To think a lot of people don't understand adoption

[Kettlesingsatnight]

Based on a comment on another thread.

Adoption is not looking after a child for a few years as the birth parents can't.

It isn't fostering.

It isn't easy and it isn't straightforward. You can't rock up to an agency and announce your intention to adopt and get approved just like that.

AIBU to think some comment just are too much? I realise some are made in ignorance not to be mean but I just don't see that as an excuse any more. I'm fed up of it!

Totally agree with you notinagreatplace.

I don't either, although I wish he didn't have his troubles, it's for him, not for me.

Oh gosh yes. Consolation prize for the infertile.

I was a relatively young adopter (35)

You should see the cogs ticking when people find out my children are adopted. They want to ask (and some do ask) why I can't have "my own" (or, in less offensive language, 'birth') children.

They almost spontaneously combust when I tell them I may well have been able to. I never tried.

They just don't get why anyone would adopt children as a first choice.

I must admit I'm not sure why someone would adopt as a first choice - not that I'd dream of being so bloody rude as to ask though!

When I was having a tough time with dc and extreme behaviour my work colleague said we'll it's not like your (birth child) is it
I asked what she meant and she said if it was BC I would just have to cope but with adopted child It wasn't really my problem as I could send child back
I couldn't answer I just walked away

There's a double standard here though. On one hand people are complaining that no one understands adoption. But then also complain when people try and ask questions about it.

Isn't the terminology 'have you considered' just a polite way of asking a difficult question about a sensitive subject.

Unless you have experience of adoption or know someone who has been through it, then I think it's not that surprising you wouldn't understand the process or the more complex issues surrounding it.

Even most adoptive parents don't fully understand it and are woefully under prepared by the system for what comes later. I'm thinking particulary here of the teen years for children who suffered early childhood abuse. The ongoing consequences of which lead to family and adoption breakdowns. The idea that love and stability can conquer all is sadly just not true in many cases.

I haven't complained when people ask questions.

I would however hope that, as advice to a woman who wants a child and a husband who doesn't 'adopt, foster or get a dog' would be considered not only stupid advice but downright offensive. Yet it passed without a murmur of protest.

On the adoption board some posters talk about parenting adopted children as parenting plus. This is a brilliant was to describe it. Without exception all our kids have issues that have arisen directing from their adoptions

Not my DD. Not a single issue. And she is the easiest child in the world to parent. I say this in the interest of balance; I get so fed up of all adopted children being labelled as damaged and parents being viewed as saints because they adopted a child.

MrsFrisby, I think there's a big difference between asking thoughtful questions about behaviours you might see new adoptive parents doing ('funnelling' to help build attachment or maybe disciplining differently later on) and asking someone who hasn't adopted 'have you considered adoption?' which isn't going to give you any new insight into adoption.

Or the other phenomenon my friends who have adopted report, where peoole they hardly know at the school gates come up and start asking them whether the child's 'real mother' was a heroin addict and was X very badly abused, and then look expectant!

OP I'm sorry but your children were NOT lucky to not live with their birth parents. All children should be able to live with their birth parents. That is basic. Your children, like mine, were unlucky that their birth parents weren't able to care for them. That is a tragedy.

I disagree. I think luck plays a part - we are lucky to be born in this country, for instance. I think that sort of attitude toward adoptive children - that their very existence is a national tragedy - is unhelpful.

Their existence isn't a tragedy. The difficulties their birth parents had that meant they couldn't care for them ARE a tragedy. What's the alternative? That they were born and suffered so we could be their parents? I don't think so. That would mean they and their birth parents were there for my benefit.

No; just that put bluntly shit happens. They were born and they suffered and it was fortunate that that didn't continue as it does for many children. That doesn't diminish what they went through but acknowledges the adoption was a positive.

MrsFrisby I'm not sure where adoptive parents have complained about people asking questions - on this thread? I for one have been very clear that I am happy to answer questions, and fully accept that if you haven't been through the experience you probably won't be clued up on it - as I wasn't, ten years ago.

It's a very different thing to complain about questions that are overly intrusive or insensitive. We all have the right to draw a line against those.

