Today was my middle daughter’s therapy appointment, although as it turned out, the conversation seemed to gravitate to more about how well I , her mom, am dealing (or not dealing) with everything. I freely admit that I am often a mess, and still at times emotionally challenged by many of my own issues from childhood. This fact frequently comes through in many of our sessions, and even though she is a new therapist for us, she is quickly catching on to me.
The new therapist is a great lady. For some strange reason she makes me think of Nancy Spoolstra (although Nancy and I have not met in person yet.) Perhaps it is her straightforward manner, understanding of attachment concerns, and her strong interest in horses. She even offers equine/child therapy sessions. I almost asked her if those sessions involved bagging manure!
This time I spent the afternoon explaining to her how hard it has been lately to get my children’s school to understand the issues unique to adoption. Some things, like coming back into the school routine after the Thanksgiving break, I knew they would have a rougher time with. Transitions and disruption in routine are always a huge struggle, I believe for adoptees that those kind of things are harder than for most, but the school tends to poo poo my logic.
Today the therapist also threw me an additional idea to mull over. Am I making the kids struggles at school somehow worse by insisting on making that strong adoption issue connection to their behavior? She suggested that I explore if it would be better for me just to chalk much of what they are doing behavior wise up to their individual quirks. She was quick to add that I needed to come to my own conclusions here. I know everyone is unique, with their own abilities and ways of handling things. Does it always have to have some basis in adoption related loss, or is this something that I am pushing for a deeper and more ‘me’ related reason?
Honestly, I don’t know.
I do think that because adoption does create a fundamental trauma, that the loss and reactions to other similar (or even just vaguely familiar) loss could be called adoption related. I don’t however want that attribution to be seen as excuse making for poor behavior at their school. At the same time I don’t want adoption related trauma pushed under the rug and my children simply seen as trouble makers. I want their challenges acknowledged in ways that will help them, and so that they are not unfairly demoralized and tagged as ‘bad’ or disruptive kids. I need the school to have some empathy for the challenges that these kids face, and I want them to believe on some level it is about loss, even if they only do because I say so.
Sometimes I think people don’t want to see the difficult behaviors that can result from trauma. We all tend to believe that a life altering event, a loss, can be cleverly processed, and then dispensed with accordingly. Maybe to acknowledge that loss due to trauma travels with us on some level, forms some of the ways in which we cope with other stressors in life, would be admitting that there are parts of our experience that we can’t change or control, just because others believe we should be able too.
I guess I still do feel that the school needs to understand how loss and adoption related issues play into how my children respond to things. I am not as sure that they ever really will though. I think this new therapist will help me find better ways to get that across, she is already helping me explore why I feel it is so important for my kids. Well I already knew, it’s because I am their mom, it is loss, and I say so.
