Our Edge
08 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in CAS, Childfree to parents, Kids
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Our social worker assigned us some books to read in preparation for adopting older children from foster care. Talking to her, and doing all the reading, I’ve come to realize we have several advantages over many other adoptive parents. Now, I know it’s not a competition, but I’m looking at this as less work, fewer stumbling blocks, an easier transition rather than having all these things to overcome.
Our first advantage is that we are not coming to adoption after grudgingly accepting infertility. Granted, we are not able to conceive children, but that’s not been any sort of heartache for us, and we are not looking at adoption as a last option. It’s our first choice, and we are happily jumping in with both feet.
Another advantage is that we have never parented before. This inexperience would, at first thought, seem like a disadvantage. However, in the reading I have been doing, it seems as if the usual parenting strategies don’t work very well with kids who have attachment disorders, which many kids in foster care have. In the formative years of their lives, they are often neglected and never attach to anyone. They also can connect love with punishment and anger, so rewards and punishments don’t mean the same thing to them as to attached kids. They can literally think that an adoptive parent doesn’t care about them if the parent doesn’t punish, spank or beat the child. Some adoptive parents who have already had children will get frustrated when their usual strategies don’t work on their newly adopted child, and it’s hard for them to un-learn those habits. We won’t have to unlearn them. We never learned them.
Of course the flip side of this advantage is that it confines who we can take parenting advice from… I’m sure we’ll have to deal with lots of well-meaning people telling us what worked for their (attached) children, and it won’t work for us.
Our third advantage is that, although we are older than the average first parent, we are younger than the average adoptive parent. Also, we are getting kids who are age 7 or older, so it’s like we “had” them when we were in our early thirties (or earlier), about equal with the Canadian average of age 29 for first time parents.
With all our personal challenges, and those inherent in adoption, I’m hoping our advantages will give us a fighting chance for success.