I am trying really hard not to get drawn into an adoption thread, because I have had my share of flaming on here, as have other adopters.
But one thing I would add, is that saying people don't understand adoption is almost like saying people who speak English don't understand French.
Some people will know it well, some people will know a little, some people will think they know something only to find there is a better way of saying something.
Some people will always wonder why everyone can't speak English

So some people will know a lot about the topic, and my experience is they are further along in the journey
We all find on our parenting journey there is a better way of saying/doing things in our adoption parenting
As adopters we will always find people who don't understand why we are doing things the way we are, and that we should just let our children get on with life/AKA speak English.

Bruce Perry wrote of a girl (and she was really just a girl) and her son from the American foster care system who had learned love as a foreign language, and that is very much what most of our children our doing, so much about bonds love attachment permanency that comes so naturally freely and naturally to children living within a functioning birth family, has to be learned and relearned for our children. To allow that to happen when you become a parent through adoption 9/10 it involves doing things that don't follow what everyone else seems to be doing and that genuinely seems to confuse and frighten people.

I've heard people breezily say 'you can always adopt', as if no one ever gets turned down for adoption.

Well we adopted because we believe that live is a choice I have a bs and I love him no more or less than I love my daughter

It's not that people don't understand adoption per say I think people don't understand about child protection in general

People say to me " God how could someone give their baby away" it just shows how little they understand about modern adoption

They also ask about children's homes and if you have any information in the child as if you can just rock up to a children's home pick a child and bee off that day

They have been watching to many movies it's not helpful when many films portray children in care as living in homes when the truth is their are very few homes and those who do go into homes are older teens were a family environment is just to stressful because of the abuse or neglect they have suffered

iPaid, you won't know whether your dd has any difficulties relating to adoption until she is an adult, or indeed has children of her own

I realise that, Mary. The point I was trying to make is that it's unfair to label all adopted children as 'damaged' and insist that they are more challenging to parent than other kids. That hasn't been my experience with DD in the 10 years she has been with us. She is wired for happiness, optimistic, resilient, kind and strong. Who's to say what the future will bring, life brings plenty of problems for everyone, adopted or not. I shudder when I see what some of my friends and family have to deal with with their birth children.

Got to agree with some of the comments already written about adoption. I'm a fairly new adopter and also very young (25).

Adoption was not a second option for us. We decided that IVF was not an option just like some people decide that adoption isn't an option.

Some people have already made me feel like a 2nd class mother because I didn't give birth to my little girl. Just two days ago someone asked me if I struggle to change the nappies because she is not my own.

I hate when people say just adopt as if it is easy. It takes time, it's gruelling and can also be heartbreaking.

Plenty of people have told me how lucky she is...she is far from lucky. It's us who are lucky to have her.

I think what I meant was that people react to questions that seem insensitive to them. And for the most part those questions are insensitive - but sometimes you have to look beyond the wording of the question and figure out what people are actually asking you.

'have you considered' to me is just a polite way of asking what I might consider to be a delicate question - but to someone who whose in the midst of it could be construed as insensitive.

Using real/birth/biological etc - just shows a persons lack of experience with the 'correct' jargon to be using. Again an issue about exposure and knowledge.

These issues show up our own insecurities as well as our own increased knowledge of the issues.

I honestly think most people mean well and are just trying to find (albiet very clumsy) ways to make conversations.

Take sarahlux's example above of the babies nappies.

There is a theory that we find our own children's poo easier to deal with (something to do with how we react to the smell). If someone thinks like that then the question about changing nappies can be construed in a different light.

Interesting thread. A close friend is having serious problems with her teenage adopted children (drugs, violence, theft) and I've heard other 'friends' say things like "Don't know how she copes, they aren't even hers, can't she send them back". "Bet she'd never have bothered had she known they'd turn out like that". "Some thanks for 'rescuing' them when they were babies" etc etc. Truly astonising, it's been an eye opener. I've given up trying to explain that they ARE her children, she loves them just like she would love her birth children.

I was adopted at 10 months old, I'm now 48. My dear old mum suffers from dementia and for a few months it was very tough, trying to deal with her deterioration and get the correct help that she needed. Mum would ring me up to 20 times a day at work, asking if she had done something wrong as she never heard from me etc etc.

A colleague said to me

"I'm not being funny Sandy, but you've got every right you know, to think fuck it, she's not my real mum, I can't be arsed with this, and walk away". .

there is a theory that we find our own children's poo easier to deal with

There it is again.

'We' in this context obviously excludes adoptive parents.
'Our own children'
They are our own.