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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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A co worker was in his mid 30's, he and his wife had tried for years to have a child with no success.
They adopted a kid and she was pregnant within a year. The had a 2nd child a few years later.
I guess adoption worked out for them
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - May 2, 2017 - 05:09pm PT
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Happiegirl, thanks for your insight.
Donini,thats super cool.
Largo. Great testimony. Very cool. Thank you for chiming in.
Adoption can be a tricky thing, made much easier if the birth parents do everything possible to track down and let the child know every possible fact about who he/she is in terms of genetics, background circumstances, etc.
I agree that an adopted child needs to eventually come to embrace their identity as a matter of their personal history. It starts young. Not just plopping a kid down at 13 years old and saying "Come, sit down....your mom and I have something to tell you.....you're adopted."
That was the way it seems like it was done historically in the 50's, 70's etc....like it was bad news to tell them. Imagine what that did to a kid.
Now we advocate for slowly immersing your adopted kids with their adoption story. Very young. And growing that into a neat historical part of who they are. At age 10 my son Bek knows this...
1. He is special
2. He is adopted
3. He is from Kazakhstan wher kids his age hunt with falcons and look like him and are descendents of Gehngis Kahn
4. He is MY son
5. He is Mom's son
He really doesn't understand the concept of his birth mother yet because he doesn't understand conception. That will come down the road. He doesn't understand that his biological mom and dad are still alive somewhere. When the time comes, we'll travel to Kazakhstan if he wants. A vision quest type of thing to let him touch his native soil and see the land. He came from a town of about 10,000 people total. His orphanage (one of three there) has 200 babies living on each upstairs "bedroom."
His bio parents will probably be there forever. Tiny town in a 3rd world country. The rest of Bek's story is unwritten but he has us as his advocates and his parents. It will be fascinating to journey along with him.
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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AP - The pregnant after adoption happened with our next door neighbors as well. They were so anxious to have a child and each month the disappointment became greater. They were so happy when they brought their new baby home and thrilled to become parents, especially mom.
My own mother was a nurse, and I think she had the compassionate insight that those who really are committed to both physical and emotional care develop. When the neighbor went back home, my mom stated as if making a "no doubts" prophecy. I can still see her face when she said "She'll be pregnant within two years."
And just like your example, that is just what happened.
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klaus
Big Wall climber
Florence & Normandy
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I adopted 2 chickens last week. they are a month old. we named them Major Manok and general Dynamics. They better start laying eggs soon cuz they sure seem to eat and poop a lot.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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My daughter, now 14, is adopted from China. She's a great kid and her Mom and I are very lucky to have her.
The process was long and difficult, and we almost missed out because of the SARS epidemic, but we made under the wire before they stopped adoptions for some months.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Yea :-)
My head's been spinning recently from some adoptive families in our lives.
One family is a single white mom who adopted two black girls from the Congo when they were 6 or so. One girl got an exit visa and came home to live with her adoptive mom right away, but the Congo shut down exit visas before the second daughter could get out, so she was left behind in the orphanage for another year! Mom finally got her out though. Those folks are good friends - really admire the mom and try to help her out as I can. Her girls and my girl are sympatico.
We know another adoptive family - affluent young white married couple - who has a bio-son in class at private school with my daughter. They adopted a black daughter internationally at birth 5 years ago, then a black son a year ago. The daughter and the adoptive mom never bonded. Hard to say why. The bio-boy older brother didn't like his little adopted sister. Hard to say why. In my experience working in the class and play dates, the bio-boy was one of the least emotionally resilient kids I've ever met - offended and pouty and sad at the slightest of slights. Hard to say whether he was like that before getting a sister he didn't like or whether he was like that because of it. He was an only child before she came along.
Anyway, the situation has deteriorated to the point where the adoptive family decided to give up their adopted daughter for adoption. Our single mom friend with the two adoptive daughters is now going to adopt her.
Hard to wrap my head around. This poor precious child was given up for adoption not once, but twice, by the age of 5. And her first adoptive family was just too privileged to do what it took to make it right for the daughter that they adopted and promised to love and care for, and now their spoiled white bio-boy is winning while his black adopted sister that he never liked is thrown to the curb. It pisses me off.
But also, we're hoping it's a step in the right direction for the doubly adopted daughter - I'm glad our friend will be the one who loves her now, after her first adoptive family flaked on the job.
