The End of the Road

I am reprinting here what I wrote back in April of 2010, nearly four years ago. I was so full of hope and naivete.

The truth is that I have been unable to help T move forward in any way.

I wanted a happy ending. I wanted him to learn to love me as his mom.

I don't think either is possible at this point. He has most definitely not accepted us as his family. There has been nothing awe-inspiring about this journey. It has just been hard and bleak. As he gets older, the problems are becoming more difficult and scary.

I don't blame T at all. My empathy for him runs deep, deep, deep. I feel tremendous sadness for that scared little boy who was ripped from his mother's arms as she screamed, desperately trying to hang onto him, and then sent away without a word of explanation to live with strange people in a strange land. That he has not been able to cope is not his fault.

And I am tired of people who seem to insinuate that his inability to be resilient and come out of his dark place is somehow my fault. That I have failed him as a parent. I am not a bad parent. I have had bad moments, but all parents have bad moments, and my bad moments have not been anything close to what I endured growing up. I am tired of being told if I just do this or that it will all miraculously get better. I do this and I do that and nothing changes. We still have a child who is angry 24/7, except for when he's at school or daycare or spending time with relatives so we can get a break. In other words, he wants to be anywhere but with us. Particularly with me.

The fact is that when we showed up at the orphanage to bring him home with us, it was clear within hours that he was the most challenged child there. We spent a week watching the other kids who were with families in our group play with their parents -- and watch those parents enjoy a honeymoon period with their kids -- while our child climbed junk piles in an attempt to escape over the fence. Every time a car came or went out of the solid metal gates, he ran over and clawed at the gates with his fingernails. Let me repeat that. He was the only kid who would run to the solid metal gate and claw at it with his fingernails in a desperate bid to be anywhere but there. 

When he got into things that they didn't want him playing with, the staff couldn't stop him. They would try, and then shake their heads and look at us. Look at us and look at him and back at us and it was clear they knew what we were in for. At coffee ceremony time, our child was the only one who did not participate. He was the only child the director of the orphanage did not know. Not one nanny hugged him goodbye. No one was sorry to see him go. He was deeply troubled before he ever arrived in our home.

I have reread my April 2010 post several times lately, and I weep. I had such hopes and dreams. I have already grieved a lost baby. I have already grieved infertility. And now I have to grieve a failed adoption. I don't think I can do that publicly and I don't think I have much to share about my life that anyone cares about, particularly in a blog that has "adoption" in the title. My adoption journey with T was, like all adoption stories, born out of grief on both sides. Ours has remained stuck there.

So like so many others, I think I have come to the end of the road on my blog. I had hoped that as we progressed along, I could help others deal with the challenges of adopting an older child, but clearly I am not the person to be doling out advice. If you have adopted an older child, I wish you all the best. If you are thinking about it, I would warn you that you are rolling the dice, and the dice are not loaded in your favor. I've read a statistic that the disruption rate for older child adoptions exceeds 20 percent. That is a sobering statistic.

I don't know what our plans are right now. We are four weeks into a ten week course that is supposed to help us learn to connect with him -- because I keep trying to make this work. We are changing his physician to one who has shown more of a concern in both his and my mental well-being. I'm hoping there is a pediatric neuro-psychiatrist in our area who understands early childhood trauma. If not, maybe we will be visiting friends in Virginia and hoping our insurance covers at least part of an evaluation and treatment plan.

I do know that our adoption was unethical and that T's birth mother did not consent to it. I will also be investigating what the legal ramifications of that are. If this had happened in the U.S., it would be a no-brainer -- he would be returned to his mother. But I don't know what international law is regarding adoptions where the birth mother's death certificate is forged and a relative commits perjury in a court of law. I do strongly suspect that if we were able to return him, his uncle would just give him to another family member. So his mother would lose him again, and our attempt to make things right would be yet another fail in this train wreck.

In the meantime, one thing has not changed. I love this child dearly. I would throw myself in front of a bus for him. To not have him in my life would leave a huge hole. I would grieve the loss of him every day.

