Winning Your Child

Parenting is a difficult job and so much depends upon the child, the family, the issues and the situation. I’m planning a series of posts sharing my experience with six adopted children. After going around the track a few times there are some things that resurface.
Winning your child from foster care or orphanages is a gradual and slow process. Since we are only human, we will experience limitations in our ability to follow through on every suggestion from the experts. This is only natural and shouldn’t cause excess concern. It is all part of the process. Keep this in mind when reading these suggestions. It is understood that the adoptive mother may be too tired, too strained, or just had too much to follow through on all these.

I. The Baby Comes First!
This might seem obvious (and in some ways it is) but the process of adoption can be very demanding, intruding and stressful. By the time you get to the point of meeting your child, you’ve probably been through a terrible ordeal – much worse than you expected. On top of the struggles with the process there is the internal turmoil, the emotional upheaval involved with meeting and parenting a new child. The family experiences growing pains and everyone needs to make an adjustment. Despite all of your difficulties (and they are real difficulties) it is very important to put all that aside (with the help of prayer) and tend to the baby’s difficulties first.

It might help to imagine your niece or nephew or the child of a good friend. Imagine how a child of six, nine or twelve months would feel if suddenly they were taken from the only (in the best case scenario) and placed in the home of another: different environment, different people, different smells. An infant doesn’t have the intellectual or speech development to understand the new situation. His whole world has just been rocked – violently! No matter how nice you are, this is a horrible and traumatic experience. Forget your own pain and concentrate on the difficulties of the baby. Make sure you can look at the child directly in the eyes showing no worry. Comfort the child ceaselessly. Create a “Pain Free Environment”. No wish or demand is too small for you to fulfill. Bend over backwards to make the child feel comfortable and safe.

Speak to the child in reassuring words but remember that the main form of communication is holding your child and speaking with your eyes. Deep, long, peaceful eye contact will break through the bewildering sea of pain to tell your child that you will be the anchor in his life. You will provide for all his needs and you will never leave him.

(More suggestions to follow)