Place of chat for those who adopted years ago?

[bubbakin]

Hi
My parents adopted my Sister & Brother nearly 40 years ago. They were told they were unable to have children......then out of the blue I came along. Now I don't want to cause any upset on this forum but my mum in particular would love to chat with & hear other peoples experience of adoption. For her, she will admit, it has not been plain sailing & has found things very difficult. My brother in particular has underlying issues with being adopted & has really made my parents lives difficult. My mum can't give up on him, even though the abuse he's subjected her to (all verbal/mental - he suffers from alcoholism, will blame my mum for everything that goes wrong in his life, will lie to her & has stolen from her in the past) yet she can't & won't give up on him & has given him her everything......to the extent that at times when he's at his worst I worry she'll have a breakdown. My dad would have walked away from him years ago. My sister is much more grateful to my parents, she has found her natural mother & has completed her picture so to speak. My parents are delighted, however for some reason at times she talks to my mum like she's something she's trodden in. We have all been treated equally, all been given the opportunity to private education, had fantastic holidays abroad & if I'm honest spoilt!! I would like to add my parents & brother have been to counselling however my brother soon gives up saying it's crap & waste of time.
So if you know of any forums where my mum can chat to people in similar situations I would be really grateful.
Thank you

Afraid I only adopted 3 years ago so I'm not much use but www.adoptionuk.org is a brilliant resource with great talk boards that I'm sure your Mum would get loads of support, advice and ideas from there.

Good luck x

Thank you both so much. Maryz, I really feel for you. I resent my brother so much for what he's doing to my mum ( I know that should read our mum, but I don't think he deserves my mum!). Maryz, would it be ok with you if my mum messaged you for a chat as she's never come across anyone in a similar position - it's not something you advertise or like to talk to your friends about! I will also have a look at the adoptionuk.org link.
Thanks

don;t worry about causing upset - we're actually pretty resilient on this board (though I did wince a bit when you talked about your Sister being "grateful" as it is a pet hate of mine that some people expect DS to be grateful for having the kind of nromal stable life that every other child expects as a right - rant over!)

I do think parents 40 years ago were extremely poorly prepared for the kind of problmes that might arise as a reuslt of an adoption and were generally given little or no preparation.

In addition to Adoption UK, your Mum might consider posting a thread on here because at the very least she will get support from people who have teenagers, adults who were themselves adopted and more recent adoptive parents who have have a great deal more (theoretical) training than your mum did. Anad from people who are unlikely to be judgeental about her whatever the situation - there but for the grace of god go most of us.

Hi Kewcucumber, apologies for the 'grateful' comment, completely understand where you're coming from, but it is actually a term my sister has used.
Maryz, thank you for taking the trouble to reply. I have found your response so interesting & it has stirred lots of different emotions. You are very lucky that your 3 children are close. Sadly me, my brother & my sister are not really that close & never really have been. We are like chalk & cheese as far as interests, personalities etc go. So this probably doesn't help our situation at all, perhaps it's made more awkward because I am very close to our parents. My husbands family often go on family holidays & we all have a fantastic time, this just wouldn't happen with my family & it would end up in arguments, tears & extremely stressful. Even Christmas day is a struggle.
I'm not sure how old your DS1 is, my brother is 37 & cannot stand on his own two feet. In his late teens he started to go off the rails, taking advantage of mum & dad's generosity & basically the emotional blackmail began & has never stopped.............it is exhausting for my mum. And yes he may well have been the same if he was being brought up by his natural mother & father but surely at some point enough is enough. He's a grown man and should surely take responsibility for his own actions & decisions. So yes I do resent him for treating mum & dad like he does & yes if he was a 'natural' brother I would resent him just as much. Perhaps because I would never treat my parents like he does that I feel it has something to do with adoption, maybe that's my naivety.
I get on better with my sister than my brother but I wouldn't say there is a great connection there. Maybe my issues with everything is because I've been one of those that's not really gone through that 'awkward teenager' stage or ever treated my parents with disrespect or contempt. I am by no way saying I'm perfect, probably 'boring' if anything! And yes, maybe I'm one with issues too about my brother & sister's attitude towards our parents being as they are.
So is it a coincidence that my siblings have both caused our parents so much grief & distress? Or is the underlying issue the adoption? My sister went through a bit of a downer a few years back & saw a counsellor, who said that she had issues with being adopted & she has agreed!
Maybe it's wrong that my mum talks to me about her feelings with regards to adoption & the situation with my brother in particular, but she needs to vent & I'm always the one there, guess it should really be to a counsellor not me.
As far as my parents experience goes, if they were asked if they'd recommend adoption to someone, their answer would be no. Rightly or wrongly.
I hope you don't find any of this strange, I've just been honest. My parents are loving, caring & fantastic people & would do anything for their children, but at some point their children (including me) have to give something back.
Reading this back makes it sound like I've put myself on a pedestal, but it's very hard to put it all into words.
Sorry if this upsets or offends anyone.

