentally strong and healthy, which is one of the goals of parenting.

Sometimes the older child will talk about their ‘real’ family, and say their adopted family is not real. An adopted child in our own family did this once, when her full sibling birth brother came to live with us. She said he was her ‘real’ brother, and the rest of the boys in the family were not. I explained to her on her four year old level, that we were all ‘real’ and that none of us were made out of silly putty. I told her that families were made in many ways, and that her birth brother had more than one way of being her brother, because he had the same set of parents, and also, he had the same set of adoptive parents, and he was her real brother both ways. I told her the other five boys in our family were her brothers by adoption, so they were brothers to her one way and they were real too. I reminded her that she also has two half brothers that did not live with us, and those half brothers were also real. All these many boys were brothers to her in different ways, and all those brothers were real brothers. No one was silly putty. We were real people, related to her in real ways. She enjoyed that explanation very much, and she has never questioned it.

There are many terms that are popular to use when talking to adopted children. One is to tell them that their birth parents loved them so much, that they gave them up. That explanation can cause distress in the child, because how do they know that you will not someday love them enough to give them up too?
Another is to tell them they by being adopted, they were ‘chosen’ or picked out specially, and that other people who give birth have to just take whatever they get. I believe that explanation is faulty, too. Obviously, someone gave birth to this child too, and either choose not to keep them, for whatever reason, or they had them taken from them because of the life they chose to live. Someday, the child may well link those ideas. Also, every child is special, no matter how they come into a family, and I believe it’s wrong to lead a child to believe differently. It may cause a playground battle someday, when the adopted child tells a birth child that they themselves were ‘chosen’ while the parents of the birth child had to take what they got. The birth child may know something about adoption, and may throw it back at the ‘chosen’ child that someone, somewhere, gave them up, while they themselves were ‘kept’. A child should be raised to consider everyone of worth; rather they are in their family by birth or adoption.

An adopted child, especially one adopted from the foster care system, should be told as much information in age appropriate portions as you know. The older they get, the more they should be told, until by the age of 12, they have all their information. That way, they do not have to digest any new information during the unsettled teen years, while they are trying to pull away from their parents and become an adult. All information should be given truthfully. You should not make it better than it is, or worse than it is. It’s just the facts of their life, and not their fault. You should never say anything bad of your own opinion about their birth parents, as a child will always associate their self worth with the people who’s DNA they share. Tell the story, the true story, and maybe use it as a starting point to teach the child how to make the right choices as they grow up.

Try and reassure the child as they grow up, that if they want to meet their birth parents again some day, you will be right there beside them, so they will not feel like they are disloyal to you in the desire to do this. Try not to feel threatened by this desire, it’s natural, and if you have been a good parent, it is unlikely to cause the child to love you any less, in fact, they just may love you more, because this is yet another way you have loved them, supported them, and helped them in their lives. Your support will be invaluable to them, whether the reunion goes well or not. They will know that you are always there in good times or bad times to lean on.

Adoption of the older child is not for the faint of heart, but it is a worthy, fulfilling thing to do!