another perspective: parenting an adopted child

One of the greatest blessings resulting from our adoption journey has been meeting fellow travelers along the way.  Headed to South Korea for the first time, we were flying at 35,000 feet when we met some who would become dear friends of ours.  Jared and Sara are wonderful people, and their support and friendship have made our transition into parenting easier in so many ways.  They have four precious kiddos, all with busy schedules, but that didn't stop Sara from taking time and agreeing to write a post for me, which you'll find below.  I hope you'll enjoy hearing the perspective of experienced parents and how their parenting an adopted toddler with a language barrier makes previous parenting experience almost futile.

Parenting an Adopted Child

We met Jeremy and Sarah on the airplane to Seoul on our first trip to Korea in January. We live in Dallas and were on the Dallas to Seoul flight together. We were instant friends and spent some really fun time together sight-seeing in Seoul and talking about our sweet little boys. It was such a blessing to me to be able to talk with Sarah and process through our meetings with our boys and talk about how our lives were about to change! We have three biological children - Kyle is 9, Haley is 7, and Alex is 4 - and Jacob is our little guy from Korea. He will be 3 in June. We knew from reading books that parenting an adopted child would be different, but really had no idea what would be dealing with. Each child is different, has a different background and has a different foster care situation. Our custody day was extremely difficult and we soon realized that any experience we had with our bio children was almost useless. We felt comfortable with meeting his basic needs, changing diapers, giving baths, etc. But, we felt completely helpless as we watched him grieve the loss of his foster family. In the next few weeks as we traveled home and started the process of integrating him into our family, we realized that this will be a tough and life-long process. We can't raise him or discipline the same way as a child that has been with us since birth. We can't raise him the way our parents raised us.

One thing we are really working on right now is trust. We have not left him with anyone else & even when one of us leaves it causes him stress right now. 7 weeks ago his foster mom handed him to us and (in his mind) abandoned him. He can't tell us, but we know he is wondering every time one of us leaves if we are coming back. The majority of his fits and stress are caused by trust issues right now. I don't know how long it will take for him to trust us, but we will work on this as long as we need to. We have amazing grandparents that live here in town and we left our older three with them since they were babies. They knew we would come back, but Jacob had a traumatic event in his life when he came to live with us. The good news is that his level of trust is gradually getting better and better!

Another thing that was hard was waiting until he was ready for hugs & kisses. We were so in love with the pictures and waited 2 long years to hug and kiss him, but when he met us we were strangers to him. He didn't want us to hold him or hug him. He wanted to be near us, but not touching us. This was really hard for me, especially when he was grieving so hard those first few days! As his trust grows, he is a different little boy! Just in the last week, he started asking us for hugs and giving kisses. We are also learning by trial and error what discipline works for our strong-willed little boy. Mostly saying no and redirecting is working for now. Nothing we did with the older three kids works for him! The language barrier has been a huge challenge for us also. We can't explain the rules or what we are doing, where we are going or why we are doing something. We are starting over and it is difficult and frustrating some days. We have started using some time-outs for with him in a chair in our dining room. I sit near him, still trying to develop trust but hoping the he understands that his behavior is not okay. He is pushing the boundaries that we set for him, which is definitely normal for this age! This has been hard, but worth every minute! I love seeing more and more of his sweet personality as he gets more comfortable with us. He adores his brothers and sister and they love playing with him! He is a perfect fit for our family!

Disclaimer: We are FAR from being experts, this is just our experience. :)

(Sara, blessings to you, dear friend!!  Our late night phone conversations encourage my heart more than you know, even if they do cause me to look like a raccoon the next morning ;).