Adoption Disorders

Adoption Disorders

Before we adopted our son, he had already gone through eight counselors, doctors and specialists. My son has been in counseling since he was five years old and we adopted him when he was eleven. After we adopted our son, we continued down the same path, adding more counselors, doctors, and even more specialists. Nothing has changed. Nothing got better.

We needed a reinvention of adoption! We died! Our son died! And everything we did didn't work! Ever been there? Maybe you are at this point in your adoption journey? Let me give you a new idea, a new option for you and your adopted children. Accept the disruptions.

Do you want to continue living in your car and driving your adopted child to specialists and doctors who can't fix the attachment disorder? Do you want to continue spending your time with counselors who can't fix your eating disorder or self-mutilation? Keep going, do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. Wait, that’s the definition of “insanity.”

We choose not to go crazy. We choose not to spend our lives with doctors, specialists and counselors who cannot help us or our child. We accept the disruptions and live with them. We choose to understand and know that we will never fix our child, only he can choose to bond, to eat, to stop picking his skin. Only our son can choose to be better, make better decisions and live his life.

It's so liberating to accept the disruptions! It puts the responsibility of living on my son and the burden of making sure he lives on us! Of course we give him security, we provide him with an environment for success by offering him clothing, food, shelter, love and his medication. But we can only do so much! Our son must make the decision to live.

Mom won't always be there to make sure he took his medication this morning. Dad won't always show up to make sure he gets to work. There will be failures, there may be stays in the psychiatry, the eating disorder clinic, and he may lose some jobs. It's not my job to make sure our son never fails, it's my job to make sure he accepts his disorders and owns them.

Have you accepted the disorder or are you spending your entire adoption journey trying to “fix” and “change” and “get rid of.” Stop! Just accept it.

When you accept the adoption disorders that show up in your own adoptive family, you learn to enjoy and love in a different way, better and better. Your adoption can be a success if you acknowledge and accept. You don't own it, but you accept it.

Inspired by Jennifer K Chase