And reports are that the double adopted daughter is glad to put her first adoptive family in the rear view mirror. When our friends told us about it I turned to my adopted daughter and told her to not get any ideas - she's stuck with us :-)
Best to you all.
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Myles Moser
climber
Lone Pine, Ca
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I was adopted at four going on five years old. wild ride! Worked at for the best.
Nice to read about people caring for people...thanks
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Flydude
Trad climber
Prather, CA
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Micro, you're the man...no one could hope for a better family than yours...you and the kids certainly won that cosmic lottery and realize it!...d.
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - May 2, 2017 - 09:41pm PT
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Hard to wrap my head around. This poor precious child was given up for adoption not once, but twice, by the age of 5. And her first adoptive family was just too privileged to do what it took to make it right for the daughter that they adopted and promised to love and care for, and now their spoiled bio-boy is winning by getting rid of the sister he never liked. It pisses me off.
Rbord, I agree with you. So many of these "bad adoption stories" are really "bad parent" stories. They get lumped in with the narrative of adoption but really have nothing to do with the kids or the adoption process. So sad. Hopefully she well grow into a wonderful young woman and this auspicious beginning will simply color part of the fabric of who she becomes.
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Maysho
climber
Soda Springs, CA
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Hey Largo, never knew that! And I heartily agree with your insights.
And Micronut – Kudos for starting this thread, and your commitment to conscious parenting!
I was adopted at 3.5 months old, by two amazing parents, who went on to adopt 3 other younger ones. My adopted father was a psychiatrist, mother was a social worker, and I appreciate that “adoption” was an early word I learned. I remember going to the agency as a 4 year old with them when we picked up my youngest sister.
Like all things human, adoption is complex. Of course I am very pro-adoption, and I applaud adopting parents. I am also pro-truth, and in our culture the voice of the adoptee is not often heard. The “adoption triangle” narrative is mostly dominated by great tales from wonderful adopting parents, or less often, the trauma and pain of the birth mother. Much less airtime is available to hear of the adoptee experience, the kid who, though rightfully considered lucky to be chosen by some caring new parents, is often spending their life dealing with the wrenching primal wound of being separated from their bio-mother.
A lot of my work focus these days is growing and leading a robust and innovative therapeutic program for youth, called, Whole Hearts, Minds & Bodies. Our treatment model could be summed up as "Connection Heals!" We have a significant percentage of kids on our case-load who are adoptees with serious emotional disturbance, and I have spent some years treating some of these kids. My direct experience of bonding as a consistent, caring, non-parental adult with kids who are attachment challenged, and my research on the issue, has given me a lot to consider about my own long-term adaptations and mal-adaptations to being adopted. I am very happy with my 54 year trajectory of life and work, and I have great friendships with a rather large string of awesome women who tried to partner with me, but eventually got burned out by my consistent default orientation as “solo-guy”.
One of my strongest life memories is of sitting in the sun in El Portal, holding my newborn son Braden, and realizing I was meeting my first biological relative. Later, watching him nurse on his mom, I was viscerally aware that my own baby-time, being in a crib in an orphanage in 1962, had been a seriously different scene. In my work now, I read papers about anaclitic shock and depression, rather harrowing!
I attribute a lot of my relentless, social-entrepreneurial drive-to-change the-world, as a need to justify my existence, like, “my mother rejected me and gave me away, so at least I can try to make the world love me!”
An amazing twist to my story is that my adopted Mom, really pushed all four of us kids to find our birth mothers, once the youngest was 18. This is rare, but she strongly felt the need for these birth mothers to ultimately know that we all turned out fine. She got me to sign the waiver of confidentiality, and also rare, my birth mother had found out about that program and had signed one as well. So at 24 years old I got to reconnect with my birth mother Melody and my 2 half sisters, Kristin and Aisha. I started CityRock Gym by working out of Melody’s basement in Berkeley. I am completely at home in both families now, as brother, and uncle, but as a son, it is different between the two, with the clear loyalty to the one who raised me. And a clear appreciation for the one who gave me life and genes, but also an innate caution, like my body and soul remember that it was problematic gestating inside a freaked out 18-year-old girl who had been traumatized herself.
