I Like My Kids

I was thinking today of how much I like my kids. I was thinking that last night too. This is a good thing, I think, to be thinking. Not that there are a lot of times that I’m not liking them but there are times. As an adoptive parent those times really niggle at you. Is it all right not to like your kids sometimes? Of course I love them always. Even when I’m the most frustrated with them I would die for them but is it all right to feel sorry for yourself as you carry your kicking, screaming, and scratching (our new trick — yay!) kid through the mall and back to your hotel room because you just can’t handle one more public tantrum. At least a 5-minute walk (an eternity) past hundreds of people, each and every one of them staring openly and not one looking understanding. Is it all right if that happens at least once a week?

I think even more than infertility patients blessed with pregnancy, adoptive parents feel even less of a right to complain where a “normal” parent might gush complaints. It’s not that you finally have the child you wanted to so long. It’s just that there are soooooooo many people ready to blame your child’s normal “problems” on adoption. I actually had someone go on the other day about how wonderful adoptive parents are and use as an example a mutual friend of ours who is having problems with her “adopted” teen age daughter. She was comparing our friend’s child to her own biological children and the relatively few problems she had with them and talking about what a saint our friend was to have taken such a risk in adopting. Okay, I was a little rude in my response. Parents with biological children always have perfect kids!?!

Anyway, since I know that a good many people are ready to judge my kids because I didn’t give birth to them I don’t feel that I can be completely honest on those days where I wish it was easier. But those days do happen. I admit it. Okay I’m not the perfect Mom. I don’t think my kids are perfect all the time. Sometimes I know they are VERY imperfect.

Then there are the guilty feelings you put yourself through. There is a lot of ignoring the fact that they aren’t biologically related to you. Forcing yourself to ignore those qualities that you don’t particularly like that you might sooner excuse if you could see them in yourself or your spouse. Seeing their behaviors mirrored in your own personalities doesn’t make the behaviors more legitimate but maybe easier to understand. That stubborn streak isn’t yours – or is it? Have they picked that up from your reactions to things or is it something genetically ingrained.

Sam’s birthmother mentioned in an e-mail last week something that made me cringe a little. I had put in my Christmas letter that it was torturous for Sam to stay still. She wrote to me that she was happy that “he was hyper” and that he was “just like her.” Sigh – she’s trying to fix her life; she really is, but she is kind of a disaster. My biggest fear is that he will be too much like his birthmother. That too many of her challenges will be his as well. I can’t/won’t deny his origins but I so hope that being in a good stable home (birthmother’s was far from) and having the opportunities that she was denied will mean so much more for him. At two I barely have an inkling of who he will be in the future so much is unknown; it’s scary.

Kamryn’s birthmother had gone on about how painfully shy she was as a kid. We’ve worked hard to try to build Kamryn’s confidence and perhaps shift her away from that tendency. If you’ve met Kamryn you will note that she is far from shy. Is it our skill as parents or did her birthfather’s personality weigh in there? You know though, ever so often I see it and it always comes without warning – shy Kamryn. Put the right set of circumstances together and she is miserable. She’s quite gregarious one on one but in a crowd she can disappear a little – first day of school, ballet recital, home of a new friend … Is that just a normal four-year-old or is it a biological tendancy. Do biological parents have these little debates in their heads? Do adoptive parents? Am I a freak? More than once I have been accused of being overly introspective. Yes, I often have these little conversations about dumb stuff in my head.

It’s easy to look at my children and see their birthparents in their features. It’s harder to look at them and see their birthparent’s in their behavior.