Other parent/writers confess to the joy their disabled children have brought them. Can I confess to regrets? I adopted my son when he was eight from the foster care system. He was sweet, charming, and bright -- with a social background that I know now should have scared the heck out of me. I went through training. I knew there were no guarantees. I knew kids who had been abused/neglected/abandoned were bound to have emotional problems. I was committed to love him. I had committed my professional life to social justice/making a difference. I could make a difference for one small child and know the joy of parenting, expanding our family from the small single parent household-with-bio-son that I currently had. Besides, everybody who knew me said I was a great mom. My son would have a brother.
Twelve years later, I can tell you with clarity that I would not do it all over again. By the time this son was 13, I had long experience with emergency rooms, police calls, psychiatric units. I kept looking for the right psychiatrist or therapist who would make the right diagnosis and have the right therapy or the right medicine. He was fetal alcohol, reactive attachment disordered, depressed, oppositional defiant, ADHD... I am sure we could have kept accumulating diagnoses, none of which helped manage behavior. He lied, he stole, he was sexually inappropriate, he destroyed our house, he let the dog out to run the neighborhood, he broke into neighbors' houses, he went joy riding, he was expelled. He was funny, he told good stories, he could cuddle, he was an athlete, he made friends instantly. One psychiatrist told me he was a sociopath in progress. At one residential treatment center, he flung his own shit around the room, and refused to bathe for months. I lost at least one job because I couldn't manage the stress of the constant phone calls, emergencies, etc. Co-workers are only sympathetic so long. People said "I don't know how you do it," and I didn't know if that was admiringly or despairingly.
He is twenty now. He has been a gang member. He has worked a total of about 2 months in the past 2 years, when I have tried to encourage that he get a job. He just can't keep a job. He deals. He lies. He has been back home, to get back on his feet. He doesn't get back on his feet. He plays video games all day. I kick him out again, because he isn't keeping up the bargain... get a job, or volunteer, or help with chores. He has had years of therapy. He has had years of support. He has had years of tough love.
He feels entitled. He will be one of those guys who lives off girls. He will not hold a job. He will circle between social service agencies and jail. He will become the kind of person I have spent a lifetime as a social activist railing against: a leech on the system, on someone else, a petty criminal, a non-contributor to the larger good. He will have children he cannot support. I thought we could create policies, programs, and just plain love enough to make a difference. I cannot know, maybe he cannot know, if his brain is just too damaged, if he is truly incompetent, or he cannot muster the will to live a succesful life when the culture provides so many alternative pathways. I know I lost years of my life, and my bio son --with my encouragement -- has sought his own opportunities far away, as he, too, figures out what is healthy and what is the detritus of a life with a brother that was always generating chaos.
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Brassawe
old new lefty
Sally Swift
ladyslipper
Greg Correll
Robert Blevins
Salon.com
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The Rainbow
Swiss greens
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Your Tag:`open call, lively life. (interesting) Verily.
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I hear you. I'll share a few personal 'stuff' and I have to admit, I sure do agree.
My (she is who she is. she lives in a gust house I built) wife and I can't see eye-to-eye. I don't know if she knows what color of eyes I see the world through? Bless her heart. If she stays clear of me, we get along just fine. Dandy. People ask:`How Do You get along with T.? I respond. As long as we two stay clear and far away from each other:` Fine. She was an orphan at 12 years old. Tragic. Her Parents, of course I never met, but, her Father was from West Virginia. He wanted to escape the drudgery of the cruel coal mines digging livelihood. Her Mother was from the Vanderbilt bloodline. However, there was no money from Cornelius's V.'s railroad and shipping business. The accumulated masses of lucre never was seen.
The Parents, respectfully, and Know:`I wasn't there ... The small amount was squandered in horse-racing-gambling, and bad stock chicanery. They both met in this fancy prestigious New York City, International Law Firm. The West Virginian was in misery, and he blamed for the loss of some money. I am not gonna go into details. T., sad to say, heard morning arguments from her bedroom every day. Her Mother died of cancer two months after her Father died suddenly. A foster home used three children as little dishwashers, floor scrubbers, and charged rent. The deaths of their Parents was never discussed. Her two brothers are "victims" of sad New York City reality. My own Mother saw 'stuff' I never could ... for the life of me ... fathom. Well, the childhood trauma is worst than PTSD from war? In my opinion. I'm skipping gobs of sad details. Respect.
