“A statement of fear or a statement of fact?”
Suz commented:
Do you think its a fear or a statement of fact?
The child has already experienced being “taken”. Its real. They were intended for one place and taken to another. Had one mommy and given to another. That fact lives in their system. That experience is imprinted. If its a fear, its a fear based on their experiential knowledge that it already did happen. I would guess children who have never been taken and given dont have quite the same fear.
My point is that I am not so sure it is just the adoptive parents instilling that but it is an accurate expression of what the child has already experienced.
And if I am STILL not making sense, let me say that I do see how adoptive parents instill that/reinforce it (often to their own benefit) but we should not overlook the childs very real experience of being taken.
Honestly, I don’t know.
I think it’s significant that both Supergirl and Madison are four. Madison was about 3.5 when she started expressing some of these concerns and I remember that Noah at around this age also started worrying about real life in a way he hadn’t before. I think four is a very typical age to start being afraid of the Great Big World and what it all means.
I don’t have my Ames & Ilg 4-year old book handy but I do know that at around this age both of my kids started thinking about DEATH. And fire. And earthquakes. And that’s when they started being afraid of water where previously they were happy little fish at the pool. And both went back to some stranger anxiety/separation anxiety. This is also the age that both became hell bent on being big and NOT being babies and pouring their own juice, not holding hands, not to mention having their own friends.
I do know that Madison has had an extra burden in trying to figure out what it means to have two moms who live in different places and one is called “mommy” and one is called “Pennie.” Plus she kinda ricocheted from typical 2-year old “is that a baby in your tummy?” fascination to “adoption?!? What?!?”. Which is to say that my experience has been that Madison hits these things at developmentally appropriate ages and then she’s got an added burden in figuring out her adoption on top of these typical things. But to me, the fact that these go hand-in-hand with non-adoption related challenges proves that these adoption-related challenges are developmentally NORMAL and not something to freak out about.
Like I wrote before, Noah used to be afraid that we’d accidentally leave him at grandma’s at this age. I think this was a reflection of loving grandma so much and also being at the age when he naturally and healthfully was pulling away from me, which was scary for him. He liked pulling away fine — if he could control it. He was very, very scared that his pulling away meant that I was pulling away, too. The more he wanted to go to Grandma’s the more nervous he’d be the night before about going.
My take is that Madison was having similar struggles. Her fears manifested at the same time that she started well and truly letting herself love Pennie as HER person — her birth mommy. And, like Noah, the more she wanted to spend time with Pennie and the more fun she had with her, the more clingy she was with me after.
It is definitely possible (and maybe even probable) that this is colored by being handed over once — could it happen again? But in that case, too, I think the answer is in the grown-ups being strong enough to withstand those fears, to say over and over again, “We all know that you live HERE and you will stay here and this is what we’ve all decided.”
The most important thing I want to be clear about is that regardless, this seems NORMAL and even HEALTHY to express these fears. This is one of those times where I think, “Hey, normal doesn’t mean easy or simple.”
If it is an expression of primal fear of being taken, how much MORE important to address that fear by reminding her that her parents (both sets) will not visit that upon her again. And that’s the key here — if you’ve got first family around, I think it’s hugely important to ask them to be a part of this. It’s one thing to have your parents say, “I will not let you be taken” and another to hear from the person you’re afraid might take you, “I will not take you.”
I know that Madison has needed to hear both of us say that she lives HERE with us. Sometimes now she’ll say to Pennie, “THAT’s my mommy” and Pennie says, “I know who your mommy is” and honestly I think Madison is letting herself lean into Pennie a little more and she needs to know that Pennie will remember our reality so that Madison can be free to pretend.
(I do believe that this fear is also a reflection of Madison yearning to be Pennie’s daughter and being afraid that wanting will make it true. And I also think that this is one reason adoptive parents use this developmentally appropriate reaction as a reason to pull back in contact. It’s no coincidence that Madison got scared at the exact same time that she fell madly, truly, deeply in love with her birth mama.)
Great. And now I have guilt that this is all my fault on top of adoptive parents overreactions.
Great.
(No fault of Suz. Just a reality of it all. Sigh.)
{{{Jenna}}} It would never in my wildest dreams seem to me like this is Pennie’s fault or my fault (for taking her). It’s just what it is. We’re all doing the best we can and we’ve all done the best we could.
From my POV, this pains me deeply. It pains me that we still allow children to feel that. That we can sit here talking about it so matter a factly and somewhere, in some hospital, another baby is being taken and four years down the road she will be afraid of her own mother keeping her or taking her back.
It pains my heart that any child has to live in the fear of being taken, given, shared or other.
i agree with you about the nuance, complexity and also normalcy of it all. i too feel so sad contact has been revoked for now, because it just makes no damn sense for anyone involved- that means a-parents, too. you articulate so well all the paradoxes of these developmental stages, dawn.
Something that happened just the other day to Liam reinforced his fear of being “taken” or getting a new family. A casual friend of ours (who is also an adoptive mother and SHOULD KNOW BETTER!!) was telling Liam how wonderful and cute he was and how she was going to snatch him up and take him home with her because she needed a little boy just like him
Hello!!!! Don’t say crap like that to kids!!!
And people wonder why kids get freaked out. Add to it that they know they are adopted, which in the simplest kid-explainable way means they’ve already left one family to go to another and it’s just a recipe for fear, anxiety and uncertainty.
Grrrr!
See, I’m not sure that it’s a parent’s job (either bio or adoptive) to protect their child from ever feeling hurt or fear. Those are real emotions that are going to be part of everyone’s life at some point. I think Dawn is right - that a parent’s job is to help their child learn coping and processing skills that will allow them to work through those emotions, both now and in the future.
It was a hard day when my kid finally got it, at the age of four, that being adopted in her own case also meant having been abandoned and institutionally warehoused.
(FWIW, we no longer recommend the movie that helped her to this realization, Pete’s Dragon.)
However, my mom was very helpful as is often the case. I called her hysterical and she said, Well, that’s what happened, right? So is it your job to convince her that what happened to her wasn’t frightening? Being with her in this crisis means accepting that it’s going to feel scary to her–but it sure as hell can’t feel scary to you.
Turned out to be very good advice. 4 was the year of scary monsters and our job was to not. be. afraid. That’s what it means to be the mom, not being scared of the monsters anymore.
Dawn, aside from the value of your writings as a guide to parenting in an adoption, I’d like to thank you for this post (and others on the subject). My son is just a few months younger than Madison, and reading how she’s processing the relationships in your open adoption at different developmental stages helps me understand what Acorn is or soon will be thinking. The parallels between an open adoption and a divorced family in which a child has to travel across several states to see their second parent are greater than I would have expected had I not been reading This Woman’s Work all this time.
—Lou
part of our job is to protect them, sure, but what form that protection takes is what is at issue here. does that mean not talking about it, or letting them live with their age apropriate if irrational concerns? or does that mean talk about it more, reassure, figure out what is really going on inside their heads and let them know it is ok to share that with you and that you will help them work through it?
i wonder if this is a new way of parenting - my parents have commented that we ‘talk’ more with our kids and are much more aware of their worlds than they were - and this is just a manifestation of it in terms of adoption.
i think this also fits into the last issue you posted about - knowing what madison heard, and how it made her feel, helps you help her deal when other, seemingly smaller issues, come up since you have more of a sense of what is going on in her head.
(again, i’m coming from a non-adoption angle and just dealing with other issues where talking and being open, with all the adults and even other kids, has been incredibly helpful and enlightening, inspiring even)