age is not a number

The first thing you realize when you adopt an older child is that they are not the age their birth certificate says. Some kids have matured beyond their years and become tiny parents to younger siblings. More often than not, you are going to find that the adoptees have not matured nor learned nor grown as much as their peers. Mine definitely are behind in maturity, they were physically behind in growth and they just do not understand the world to any level close to their peers.

One of things you hear when going to adoption trainings, is that the child is only going to mature when they have formed an attachment. I refer to my teenagers as my “six year olds”. That is just where they are in a lot of areas. My children faced a large amount of trauma and a high degree of neglect throughout their first decade of life. I have spent the last six years trying to make up for those deficits. My children participate in multiple mental health therapies, speech therapy, occupational therapy and social skills classes. We have finally gotten proper diagnoses for underlying issues and they are now receiving services at school thanks to their IEPs.

They know they do not fit in with their peers on many levels. It is easiest to blame the fact that they are “adopted”. I understand how easy it is to blame that descriptor. A lot of baggage comes with that descriptor, namely the trauma and neglect they suffered. And do not forget the rejection they feel after having been cast out of numerous families. However, a lot of the things that make them stick out among their peers are their skill levels. If they would stop “trauma dumping” to anyone who would listen, their peers would not know that is the reason behind why they behave so differently. It has been really hard for my kids to move past the hurdle of wanting to change the past, and to just utilize their support system to improve their skills.

They have made a lot of improvements. My youngest improved her handwriting to her age level after a couple years of occupational therapy. It was a very difficult thing for her to accomplish. She is still not happy with her fine motor skills, but I will never forget watching my ten year old write her new name over and over again. None of her letters were the same size, some were backwards, one was upside down, the wrong letters were capitalized, but she loved writing her new name over and over. I kept some of her writings from that time. I have also scanned some of them to be safe in the cloud. She has come so far.

The handwriting proved to not be as hard to improve as making friends, stopping oversharing, or controlling her anxiety. Those are probably her biggest struggles today. She may be failing classes, but study skills are not anywhere near as important to me as the life skills. School is hard. It is difficult for so many more reasons than just learning. School is where kids interact. It is where they learn about relationships, independence, and how to venture out on their own to complete their own goals. It is hard to parent kids who are behind their peers. I wait until the school day is over to find out how my kids feel like they failed again. We try to put the pieces together and figure out what went wrong. Some days we get to celebrate things that go right! More often than not, it is how things are not working out. We talk it over. We come up with a plan to fix the things. As they get older, I try to get them to take the lead. I reach out when I need to. Slowly we see progress.

My kids go out into the world again today. I wait to hear how it went. We make a plan to fix the problems and celebrate what went well. Tomorrow we do it again.