The day your baby comes home is a day you treasure forever. Once the application and papers are submitted prospective adoptive parents need to wait for the agency call that depends on the agency’s wait list. This time can be utilized to prepare for the parenting life ahead.
Involving Family and Friends
A child needs family apart from parents. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends play an important role in the child’s life.
Any child needs to be welcomed lovingly in a family. However, in case of adopted kids, it is crucial because they haven’t experienced love and care since birth.
Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist, Prachi S Vaish says,
Although a new child should always be welcomed in the family with affection and a feeling of security, the nuances of what else is required vary with the child’s age.
An infant easily adapts to the new environment because he has no or few experiences. However, a toddler or an older child might have developed behavioural patterns or food habits that need to be considered. Unpleasant early-childhood experiences might make the child scared, wary, skeptical or withdrawn. Slowly, with time the child learns to trust and love.
"Parents need to remember that initially, for the child it’s just a change of place; it will take time to become a “home”, explains Prachi.
Adoptive kids don’t have any early-childhood memories to look back. Therefore, the day the child comes home should be the beginning of creating memories. Click pictures, videos and create a diary of important milestones to share later with the child.
Learning to be a Parent
Adoptive parents must understand that though they know about the process, the child doesn’t and cannot comprehend adoption and its consequences. Nancy Newton in her book "The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child," mentions adoption as an emotional process, with the child going through the breaking of the biological link, referred as the primal wound causing unexpressed grief.
The child also struggles with issues like intimacy, loss of biological parents, abandonment and rejection that may also create shame and guilt.
Showering love and affection helps the child overcome these feelings and enhance positive experiences.
Adoptive parents need to prepare themselves to love the child unconditionally as their own. Mahalaxmi, a holistic wellness practitioner and Director with Sahayam says, “Prospective parents should be ready to unconditionally accept the child as their own.” A healthy growing environment plays a more significant role than genetic factors.
Parenting is a learning curve. Patience, balanced thinking, responding instead of reacting and dealing with difficult situations practically, are some required skills prospective parents need to develop.
There will be moments when you’ll feel the child is personally defying you, but you’ll need to remember that you are just an authority figure, and it’s not personal.Prachi S Vaish, Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist
Emotional and Psychological Issues
Emotional problems and challenges happen in every relationship and should be tackled wisely.
As Mahalxmi explains,
Both parents need to be emotionally stable and mindful about treating the emotional issues of the adopted child as just emotional challenges and not as emotional issues of the adopted child.Mahalaxmi, Holistic Wellness Practitioner, Director, Sahayam
Understanding the importance of giving space to the child and yourself as a parent is essential. Creating and teaching healthy boundaries helps immensely.
Telling the Child
Adoption was shrouded in secrecy in the past. Today it is openly discussed. “There are many avenues where the child might find out from, and it can create a long-lasting emotional scar,” adds Prachi. It is impossible to hide the truth forever.
Counsellors advice the parents to share the fact with the child as soon as possible.
This can be done with help of stories, especially Krishna’s story. Mostly in social science, the child will learn about types of families where adoption is mentioned. Purposeful and realistic conversations in an affectionate way help the child to acknowledge and accept the truth.
As Mahalaxmi points out,“ Truth and honesty are pillars of marriage and family. Hence the truth of the family should be shared in a beautiful way to the child.”
With honest support and understanding, parents can forge a lifelong bond with their adopted child. Provide an atmosphere to explore with unconditional loving support and watch him/her grow up as a confident and happy child.
(For more parenting stories, follow FIT)
(Nupur Roopa is a freelance writer, and a life coach for mothers. She writes articles on environment, food, history, parenting and travel. You can read part one of this blog here)
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