As I was typing this, he called me in excitement to see a gorgeous rainbow through the front window. So there are still glimmers of hope. I hope somehow we get through this. What I want for my child is peace. I thought I could help him find that peace. But he has been our son for half his life now and I feel like we are as far away from that as we were four years ago.

The media has really had a field day with the news of the woman who sent her 7-year-old son back to Russia. It's a terribly sad story for everyone involved. I have no idea what the family endured, but it sounds horrific. I know that the first month with T was very difficult for me, so I have empathy for anyone who is struggling with a child post-placement. I also have empathy for the children. They have been through great hardships at such a young age -- such loss and rejection. They are thrown into new families in a new place with no preparation and little understanding of what it all means. I had a choice in all of this, so it's easy for me to want to love my son. He on the other hand has had no choice in anything that has happened to him.
We're all warned that the older adopted child might have this issue or that issue, but in my opinion the warning isn't strong enough. I think anyone adopting internationally should be cautioned that with rare exception, every child is going to come home with transitional issues. There should be more support for us. Parent phone networking and books that specifically address attachment with and parenting for children who don't speak any English and therefore can't be reasoned with specifically come to mind. I had no idea what to do with my child who, when having a temper tantrum, would attempt to kick, hit, bite, scratch, and pinch me. There was nothing in the pre-adoption education that specifically told us what to do if this occurred; we were only told it might happen. I remember saying to my husband while we were going through the online courses, "They're telling us everything that won't work in parenting these kids -- when do they get to the part where they tell us what will work?" The pre-adoption education never did.
I reached out for help, and while it was slow in coming, we got there. I learned how to restrain my child so he wasn't able to hurt me when he was furious at the world. As I read adoption books, I learned that I was doing a lot right instinctively, so I felt re-affirmed in my parenting skills and kept at it. Bath time during the day because he loved his bath and it kept him in a better mood longer. I started out doing it for my own sanity, but as it turns out, helping these children regulate their moods and hold on to their good moods for longer and longer periods is exactly what they need.
I learned from my sister that I was chosen to be the recipient of T's anger because he felt safe with me -- that is, he could throw it all at me and I wasn't going to walk away. That helped lessen my frustration. The social worker also told me that I was the stand-in for the person he was really angry with -- his birth mother who left him. Knowing that helped me understand him more and help him walk through the fire he was walking through. There's no walking around the fire of grief -- you have to walk through it to come out on the other side. I know. I've been there.
The first month parenting my child was the hardest month of my life. I've had several highly challenging jobs in my life, and this was by far the most difficult thing I've ever done. Work is going to seem like a picnic now, I think. I tell prospective adoptive parents to expect that.
Two months home and T is the joy of my life. He still has crabby times, but now when he's upset with me, he cries. Sometimes he still raises a fist to me, but he's learning not to do that. He complains when I tell him he has to wear sneakers and not his crocs to school. He cried when I turned the tv off for dinner the other night. He didn't like any of the three shirts I picked out for him to wear this morning. He makes cranky noises when the vitamin that comes out of the bottle is yellow instead of red. (Why do they bother making the yellow ones?) But these days, it seems more like typical toddler behavior than adoption transition issues. He gives me hugs and kisses. He says "I love you Mommy" and "I love you Daddy." He marvels at the flowers that are beginning to bloom in the yard. "Mommy! Fee-lower!" He jumps for joy when I arrive at pre-school to pick him up. We can get so silly we make each other laugh uncontrollably. His laughter is so infectious, he makes complete strangers smile. What a kid! I'm so in awe of my child. I marvel that he's accepted that we're his family. We might as well have moved him to Mars given the difference between where he came from and where he is now, but yet he loves us and finds joy in life. The miracle is that this is the reality for most families and most children. This is what the media should be showing us now, but then again, ordinary and typical isn't news.
I empathize with the family who couldn't make it work with their child -- great hopes and dreams go into adoption. I grieve for the child who has lost yet another family. And I marvel that for most adoptive families, parents learn to love the complete strangers who, with the stroke of a pen become theirs permanently -- no givebacks, and children learn to love the complete strangers who stuff them on planes and take them away from everything they know. The adoption journey is a long and difficult road, but it's truly awe-inspiring.