[Posted on Prodigy on 3/11/1992]
It’s much too late in the evening to be doing this, and I’ll pay for it dearly tomorrow, but I can’t help myself any more.
We adopted a 7 yr old boy and a 10 yr old girl 5 years ago. Problems? Sure. More so than our friends with bio kids? Nope. Different problems? Sometimes.
It’s an imperfect world in which we live. The good die young. The innocent are persecuted. The hungry stay hungry. And sometimes families don’t work out. Sometimes bio families don’t work out. And sometimes adopted families don’t work out. I wish neither was the case, but they are.
The point is, though, that when we draw our first breath, we take our first chance. Bio kids also have emotional problems, get violent, and end up in prison. Yesterday the State of Oklahoma executed a man that grew up as somebody’s darling little bio baby boy.
It’s hard work to adopt an older child. But it’s NO HARDER than parenting bio kids. It’s just a DIFFERENT kind of hard. In addition to all the wonderful books on adoption and adopting older kids, read Emerson’s “Compensation”. We have had to deal with some “peculiar” behavior, but, in total, it is no more awkward than a 2 yr old throwing mashed potatoes at Aunt Martha!
We’ve stayed up nights trying to figure out the day, but we haven’t had 2:00 feedings. There are things we’ve missed, but there are things we’ve gained.
Compensation.
Things we’ve learned: Forgiveness always heals. Love never fails. Patience.
I’ll go at this again tomorrow, but, for now, I’ve got miles to sleep before I go.