I strongly agree with Largo about the birthright of knowing your roots. I never got to meet my bio-father. I wrote to him a couple of times, but never got a response. A few years back I received word of his death and a note from his widow. She wrote that he didn’t respond to me because he “ felt strongly that a child's true parents are the ones who provide him with a loving, supportive home. He felt it would be presumptuous for him to enter Peter's life now as father when he had not been involved in raising him.” I appreciate these feelings, but I also feel that it is a bit of a misunderstanding of the adoptee need. I had a great father and wasn’t looking for another one. However, I still live with that sense that I arrived on earth carried by a stork, and I crave connecting with my roots. Who were my people? What were they like? What did they care about and think? It would have been amazing to get to meet him and learn some of that stuff.
Peace,
Peter
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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I wonder if the biological son being jealous of the new baby was difficult for the mother to deal with and in trying to show her first born that he was loved, she inadvertently damaged the bond(not unable to bond, because there is one....). She likely did the best she could but like an epic in the wilderness, a series of small decisions took the family down a path where they ended up lost and injured.
I wonder if the parents realized there was difficulty during that transition of a second child coming into the home and looked for guidance from a qualified person, or tried to figure it out by themselves.
Very sad, but had it been a second biological child with the same circumstances, to abandon would not have been so much as thought out loud. Sorry for that little girl, mostly, but also for the others in the family, who would probably be very wrong if they are assuming the troubles are over.
Also remembered - I am pretty sure my great(grand?) nephew is adopted, though not in the way being referred to in this thread. My niece married a man with a toddler whose mother walked out of their lives, and she adopted his son.
Anyway, my niece had trouble conceiving, but later did with some help. One of my sisters made a comment something like "going to be a mom" to her and WOAH, did a flash of emotion rage in my niece's eyes. She "reminded" the sister that she already was a mom. I don't think my sister realized how what she had said had come out, but unfortunately what had been said was said. I can imagine adoptive parents, and adopted children, and families of them, have this kind of thing occur at times.
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - May 3, 2017 - 08:34am PT
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Peter thanks for sharing your story. So much to unpack in there.
You know, so many of these stories have to do with our identity and the way we go about it as a youngster....and even later into life. We've learned a lot about this whole concept after going through state "training" a few times to adopt. We've also learned first hand through our own children and from the experiences of many, many close friends who have adopted or are currently adopting. We run in a bit of an "adopting tribe" it seems these days.
Helping any kid (adopted or birth raised) deal with his/her identity is a natural part of parenting. Helping create a strong identity and dealing with the "who am I and where did I come from and where am I going" journey is one we deal with with all of our kids but it is especially necessary with adopted kids. Its a journey, and one that has been a joy to go through alongside our kids.
Thanks again for sharing your story.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Thanks micro and happiegrrrl.
Yea my sense of what happened is that it's probably wrapped up with a lot of human stuff, and that it's not strictly not about adoption - it probably does reflect on our societal attitudes about adoption, race, gender, privilege.
When the white father of an adopted black daughter called Michelle Obama a man here on our forum, it probably wasn't because he's a bad parent, even if he is perpetuating a damaging racial stereotype about his own child, when he's the one that she looks to to help her understand her own identity. And the reasons that he was the one who had learned to say that, and he was the one who enjoyed the privilege of adopting her, while she was the one who needed to be adopted by someone perpetuating that racial stereotype about her, are probably not unrelated.
I think that the dominant narrative is that adoptive parents are awesome altruistic people who are doing a wonderful service to humanity. And to some extent, and in some cases, that's probably true.
But there are other dominant narratives in our society that affect how we humans behave. In my experience, we adoptive parents are the biggest winners in the deal.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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One of the real flashpoints in adoptions is the idea that any person can bring a child into the world and then be shielded from ever accounting to it per genetics, background, etc. But that's how the law is written in Cal. Adoption records are sealed and you need a court order to find out "identifying information" in order to "safeguard" the identity and privacy of the birth parent. Meanwhile any social worker with half a reason can rifle the adoptees file with impunity.
Another odd thing is the fallout sometimes encountered when a birth parent, wishing to remain unaccountable and unknown, freaks out when an adoptee hunts them down, usually just to get background info, find out about genetics and ethnicity and any medical conditions the parents might have. This posits the rights of the birth parent above the adoptee. Often such birth parents have kept the adoptee's existence a total secret from the rest of the birth parents relations and "disruption" will follow if the birth parent is outed. People literally freak out and crazy stuff under these circumstances, and they happen more often than we realize. Shame is a powerful toxin.
