Is adoption ever plains sailing?

[Holidaysmoliday]

I am not an adopter
But I have two close relatives and a friend who are. All had what I assumed was more than the usual difficulties over the years, not just the first months/years.
I just took it that their situations for whatever reason had been especially difficult.
I have been chatting today to three families who adopted within the last two years (this came via the relation I have as above who now supports other families) and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve just met a cohort who had it tough or if actually adoption rarely is straightforward?

Of course no parenting journey is simple and every single family can undoubtedly describe ups and downs of behaviour and situation and ages that were hard etc.

But all the adopters I have now met (agree tho it’s a tiny sample really) seem to have found it very very hard.

Is this typical? Is adoption inherently so very difficult for the children and the parents that the journey is always much harder than more typical parenting experiences?

I feel really sad about it today. For the wonderful parents and for the kids.

I don't know. To be honest I think today no parenting is easy.

With adoption I think you do always have so many potential issues on top of the 'regular' issues you may get.

Having said that our birth daughter is on the spectrum and we've had more issues with her than our adopted son. She is a teen thought!

I know very few people that have adopted without issues. That said, those having an easy life don't bang on about how easy it has been. They simply get on with their life.
The people you see seeking help and support are struggling in most cases. Not everyone is though.

Adoption has been much harder than I ever imagined. Much harder. And I thought our boys would be quite easy on paper. I was very wrong.

Then - the only three friends I have who have adopted (excluding MN friends) - have had a hellish time. It all seemed to fall apart for all 4 of us between 6 and 8. Things are a bit stable now but not sure if my son will even manage to get back into school on a full time basis. I am constantly worried but know I can’t change everything. I can only fight for what he is due.

I would be in your small cohort.

My 7 y/o has been with us 10 days and it is hardest thing I have ever done in my life..

Ask me again in a year!

Yes it is inherently different and more difficult. Children are removed for a reason and this will have long lasting implications for both children and their adoptive families.
Thats not to say that all adoptive families live in some kind of perpetual war zone. Far from it. Adoptive families are like any others, we can have ups and downs, except our downs are potentially far more destructive.
I have a fabulous son, we have had very challenging times, I'm sure we will have more. But right now he is no more 'trouble' than the average teenager.
I have a number of friends who have birth children with additional needs (ASD/ADHD/medical issues). My son shares some of those condtions and is actually a lot less challenging than theirs in many ways, but even they recognise that I am in a very different ball game.

There are things that the average teenager won't ever have to think about - why did my mum/dad drink/take drugs/beat each other up - or whatever. There are things that I have had to explain to him that no child should ever have to hear or experience. So whilst he is doing well, he cannot escape his story, we cannot escape the fact that out there is another family that have caused him much grief and sorrow. But he has to find a way of living with it.
You have asked what is on on the surface a simple question but the answer to me is very complicated.
What do you actually mean by plain sailing, when do you stop examining it in that way, when is an adoption deemed to have been a 'success'? What is success ?
I think our adoption is a success, but it is far from trouble free.
I don't know any adopters ( and I know a lot) who have had a trouble free experience, but many of us plod a long, and to continue your analogy, we weather the storms and come out the other side.

Adoption in its own right (aside from any issues or neglect or abuse) is consider a "trauma".

If you consider your own children and imagine how they's cope at say 12 months (when my son was placed with me) with being taken away from everything they know - not just the people but the place, the food, the routine, the smells, the light, the amount of traffic. It's akin to an adult being abducted by aliens.

So adoption is a trauma. And many children also have to deal with the effects of neglect and abuse or institutionalisation in their early years when the brain is developing and it can have long term consequences in particular for their executive processing skills. (Which @Hels20 tend to start manifesting at around 6-8 years old.)

Poor executive processing skills can mean behaviour which is very difficult to manage and its a long term process to improve them using structure and repetition, organised sport and learning to play and instrument are known to help and yet they are also the kind of thing which a child with poor executive processing skills can stuggle with.

In our case, DS (now 13) has made massive strides with the support of school and CAHMS - and some real self awareness on his part. Tweaking his hobbies so that they are "calmer" ones, being structured all help.

No doubt we'll have another blip as he goes through his teenage years but fingers crossed we will get through that too as we did his pretty grim 7-11 yrs.

