CORE CHALLENGES
I N A LI F E T I M E
By Jenny Riddle, with insight from L ynn Beckett For those involved in adoption, challenges and loss are a familiar story. All parties involved experience loss. As a result, hard days come. Those hard days are not limited to the first days or years in a home. There will be events or circumstances that will cycle through various issues stemming from loss. Adoption and caring for vulnerable families is simultaneously beautiful, joyful, and full of loss. It is a tapestry woven by years of both celebrating and grieving as life brings various threads to the story. Dealing with the issues of loss will help strengthen the threads and give room for the Weaver to redeem. In an article for the National Council For Adoption by Nancy Randall, Psy.D. and Kim Shepardson Watson, LCSW, the authors note several core issues that arise throughout a child’s story of adoption or foster care. These issues affect all persons in the adoption or foster care relationship: child, birth family, and adoptive or foster family. For this article, the focus will be on the child’s loss and how that may be revealed in various life stages.
LOSS & GRIEF No matter when or in what circumstances a child comes to live with his new family, losing his birth family is a traumatic loss. These losses are what necessitate adoption and foster care in the first place; although both are redemptive, both exist because of loss. No matter how good a new family is, a child has lost his family of origin, and this trauma cannot be understated or overlooked in the home. By allowing children to verbalize, acknowledge, and experience their loss, parents can help them work through challenges that hinder their healthy development. They may even want to initiate conversations with their child to signal that it’s okay to talk about these feelings. However, loss is not an issue that is simply “dealt with” or goes away. Issues of loss will occur at various points in a child’s life and as he grows into adulthood and beyond. Sometimes this loss will be most prevalent in Spring 2021
events that are typically seen as the most celebratory: birthdays, school milestones, weddings, birth of children, Mother’s and Father’s Day, and other holidays. As families gather for these events, a child may have a strong sense of loss for the family that isn’t there, even though they love the family that is present. Parents can take steps, with the child’s permission, to acknowledge a birth family at an event, such as with an empty chair, a bouquet of flowers, consistent prayers, a special ornament, or a special food. Children who experience loss will grieve these losses. Parents and other close adults can mistakenly attempt to gloss over expressions of grief in an attempt to force or salvage happiness for children. Yet, dismissing grief places an unnecessary burden on children or adults, as they pretend to show happiness without acknowledging their grief. If grief is left unacknowledged, as children age, they may act out in unhealthy ways. Acting out could start as misbehavior, depression, and later move to other destructive forms like drug or alcohol abuse, rebellion, self-harm, busyness, or even addicted to “good” things. Parents must allow children the room and space to express grief in a healthy way and ask for outside help to process it if needed. Parents can continue to acknowledge this grief as they approach new life stages and events and be present for their children to process and work through their emotions.
REJECTION & INTIMACY As children learn the story of their lives, they may experience feelings of rejection associated with their birth families. They may think something was wrong with them or that they were unworthy of love. No matter what explanation exists to their need for a permanent or temporary family, they may wrestle with thoughts that they were simply rejected because of who they were. These emotions may linger in the background of their minds as they age, and surface with friendship struggles, in competitive endeavors, family relationships, dating relationships, applying for college or
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