Our Child's Process and Love

For our child the process and history of their life will be far different from that of what both Keith and I have experienced. It is hard to know where to begin when you start mulling over the situations your child may face in life, especially when they are young. I know many new parents often worry what school will our kids go to, how will they make new friends, and how can I best prepare my child for those experiences. I suppose my Mom would say I'm worrying about this way too soon, but I think our situation will be better benefited by our devotion to figuring things out long before we get there.

From our readings and conversations with other adoptive parents we have found that the "problematic" types of situations that can occur often stem from other kids and family. Even if our adoptive children are from the same race as us, or they have brown hair and blue eyes, as I do, it is extremely unlikely they will bare any real resemblance to Keith or myself. After working with children in a daycare setting for just over four years, you come to realize how kids notice things you really wouldn't expect them too in a million years. In my class at the daycare we had three children who were adopted by wonderful loving parents that ultimately wanted nothing more than to protect their children. We had a little girl adopted from China, a boy from the Ukraine, and another boy adopted domestically. None of them bared any resemblance to their families and all the kids would ask these children, "Why don't you look like your Mom/Dad?"

Now the children would reply in one of two ways they would reply with an answer that allowed them to stand firm and be proud of their special circumstances that brought them to their parents, or they wouldn't know what to say and they would feel awkward or even belittled by this seemingly simple question. Kid's are kid's and they'll ask each other questions that should be worded with much more tact, but they are kids. Kid's never have tact unless they have been told something by their parents or they already know from experience.

As the teacher I would always hear about this later from the kids and it was important to me that I address the situation to make sure that the children understood how wonderfully special they were and how God had chosen this for their life story. I had a class with students in both First and Second grade and so it was easier to explain things in their terms so they better understood their friends and adoption in general.

When you look at it from the outside, you see all families being really the same. Mothers can carry their children physically for nine months, or they can carry their children in their hearts for sometimes more than nine months to years and years before they finally meet. To explain that to a child is through the simple explanation of Love. A mother/father, be it their birth mother/father or adoptive mother/father feel the same for their children, a love that seems endless and one that does not die. My task was to try and explain that to my Eighteen children, so they would consider their friends feelings and lift the children up that had been taken off gaurd by their questioning peers.

To do this I would turn to a wonderful book I found called "I love you so...", by Marianne Richmond. This book explains that no matter how a child's parent(s) and the child came together the child is greatly loved and irreplaceable. All my kids would just smile so wide and after reading that book they would all run up to their parents that picked them up and tell them how much they loved them, which parents love to hear. For me I think the best thing we can pass on to our children as they grow up is Love. With love from their parents they can better understand and cope with the world around them, whether they are adopted or not, Love is the one language that speaks to all children.