Many parents have expectations about how their child will achieve in school. The kinds of sports they might like to play, or the band instruments they will fall in love with and learn how to make music to our ears. We expect our child will make lots of friends and fit in well, be invited to 15 birthday parties every year and never feel lonely.
We believe that with permanency, security and love we will see our older adopted child make dramatic improvements. With our support and guidance, our adopted child may be the one who overcomes all the odds. Our child may be the one who grows up and writes the book about what it felt like to live as they did and then have a family to help them become who they become.
Maybe we will be the adoptive parents who raise this wonderful child, and maybe we won’t be. The bottom line is that helping our child heal and grow will usually take longer and be harder then we could have ever expected. Either way, adoptive parents of an older child must NOT place fault on the child because they don’t live up to the fantasies we created for them.
I believe all parents have dreams for their children. Some of us have a desire to relive our own childhoods by way of our children. We plan all the steps we will take to help them overcome the things we found difficult about our journey through childhood. We believe we know what our own parents may have done right or wrong. Some parents who adopt an older child may have other children who are raised and certainly, we learned from the mistakes we may have made with round one.
The truth is that parenting any child is not just about our dreams and our fantasies. Each child we parent will be unique and different from each other and from ourselves. Adopting an older child requires parents who are able to offer time of healing, time of getting to know each other and most of all time to understand the fantasies each of our children may have of their own.
Other Parts of the Series “The Fantasy Child”
- Daydreaming About Our Future Child.
- The Pictures and Profile
- The Child’s Expectations
- Avoiding Problems with Expectations and Daydreams.
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Special Needs and Adoption-Related Terms:
A | B | C | D | E-F | G-H-I | J-K-L | M | N-O | P | Q-R | S | T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z
For more information about parenting special needs children you might want to visit the Families.com Special Needs Blog and the Mental Health Blog. Or visit my personal website.