I just watched this week’s episode of Army Wives. If you have never seen it before you need to check it out on Sunday nights on Lifetime. The last few weeks one of the families was working towards adopting an older foster child. The show has shown some of the issues that a family planning to adopt really do face. They did however make the fastest home study & foster approval in history, but other than that the emotional issues they discuss are real.
The family met a child they wanted to adopt; they knew nothing about his history or his medical issues they just knew their personalities really seemed to go well together. Once the family decided they liked the child his case worker told them about his major medical issue. Reality is this is how it happens except in Texas you cannot just go and talk with the child you want to adopt.
If you have already decided you like the child, that you want them in your family is there anything that could be wrong with them you would change your mind? If you had a biological child and they have a major medical issue would you just walk away? The characters in the show chose to continue with the placement process and had the child placed with them for a foster to adopt.
The family was prepared for the child coming home physically, but the emotional reality is often something that most families are not really prepared for. When a child has lost their biological family, whether through abandonment or the death, adjusting to a new family is harder than first thought. The show has the child whose biological mother give him up, his grandmother died, and his last foster mom gave him back, so the fact that the child has difficulty bonding with the “new” mom.
When a child is placed with you, your expectations need to be realistic. The child is not going to walk through your front door and automatically start calling you Mom & Dad, they won’t automatically be welcome to your affection and they may worry that you are going to leave them like every other adult in their life. It takes time, the emotional scars are ones you don’t see but they can be the hardest to fix. You need to show the child that no matter what they will do, you will always be there. You need to allow them to learn to trust you.