Fortunately for me none of that stuff happened when I met my birth mother, who actually contacted me. But these things can get very ugly and volatile to the extent that a birth parent has shame attached to the adoptee and as well as guarded secrecy. That's when some birth parents start yelling that the adoptee has no right to disrupt their family while the rights of the adoptee are no where to be found.
Obviously people can become militant when all things go south and the "Bastard Nation" is one outfit that rallies for adoptees rights. As Micronut said, total honesty as soon as possible is the best medicine, IMO. All the drama is avoidable, but not if people want to hide and cling to secrets like grim death.
Lastly, few adoptees want to feel special. What they want most of all is to feel normal - sometimes a tough order when they are dropped into a family that look, act, and generally are unlike the adoptee in most every way imaginable. Those differences become small beer by acknowledging them, not by trying to minimize them even through the most compassionate means.
At bottom, regardless of their upbringing, adoptees usually have a preverbal feeling of being strangers in the world, to lesser or greater degrees. This can work for or against the adoptee. Existentially, the adoptee is on their own. We all are, really, but the adoptee probably feels it a little more acutely.
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - May 3, 2017 - 10:08am PT
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Largo great insights.
Existentially, the adoptee is on their own. We all are, really, but the adoptee probably feels it a little more acutely.
Good point. Its our job to be parents that let a child know he/she is NOT alone! This feeling is often deeply woven into the psyche of an orphan.
Picture my son Bek. There's no way he could know this at his age now but synapses in his heart and brain and psyche tell him he was
1. "abandoned" by his birth mom shortly after the womb.
2. Then he grows for a year in an orphanage...200 kids sleeping on wooden "flats" with no mattresses in his one room. He craves adult interaction and gets it somewhat in the orphanage workers who change his diaper, give him a hug here and there, feed him three squares a day. He grows to "love" them. Then we come in and adopt him at 11 months old and tear him away from what he knows. "Abandoned" if you will again.
Now he's here in the USA with a new "mom" and a new "dad". Granted, he's unable to process this because he's a baby, but we slowly start to mend those strings that were cut in his heart and mind and spirit. We hug, we play, we parent, we love. True cleansing and repair of that scar tissue starts to occur.
But a time will come when something deep in his DNA tells him...."I was wounded." That's when the parenting initiative of "I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU NOR FORSAKE YOU' comes in. Its not something you think about tending to much with your own biological kids, but its something you need to keep an eye on with your adopted kids. Actions and words and experiences that tell that kid "You are mine. We claim you as ours. We will never leave you." Its subtle, but so vital to raising a child from an orphanage. We're figuring it out as we go but it is a powerful and sweet bond we have with our children.
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PAUL SOUZA
Trad climber
Central Valley, CA
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Adoption is definitely a prospect for myself. If I can't have a genetically-edited kid to stop this familial heart disease sh#t that I have, then I'll adopt.
But I kinda already have a kid in a way...Cory.
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Largo and micro - thanks for your thoughts. Yea the parent's job is to be the adults. And if you don't go into the job with that intention, then it's the kids who suffer.
But also, we adults have sh#t of our own, and our kids aren't immune to it. And sometimes that sh#t isn't a function of the one to one parent to child relationship, but manifests on a much larger scale instead. Sometimes the best you can do is the best you can do.
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Topic Author's Reply - May 3, 2017 - 02:27pm PT
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Sometimes the best you can do is the best you can do.
Yep. That's all a kid needs!
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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What also gets lose here is the needs of the parent beyond parenting. Some like the play the role of savior. Few I would imagine but it's hard not to do what Micronut did and not feel like you didn't pull an orphan out of the fire. Another is the expectation of the adoptee to somehow conform to the family dynamic, and that there is something wrong with the kid if it cannot, for a variety of reasons.
I really think that the main thing is for the parent to provide what Bowlby and others called "good enough" parenting. This helps restore the preverbal sense of basic trust" that often gets shattered during early years, that the world is basically a safe place - and adoptees have no exclusive on this challenge.
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Phred
Mountain climber
Anchorage
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My wife and I adopted our daughter (our first child) from the foster-care system a couple years ago. She's now 6 and loves to climb mountains. I hope to give her experiences and a future that she otherwise wouldn't have had. I love her like my own - because she is (well, except when she's naughty - then she's my wife's).
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