What you wrote:`Yes. The children who are born into stressful, deplorable, and listen to arguments that never end are 'victims' of perpetual hellishness on this earth. I am not saying children can't grow, mature, and learn from sad family life, be transforming, but the wounds are deep gashes upon the human psyche. I have sure learned? Most of my life was trying to reason, ponder, and by God?
... I am still bewildered and flabbergasted. Mark Twain wrote:`The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter -- it's the difference between a lightening bug and the lightening.
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I have Listened to the foster Parents who took in three lonely child orphans. T.'s brother is a twin, and her eldest brother has lived in the city faking (cooking) the books for well-known Wall Street City CEO's Money Broker Crooks. Years ago I met the executor of the Estate. The Will had no money. The distinguished looking retired lawyer, who was the executor of the Will visited my home. He also worked for the Coudert (sp) Law Firm. He drove up into the mountains where I live with a shiny black Mercedes. Expensive! He had fine taste. He was not a black bumper Mennonite. He cried in my house. He was happy T. was okay. He told me other 'stuff' that goes with me to the grave. By the way, any pleas I've ever made for any money None! Not one penny, ever. I've never received a Farmer Grant. I have turned down a one-year offer to write a book from Gene Knudson Hoffman. What a wonderful women G.K.H. is. She reaching 100 years old. I beleve in individual suffering. Everybody suffers. I also believe in Enmity. Mystery. Separation. I believe the folly of out ancestry passes into/upon the innocent born children. A fool blurts out everything.
The article?
AY Powerful!
You did good.
on and on on.
Ya inform me.
Thanks again.
Sometimes the "best" thing that we can do with our challenging children is to "let go". They will, undoubtedly, make mistakes and some of them are likely to be doozies however one of those things that we need to remember, even with out disabled children, is that mistakes are a necessary part of the learning process.
Adoption isn't always pretty. It sucks because a lot of great kids need homes.
Blessings;
denese
Sometimes love is not enough.
Sometimes the damage is already done.
Sometimes children are not a blessing, but a trial, and survival is the highest goal.
I honor you and am deeply sorry your family went through this trial.
He hung himself in his own backyard, from a tree, when he was 35.
Some people cannot live in the world. Some people are tormented by life and torment themselves and others every day they live.
I don't know what else to say. Thanks for writing this.
You are a very courageous person. I admire your tenacity.
I know the boy has not learned how to interact with peers and abuses animals. There isn't a thing I can do of course. I just wonder where that boy will end up.
I admire your courage to deal with this boy and also to tell your story.
I too feel I "lost years of my life." My biological son, only 15 months older than my adopted son, felt wounded daily by the chaos, and experienced his own rage along with his genuine bond with his brother--diagnosed at times as ADHD, Aspergers, and psychoses.
But I wonder, when I read your last paragraph, if there is another choice that you and I and others like us can make in our thinking, one that might take a very long time to emerge, that we just can't see right now, through the despair. Your last paragraph, with it's many predictions of further antisocial behavior --"he will," and "he will be," and "he will become," "he will not," "he will have..." are dire predictions of a lifetime of failure, mis-use of others, and a lifetime of further chaos. Yet, like my son (with one exception), your son "was funny, he told good stories, he could cuddle, he was an athlete, he made friends instantly." If he has this, he does have a core, he likely does have empathy, he does have interests. If he doesn't hate himself, he may build on these several, core things.
I think if we reflect back to anyone that they simply can't find their way, ever (as I think your last paragraph suggests), that they do have less chance of doing so. We do affect them, even when we think we cannot--and my guess is that his strengths ("he was funny, he told good stories, he could cuddle, he was an athlete, he made friends instantly") are strengths that you helped him to build.
Right now, I'm working on limits. I say no. Any money or rides I offer come at the price of some small evidence of social contribution: he has to bring all the dishes with moldy food on them out of his room and put them in the dishwasher; he has to take his filthy clothes that smell like dead animals out of the bathtub and put the in the washing machine, and wash them... I do this FOR ME, not because I think it teaches him a thing. I simply feel more self respect when my giving demands some reciprocity, however grudging.
I read here that some people would like to see you "let go." I think we can "let go" of the kind of giving that tears us down, rather than simply "let go" of the kid.
It is not my place to judge, for I don't know what you've been through. I don't know you, nor your son. One thing I know, though, is that I am a social activist myself and NEVER would I work AGAINST anybody, should they be so called leeches or else. I work FOR and, preferably, WITH people. Never against. And it's been working for me, and for the people I work with, so far...