ADOPTION: YOU CAN DO IT! Blog Post #15, Chapter 10 – Reality Hits

I hope you will take time to read this week’s chapter excerpt from my new book due out in December, ADOPTION: YOU CAN DO IT!  A Husband-Wife Date-Study for Successfully Raising Adopted Children in the Christian Home.

Chapter 10: Reality Hits – Adopted Children Are Often Much More Challenging to Parent Than Birth Children                

And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.”      I Peter 4:8

I anticipated that raising a large family would be never-ending work. I expected that raising adopted children in a large family would be challenging. I imagined adopted children would bring baggage into our family that would test the very fiber of each of our beings. What I didn’t foresee was how sinful and tragic the world outside my Christian home truly was, and the emotional collateral damage that would profoundly affect my adopted children for many years to come. I also did not foresee how ill-prepared my husband and I were to deal with it all. I naively believed that love covered a multitude of sins… which it does, but sometimes love is only a small band-aid over a gaping wound which requires major surgery!

What I also didn’t know was how easily I could sin in reacting to my adopted children’s sins which were many, frequent, and often catastrophic. In parenting our adopted children, we had to throw out the window all the love and logic, and daring to discipline that had worked fairly well with our birth children. It was not only a whole new ballgame, but an entirely different sport! We had to learn to love our children fervently and unconditionally as Christ loves us.

When we adopted our first set of siblings, Attention Deficit Disorder, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Reactive Attachment Disorder, came to live in our previously ‘normal’ and peaceful home. Along with them came fight, flight, and freeze, as well as lying, stealing, sexualized behaviors, and violent rages. The real parenting in the trenches had begun. Thankfully, my husband and I were a tag team, our older children didn’t mutiny, and our new kids were so precious that forgiveness and mercy came easily—most of the time.