In many cases, agencies are far too understaffed to provide the kind of post support that adoptive parents need. If parenting wasn’t tricky enough, there’s always this adoption layer in the back of your mind which only complicates things.
Take a friend of ours. She has a biological son, E1, and an adopted son, E2. E1 was four years old when E2 came home at 20 months or so. Whenever there was a tiff between the boys, she wondered if it was “normal” sibling rivalry or if E1 was struggling with adapting to the new brother that had suddenly appeared in their lives. Parents of biological children can easily pass it off as sibling rivalry without a second thought.
In our case, we spend a lot of time wondering if Ty’s behavior is due to his personality or the fact that he was spoiled rotten for 2 1/2 years and also switched families, cultures, and languages only 20 months ago.
Fortunately if these kinds of questions ever plague you or you need to comiserate about the idiotic questions you get that I addressed yesterday, there is a whole community of adoptive parents out there to help. Unfortunately that community isn’t always easy to stumble upon.
I really encourage you to find a support group. It could be a playdate group, a moms’ night out, a formalized discussion, or just an informal social gathering. If you can’t find one in your area, start one. If that intimidates you, contact me. It’s really not that hard and you’ll bless a lot of people.