What’s a time you followed your gut and it turned out to be exactly right?

There were so many times during parenting my children where I should not have listened to the “experts”. My kids were adopted and I think a lot of what is considered “normal” parenting is extremely inappropriate for parents of adopted kids.

I had a bad feeling about their previous adoptive grandparents. They went into our adoption making all kinds of demands that would have made me and my partner glorified babysitters instead of parents. We fought them on everything they wanted during mediation because it was so absurd.

Our kids acted so differently after hearing from them or seeing them. They never explicitly said anything negative about them for years and then it was like a flood of horrible stuff. Everything from neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and absolutely crazy stuff. They told the kids their birth mother was dead among other things as well as they would die if they moved while getting an inoculation. There was some crazy trauma in that house.

Everyone kept trying to make me see reason before we ended up in mediation. That we should make nice with the family of origin. They lied to the children about being genetically related to them. They were not. There were no biological links. During one of the supervised visitations, the grandmother cornered our youngest in the bathroom and tried to coach her on telling everyone that we were abusing them. It was absolutely nuts.

They called the police on us a number of times and took the adoption agency and us to court in separate cases. We fought them tooth and nail through it all because something was very wrong. The longer we dealt with them, the more they showed their true selves. They told the judge they did not want the girls back, but they did not want us to have them. The judge asked why they were here. They said they wanted to put the girls into foster care. The case was dismissed, but their lawyer threatened us for two years after.

When we finally heard the extent of things that went on in their house when our kids were small, I was so glad that I listened to my gut and kept my girls from being alone with them ever again.