@percypetulant
I have definitely seen you post parenting advice, mentioning your own child, in a way that sounds like you're an adopter, without clarification that you're
not an adopter.
Your experience as an adoptee may be relevant. Your parenting experience just isn't.
This isn't specific to you. Parenting a birth child (no matter the circumstances) is different to parenting an adopted child. I do both. You may think there's enough overlap for you to have stuff to say, but you're a non-adopter telling adopters that. You can argue that if I don't want to listen to non-adopter parenting advice, I should go elsewhere, but I think if adopters are being told to go elsewhere, because I non-adopter cannot cope with the rejection that sometimes adopters don't want advice from non-adopters, then the point has been lost.
I am put off posting on threads when you post your "advice".
Your experience as an adoptee is useful where people want to hear from adoptees. But depending on your age, that may or may not be relevant. Your parenting experience of parenting a birth child is irrelevant to adoption.
But I've made this personal, when I don't mean to. Generally, adopters want parenting advice from adopters, and should be able to get it on the adoption board without having to ask whether posters are adopters themselves. That's why threads don't appear in active, because non-adopters wading in is annoying.
@percypetulant I am not returning to the thread generally but I asked MN to delete my posts upthread which responded to yours because I had put in too much personal information and I had the intention of re-posting but my computer screen then broke and so I am doing it now. This is not to continue some kind of feud - I agree with your point of view on some issues as expressed on other threads, and I think you raise valid points here even if I don't agree with you about the conclusions.
Firstly going back to the other thread, when adopters say "Thanks but no thanks" to advice from non adopters. In a nutshell, I think that where ac are happy and thriving or where adopters are coping or getting the right help and things are going in the right direction, no one will be telling the adoptive parent what they are doing wrong. Where this is not the case, then people are more likely to be concerned about the child rather than caring whether or not the parent wants their input. This applies to non adopter parents too.
In relation to adopters knowing best, there is growing awareness that there is a lot wrong with current adoption practice and a part of this is training. I think it is misconceived that adopters are not required to read up extensively on normal child development and evidence or research based parenting as part of the training as this appears to lead to a domination of non research based parenting methods in adoption circles, yet when adopters seek professional help, the help is going to be research based. I think it might be these sorts of problems which are causing the unmanageable situations, not the underlying trauma. These are personal opinions though, I am not posting as an expert.
Is parenting advice from adoptees relevant? Do they know what they are talking about?
Yes imo and tbh most people I know are genuinely astonished when it is suggested otherwise. Adoptees not only live through it and get through it, but, in addition, in order to process their childhood and move on they will have to, as an adult, develop an understanding of both their point of view and their adoptive parents' point of view. When adoptees have children of their own many report having to deal with a difficult resurfacing of issues around their childhoods, compare how they want to parent their children with what the parenting they received, just like most adults, and will reach conclusions about how they were parented. This will apply even if the adoption took place a long time ago. In addition, a great deal has not changed in adoption in decades. Therefore yes I think the advice is relevant and on MN I think it should be the adoptee's judgement call when and how to post, not as instructed by adopters. It is the adoptive parent's call and responsibility to decide what to take on board. In relation to your comment that adoptee advice is just that one adoptee's perspective, exactly the same applies to adopter advice.
It is extremely difficult for child adoptees when their adoptive parents are not coping. I appreciate that adopters want professionals to know how hard they find it, as posters have said here, but I can assure you, being the child in that situation is not easy.
People who adopted more than about five years ago will not have had nearly the amount of accessible help adopters have now and that will have made a difference.
Yes imo non adopter parents of traumatised children will have valid input as there will often be overlap in terms of how trauma manifests as well as therapeutic work recommended.
Sorry about the long post. I am out now again but if you want me to reply to anything specific then you can @me or PM i don't mind being challenged on my thinking at all.