Say What You Need To Say

Even if your hands are shakin'
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open
A wide heart ----------------John Mayer

I apologize in advance. I'm afraid my thoughts in this post will seem harsh or even bitter. One of my favorite things to hear about this blog is that it feels warm. I don't want to lose that tone, but I have to get some things out of my brain that are clogging up my neurons and blocking other thoughts.

I enjoy open discussion on any issues that come up in my writing. Respectful disagreement is the foundation for discussion and I relish it. Disagreement and judgment are two very different things. I also want to say that I deeply respect those with strong faiths, regardless of denomination. It is the use of 'God' and 'His Love' as a weapon to which I strongly object.

Back in September, an Editor's Letter about adoption in Parenting Magazine irritated me. I wrote a response letter. If you don't understand why I have such passionate feelings about informed adoption and older child adoption, here's the background. A recent anonymous comment on that letter has me spitting fire and hopping mad:

I will leave just a brief comment. You are blinded to the truth and I pray your eyes will be open. This world is full of so many words. I think it would behoove us all to listen with the two ears God gave us. We need to close our mouths unless we have something encouraging to speak. I have seen with my own eyes a little three year old boy placed in a Christian family. He was going to be placed in a group home because all of the (EXPERTS) felt he needed to be placed in a group home. A three year old child placed in a group home. This family prayed and brought him into their home. He is a blessing to everyone. He has learned the real meaning of love. It is to lay down your life and die for another. 1 John 3:16. My husband is a Pediatrician and I am a Registered nurse, we have witnessed what true love can do for anyone. We were born to need love. We thrive off of love. We go to Haiti each year and have a medical mission clinic. We see what love can do. It is just reaching out and loving on others. I also work on the Psychiatric floor of a hospital. I see love make a difference in the lives of all of these individuals. As long as there is a heart beat left, there is hope. It is all about LOVE. Love is a decision it is not a feeling. It is making a decision to lay down your life for another. I just want to say I love all of you all here. You are precious to God.

Adoption is incredible. It is having a baby after walking down a different path than many walk. It is filled with moments of love, the love of a birth mother for her child, the love of a forever family for their new child. Just like pregnancy and childbirth it has risks, painful outcomes, challenges of which parents should be aware. Having a child is huge, regardless of the journey to get there.

One of the possible challenges in adopting toddlers and older children is that bonding and attachment can be difficult. Not always. It depends on many, many factors. The quality of the care the child received as an infant, the length of time a child spent in an institution, whether there is any abuse or trauma in their history, the resilience of the child.

The circle of attachment is something every single mother and father knows, they just may not realize it. Your baby feels discomfort and cries. You respond. You offer milk, dryness, warmth, companionship. One of these basic blocks of love fills the baby's needs and he relaxes, his rage subsides. The circle is completed. The baby has learned trust, he's learned that adults are good, he's learned that his needs are important and will be met, he's begun to understand the world as a good, safe place for him.

In the first year of life, this lesson is reinforced over and over until it becomes the foundation for the way the baby views the world. The foundation for love, trust, self-worth, empathy, anger regulation, concentration and exploration. You name it and you, as a parent, have provided the initial seeds with nothing but the innate biological need to meet your baby's needs. You have actually forged neurological pathways in your baby's brain that allow the baby to function as he grows. I am upset, I can ask mommy for help. I am scared, Daddy will protect me.

Now imagine a baby born in abject poverty in a third world country. He cries for food and his mother holds him, but she can't relieve his rage, she can't teach him that needs are met. She leaves him alone for long days, looking for work and begging. When he arrives at an orphanage at two, malnourished and already street smart, he is cared for, but he still has to survive. He learns that the child with the largest smile gets the lollipops from visitors. He learns to climb on anyone's lap and charm them. He learns to bully the other boys so that he won't be bullied.

At four, he goes home to his American forever family. It is a struggle from day one. He doesn't trust adults, they've never met his needs. He doesn't want a mother, the one he remembers provided no comfort. He has no idea how to regulate his rage when he is denied something. He bullies the other children in the family to make sure he is not bullied. He desperately needs to feel that he is in control of every situation to feel safe. He is frighteningly good and charming for new adults, after all, they might have treats in their pockets and that's how you get special treatment. He saves his rage and acting out for the family that is trying to love him.

