The Top Ten List for Staying the Course

by Brenda McCreight, PhD

 Reprinted with permission of the author

Everyone knows that raising children is tough at times, but parents get through it because the rewards are big enough to remind us why we decided to have children instead of well groomed poodles and a paid off mortgage. But when we adopt children who have to do all their learning about how to belong to a family in their growing years instead of in infancy when they were supposed to, then it’s not uncommon for the family to experience stages where the "tough" part overwhelms the "rewards" part. Parents need some simple strategies to help them hang in there until the rewarding times start to overtake the tough times…and yes, they will. After being a therapist for 22 years and an adoptive parent for 24 years, here’s what I think about staying the course:

1. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest adoptive parent support group. Other adoptive parents are your best source of sympathy (go ahead, you deserve to roll around in self-pity on occasion), as well as your best source of suggestions for the present and hope for the future.
    
2. Keep living your life as if the problems (remember, I said the problems, not the child) didn’t exist. Don’t focus every day and every decision on Junior because, as we all know, Junior is going to eventually come out of this just fine. There is no point in putting your life on a shelf for two years or getting divorced while he sets a new standard for "attitude."
    
3. Get enough sleep at least four times a week. If you have to, take shifts or once in a while hire a babysitter to watch the house (not the teen) while you nap.
    
4. Get an updated psychological assessment on the child as well as blood tests and allergy tests. It may be "older child adoption issues" or it may be that Junior was never properly assessed for his needs as a younger child. Psychology is an ever-changing field, and problems that were not well understood when you adopted Junior may be more easily addressed now.
    
5. Learn conflict resolution skills. Formal conflict resolution skills really work, and while they won’t change Junior, they will change how you engage in an argument and how you feel about yourself afterward.
    
6. Find a way to enjoy at least an hour with Junior once a week or once a day if possible. Take him out for a fast food lunch, and just let him talk on and on and on without benefit of your advice or opinion. (I bet your parents did that with you.) It won’t change anything, and it might raise your blood pressure, but it will help you to know him in the present and to remind each other of when times were better in the family.
     
7. Find a hobby or interest that makes you feel good. Take a couple of hours a week to focus on you, not on Junior.
     
8. Let the rest of the children have a "normal" family life. Don’t miss their soccer games just because Junior came home stoned. He’s only going to sleep anyway, so leave the argument till later, and go cheer the one who is still behaving.
     
9. Believe in your child and your family. Your belief that your family can make it and that Junior will someday be okay again can serve as a guiding line to that destination for your other children. They want to get there too, despite what it looks like now.
     
10. Remind yourself that this will pass. As someone once said, "Everything works out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out, then it isn’t the end." Fifteen-year-olds are in process; they are not finished.
     

Brenda McCreight, PhD, is a family and child therapist in British Columbia. She is an internationally known consultant and educator and the author of Parenting Your Adopted Older Child: How to Overcome the Unique Challenges and Raise a Happy and Healthy Child, Recognizing and Managing Fetal Alcohol Syndrome/Effects: A Guidebook, and Eden’s Secret Journal: The Story of an Older Child Adoption. She is the parent of 14 children, 12 of whom were adopted, and the grandmother of two.

NYS Citizens' Coalition for Children, Inc.
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08/04/04