Preparing Your Heart & Home
Building a Healthy Adoptive Family: Factors Crucial for Success
What goes into building a healthy adoptive family? Parenting adoptive children is similar to parenting birth children, but the dynamics involved in adoption can bring an added stress.
Following are ten factors crucial for success:
1. Parents demonstrate healthy family characteristics.
- Model a strong marital relationship
- Are able to resolve conflicts and problems
- Are able to deal with feelings
- Accept and deal with change
2. Parents are in full agreement with the adoption.
Equally excited about adopting
3. Parents display acceptance of their own conflicting emotions.
Recognize that experiencing both positive and negative feelings toward a child are normal
4. Parents demonstrate the ability to defer parental fulfillment in terms of appreciation and attachment and refuse to be rejected by the child.
- Discern that anger and rejection aimed their way is triggered by the past and really has nothing to do with them
- Learn how to meet their child's needs in the home while postponing their own needs, sometimes for a very long time
5. Parents are able to find satisfaction in small steps of improvement.
Focus not on long-range expectations but on achievable, short-term targets
6. Parents maintain a commitment to the permanency of the family relationship during difficult times.
Maintain their promise even when reality is not what they expected when pain threatens pleasure, they opt for hope, not out
7. Parents like themselves.
Consider themselves competent and capable to take on the challenges of parenting
8. Parents are open to seeking professional help or support when necessary.
Acknowledge that their special task requires special assistance
9. Parents value differences.
Recognize that the differences in mannerisms, interest, habits, and performance ability from the adoptive family are distinctive characteristics
10. Parents build their families with a strong values structure.
Base values on personal convictions that are respected and communicated understand that wisdom, strength, determination, and encouragement needed for all of life comes from God not themselves
Preparing For Your Child from Abroad: The Wait Can Be a Blessing
The wait-- all adoptive parents have to go through it-- whether for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, or years. Waiting is a critical part of adoption- children wait for homes, parents wait for children. When you've done all the paperwork, done all the preliminaries that you need to do in order to make your adoption happen, you may still have some waiting to do. Use the waiting period as a time to prepare.
Prepare pets who have not been around children by asking your veterinarian the best way to introduce your pets to children.
No matter how much you take time during the wait to plan and prepare, the wait is still a difficult and emotional time. To make the wait easier:
- Expect Frustrations and Delays as Normal
- Retain Hope - Don't Give Up
- Stay Committed to Your Agency and Child
- Seek Support From Other Adoptive and Pre-Adoptive Parents
- Keep Busy- Carry On With Life & Don't Put Off Enjoyable New Projects
- Nurture The Relationship With Your Spouse
- Face Your Fears
- Creating a Supportive Adoption Environment: Preparing Family and Friends
If you have older children, you began preparing them at the time of the homestudy. You've told them that they will be getting a new brother or sister. You've talked about adoption and the type of child you're hoping to adopt. If you are adopting an infant, then you'll need to help your children understand what infants are like. A young child will have to learn to share his parents and his toys.
If you are adopting an older child, make your children aware that the new sibling may seem less than overjoyed at joining their family. Indicate that there are likely to be rocky times ahead and that the new child's behavior may be different from what they expect. They should realize that the child may hoard, hit, or act like he doesn't like them. Preparing your child for the worst puts them in touch with the reality of the situation. Keep in mind that your children will be faced with a difficult transition. They may be resentful and jealous and feel that the new sibling is receiving preferential treatment.
When an existing family says yes to adoption, it is like stepping on a tightrope. Parents must learn to meet the needs of the household's newest member without neglecting the needs of their other children. Dealing with the issue of equal attention is difficult, parents need to understand that it is more important to love children distinctively, than equally.
If you have older children, plan to take them along when you go to pick up your child, if at all possible. The trip will give them a chance to see their sibling's birth country and to forge their own special bonds.
Adoptive grandparents also need preparation and a chance to vent their own feelings. Even the most eager grandparents-to-be, like prospective adoptive parents, have their own grieving to do over the lost biological grandchild. Prospective grandparents also have to deal with their own prejudices. Encourage family members to ask questions and to read about international adoption. Most importantly, forgive relatives who may have made hurtful remarks while they were getting used to the idea of international adoption.
Developing a Support System: Finding Others Like You
In many ways you may be isolated in your experience of international adoption. You have no one in your current network of family and friends with whom you can relate to in this experience. Find a group of people in your area who are currently going through what you are or have been through it already. This may be through an Adoptive Support Group or with the people who have or are adopting through your same agency. Don't hesitate to call the name of a stranger you have been given. It may be your link to sanity when times get tough.
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