It's really impossible to separate what issues might be caused by adoption and what by other things or basic personality issues but I do get the feeling you (and possibly your family) are using adoption as the catch all for every thing which is wrong within your family which I doubt will be very productive in helping deal with them.

Its quite possible that you sister has some issues to do with her adoption, it would be perfectly normal for her to, its a huge thing to deal with but that might not be the reason for the perceived distance between the family.

My siblings and I have little in common and different personalities. My sister was a wild teenager and gave my mum a terribly hard time but she was lucky that itall settled down before she discovered drink or drugs and although it meant that she and I spent many years with little to do with each other, as adults we have become quite close. My brother drifts around life aimlessly and blames everyone else as to why he hasn't fulfilled his potential (very bright) has no money and a failed marriage behind him (and he a great deal older than your brother) but is happy and so again we have been very lucky in many ways. Neither I nor my siblings were adpted but should we go on holiday together I have no doubt there would be blood shed within about 3 days (and we are despite appearances a reasonably happy reasonably close family) - so I think your utopian ideal of family life is probably rarer than you think!

Whether the adoption has caused all or some of your family problmes to some degree at this stage is a red herring (though it might be helpful to your sibling when trying to access appropriate help) as neither you nor they had any choice about the adoption so its hardly fair to "blame" them for it.

Addiction problmes are horrible and can destroy families so I hope that you can get some help with that side of it at least.

As a 43 year old adoptee I can say that some of my early difficult behaviours were not to do with nurture and everything to do with the separation from my birth mother as a baby.

It is known amongst psychologists that any child removed from their mother's close care in the first months of life can/does suffer from a psychological trauma that can have a catastrophic effect on the child and their family.

Try reading The Primal Wound, by Nancy Verrier(i think that's her name).
It was a revelation to me and explains alot of what happened when I was little.

Sorry to be harsh, but I was adopted 53 years ago so I think I'm qualified to add my 2c here. Your brother needs to grow up, be happy that he was adopted by a loving family and get over himself. He would have been just as big of a pain regardless of his genetic background, he just chooses to use the circumstances of his arrival in your family as an excuse to be disfunctional.

Bubbakin - I can understand how you feel but I too winced at the thing about being grateful. The only thing I can say is your parents (and possibly you) should have been told all about their life with their birth parents (am assuming they are not sibs) and the abuse or neglect that they suffered as young children. I think years ago everyone thought that if these traumatised children were loved by a new family all would be well. However we now know that love is not enough. If children suffer abuse/neglect etc in their early lives, this can cause all sorts of problems for them right through their lifespan. Indeed there is now evidence that a foetus can be emotionally harmed in utero if he/she is being carried by a mother where domestic violence and tension are present. So if children are removed from abusing parents very early (just a few months of age) they will often continue to suffer, regardless of how much they are loved.

We now know about attachment disorders and some adoptors are able to learn how to help children trust adults again. Very often the chronological age of these children and their emotional age are very different, and so there is a need to regress and treat the child more in line with his/her emotional age. None of this was known all those years ago.

Very often all can be well until adopted children hit puberty and then the problems can emerge, which have lain dormant through their childhood.

I of course have no idea of the circumstances in your family but I am just inviting you to consider the issues I have raised.