Plenty of birth children are equally challenging as @Italiangreyhound said. The difference is just the proportion of children who suffer issues and the degree to which they experince those issues.

Based on nothing scientific I have always reckoned that 20% of adopted children have significant behavioural problems, 20% have no behavioural problems and 60% have a degree of problems that vary over time.

You don't need to be sad for us, I love my son 100% exactly as he is and he loves me just the same - most of us sucessfully negotiate the grim years eventually with a few more grey hairs and a lot more wisdom. That's not to diminish the struggle at times.

It will all work out in the end, and if it hasn't worked out yet then it's not yet the end.

@topcat2014 it was 3 months before the fog and panic lifted in my case and I adopted a very cute 1 year old who had no clue how incompetent I was. I would imagine it's 7 times more hard with a 7 year old. Hopefully people like @Ted27 who have been through similar can help you on your journey.

The thing I found most helpful (apart from faking it until I was making it) was having a set time to myself out of the house each week. In my case I started doing an acqua class one a week on a friday evening after about 3 months. Saved my life!

"It will all work out in the end, and if it hasn't worked out yet then it's not yet the end."

I love that saying. In the version I heard it is...

"Every story has a happy ending. If you're not, this is not the end."

Not in my experience. My DH and I adopted our two DC a few years ago. Out of our group of adopters (5 other couples who went through training etc with us), 4 out of the 6 couples now have at least one parent on anti-depressants. At various points we have all regretted our choice and one couple have been very close to disrupting.

For our DC the trauma of seeing their birth mum regularly abused in various forms, alongside their own neglect and abuse has been hugely damaging to them.
I'm sure for some people it's easier but certainly never easy.

Interesting one. I have 2 DC - adopted at 18 months then the second 2 years later at 12 weeks. The first 6 months were like a never ending nightmare of a babysitting job, so, so hard - but that was the life changing shock for DH and I. DC1 was just being an 18 month old, not doing anything that any other would or wouldn’t do so the ‘problems’ lay with us and our expectations.

Now we’re 6 years in and I have to say that day to day things seem totally fine, and any problems we encounter are very much just usual family ups and downs.

We don’t take anything for granted though and are certainly ‘expecting’ problems - especially as they hit the teenage years but like anyone and any family we will just have to deal with it as it arises.

Out of the 5 adopters I know only one adoption broke down (within the first few months) the rest, certainly on the face of it, just seem to be trucking on.

We adopted a 2 and 3 year old over a year ago. In our case, we had a really positive experience so far, with very few issues (the issues we had are issues that any biological parent would face). We attribute this to us and the kids being a ‘perfect’ match for each other. Maybe things will be different when they grow up, but so far adoption has been straightforward and a dream for us as a family. I must confess though that during the adoption assessment and matching process we prepared ourselves for the worst - so it the experience we have had so far was definitely a big surprise.

All adoptive families I know have more challenges than the birth families I know. It is different. The children have all suffered trauma, most have experienced more than 4 Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), which puts them at risk for various things, and most adopters use therapeutic parenting strategies.

We adopted a 5 and a 6 year old 7 years ago. We have definitely had to deal with things most birth families don't. However, we are and always have been an incredibly happy family and on the whole my children are easy to parent. They are wonderful!

Definitely not plain sailing!

My son was a few months shy of two when I took him on, he’s had a very traumatic start and three foster placements in an 11 month period.

One thing people forget is that no one truly knows a looked after child’s history, there will always be things that SS etc don’t know. My son doesn’t consciously have any memories of his birth mum or his foster carers, but the trauma is very clearly displayed. He’s four (we’re almost three years in) and he steals food, including from bins at school. He was left hungry as a baby and ended up very underweight and malnourished. So while he has no conscious memory of this he had a strong urge to gain and hide resources.

He is overly compliant with adults he doesn’t know, due to attachment difficulties he will also display unusual behaviour around new adults, it’s way of trying to make them love him.

He is doing really well, he has a good attachment to me for the time we have been together. But I’m well aware the next big disaster could be around the corner. I’m also aware that traumas he has suffered will impact on him more as he gets older.

A thing I find frustrating is that so many people just don’t know that trauma never goes. He will always be damaged due to his start, but so many people take it into account which is very frustrating.