Words of advice from another who has adopted

I thought this was very well done and gives you a flavor for what we might be going through. I got these off one of the Yahoo groups I am on:

Here are some things I have learned after having adopted three times from China:

1) Every child needs a family.

2) Not every child wants a family.

3) Just because a child wants a family doesn't mean they know how to be part of one. For some children their only adult relationships have been with teachers and/or SWI workers. They've never been invited to a friend's house and witnessed the interaction between parent and child. They don't know how to interact with adults, including their new parents.

4) For some children the adults in their lives were only people to be avoided or pacified or manipulated for the child's survival. They enter their new family only knowing these survival skills.

5) Not all Social Welfare Institutes are highly structured institutions where the children are closely supervised and follow a regimented routine.

6) Years of SWI living and the survival skills and habits learned in them take time to unlearn, lots of time. Lots and lots and lots of time. Old habits need to be replaced with new ones. Wrong information needs to be replaced with correct information, etc.

7) Some adopted older children may mistake their new parents' signs of love and affection as a weakness. These children need to be drawn into a loving relationship with their new parents slowly. At first, they need to know we are firm, but not unkind. As the child learns to adjust to this new atmosphere and relationship, privileges and outward indications of love can be added to the relationship slowly.

8) Children in China are not necessarily taught to respect adults.

9) Just because a parent longs for a child, completes mountains of paperwork to adopt a child, waits anxiously for their child, spends months dreaming and imagining what life with this child will be like does not guarantee that the parent will love the child. Or like the child.

10) Love is a commitment. The emotional attachment, in some cases, takes time. Wanting to love a child does not guarantee that you will fall in love with, or even like your child right away. And that's okay.

11) A parent struggling with a new child does not, under any circumstances, want to hear "it will take time" or "it must be a difficult time for the child" even if it is true!
12) No matter how experienced a parent is, each adoption, like each child is different and presents its own problems (and joys). Support is so very important. When a parent can not get that support from the people in their lives, their Internet friends' support can mean so much. When a parent turns to that Internet support they need to know they will not be condemned, ridiculed, put down or thought less of or referred to immediate therapy. It is hard enough to admit to having struggles without the fear of yet more rejection, especially from those in the adoption community who have Been There and Done That (BTDT).

13) Adopted children, for a while, can not be expected to react like children of the same age born into a family. With time they will blend in and interact and react just like their peers, but for a while they won't. I had a friend whose newly adopted daughter was having trouble sleeping at night and all the advice she was given by non-adoptive parents was "she is old enough to be sleeping through the night, just let her cry herself back to sleep". A child adopted into a family probably won't run to his/her mother for love and nurturing like a child born into the family. At least not at first.