This is not a happy family and, despite his public charm, this is not a happy little boy. This is a frightened, angry little boy. These are desperate, exhausted, frightened parents. They have tried love. He rejects it at every single turn. He fears it.

Anonymous, your words are a dung bomb of hate and misconception and judgment wrapped in a sugar candy coating that you call 'God's love.' You get to say anything with impunity, right? Because it's all in the name of love. Amen.

Don't people like you have some other pithy phrase involving not judging until you've walked in someone's shoes. Have you? Walked in these shoes? Have YOU adopted an older, traumatized child, or just your 'friend?' Have you held him for three hours while he raged and tried to bite you? Have you tiptoed through days trying to avoid another massive meltdown? Have you sat on your front porch for two hours, crying, because he just hurt one of your younger children again, hiding because you have nothing left to show him but anger and you know that's not what he needs. Does it BEHOOVE you to comment so negatively on something you know absolutely nothing about?

I know I've said insensitive things in my life. Things that may have hurt someone. I've spouted off on subjects I didn't understand. But, as I've lived, I've learned, I've tried to grow. I'm much more careful. You hurt, you learn. I've learned, each time I find myself doubled over in pain from an invisible blow, not to throw air punches. They can land. I'm a better person for trying to understand what people are going through rather than spouting off about their shortcomings, their lack of love.

My eyes are open. Wide open. We need families who can understand what it takes to heal these children and who are willing to do it. We need parents to foster, fully and completely cognizant of the behaviors they can face with traumatized children. Speaking encouragement is one thing, pretending that these families can survive on blind faith and love is asinine.

I do speak encouragingly. I could write endlessly about the joy of bonding with my daughter. I could write posts about what worked. Rocking. Swinging. A highly structured environment with clear rules. Discouraging touching and holding with anyone outside of our family.

But I will never say that it wasn't difficult or that it took only love. It took perseverance. It took research. It took determination. It took a lot of tears. With her it worked, with our son it didn't have a chance in our home, for a myriad of reasons.

I am so tired of you, Anonymous, and people like you. I'm so tired of the whispers and the insinuations. I'm so tired of the 'friends' who talk to others about how we abandoned our child, who walked away from our family without ever sitting down with us and asking: What's going on? Why are you making this decision? I'm so tired of family members using words like 'mistreated' to describe our painstakingly-arrived-at, heartbreaking decision to find a second placement for our son. I'm so tired of people who think they know it all and make snap judgments about how someone else's pain, someone else's struggles, indicate a lack of love or faith.

It's wonderful that you provide medical care in Haiti and that you see the power of love healing there, but that's not the same thing as bringing a child into your home forever. They are laughably different issues. It's wonderful that your friend took in an apparently struggling, angry and traumatized three-year-old and created a family, healed his heart. I'm in awe of that.

I don't think you understand what it took. The Christianity of the family is irrelevant. I suspect they are strong parents who have parented children with these issues before. I suspect they had an excellent support group, knew other parents dealing with attachment issues and had a good therapist on their side. I suspect that their other children were older, or possibly, that they were well prepared and this was their only child, so that they could focus on him entirely, provide for his needs and weather his storms. Because THESE are the things that it takes to heal unattached and traumatized children.

Love is prerequisite, it's foundational, it's a given, but it's not enough. Love, and in particular, your sanctimonious, obnoxious, love-the-whole-world, god-saves-the-little-children brand of love is simply not enough.

If you want to go around about God's love and my lack thereof, I'm not interested. I rejected your narrow-minded, judgmental, exclusionary version of "God" long ago. If you want to take me on about whether love in and of itself is enough to heal traumatized, unattached children and sustain families dealing with their negative behaviors BRING IT ON. But I'm warning you right now, I am better read than you on this issue, I am more informed than you on this issue, I am smarter than you (I tried to add on this issue and I just can't) and, I'll be frank, I will run circles around you in terms of my ability to express my points.

Any questions?

*********************************

Just in case, I'll set this up in advance. I know that not everyone wants to share their Google account, so I'm going to allow anonymous comments, but only if you sign a name. Humor me, make one up. If you don't, I'll delete your comment. Fair warning.