What I Know Now...

...is that I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did before.  I have learned a thing or two these past six months.  It has been hard and it has been good.

A while back an internet friend, who I once asked for adoption advice during our first adoption, sent me an email asking for advice regarding older child, sibling group adoption.  They have two, young, precious children whom they also adopted as infants from Colombia.  Their lives are filled with love for the Lord and it is evident in the joy they have as they obediently respond to His leading, even when He leads in challenging directions.  Most recently they have sensed the Lord leading them to adopt a sibling group of older children from Colombia.  Her recent email asked what questions we wished we had asked, but didn't.  She asked what we wished we had known in advance.  She asked how the most recent adoption was impacting our two little ones.  

These are great questions and since I realize that our adoption has brought us to some surprises, I want to share with others the answers.  It is possible that someone else out there may be considering older child, out of order, or sibling group adoption and that this may be helpful to you.  Or, it is possible that there are some who are wondering what we think of our decision now that we're at this point and can reflect back on the past six months.  The last thing I would ever want is for someone to read our story and hear that we had surprise challenges and then decide against stepping out in faith and obedience to adopt precious children.  Challenges are part of every journey in life.  We didn't expect this journey to be without challenges.  In life it is impossible to anticipate exactly how and where the challenges will come, and that is why we need to have faith.

Truthfully, I realize now that what I thought I knew about attachment and bonding prior to bringing home our three oldest children is nothing compared to what I know now that we are living out the daily effects of an attachment disorder.  I don't say that to scare anyone off, but there is no head knowledge, books, or workshop training that equals real life experience for this situation.  Attachment disorders are a big deal - big and scary to tell you the truth.  I know that my God is bigger and I believe that He can redeem the lost and hurt years that bring children to the point of brokenness.  What is difficult to see and understand is that His redemption of any one child's brokenness may look different than than of another child.  God is not confined to healing children according to our plans or the way in which we have imagined He could.  We trust Him with our sweet children, and we trust Him with our family, but we don't know what His plan looks like for each of us in the end.  Having said all that, there's no way to know what you don't already know until you have lived it.  Experience is the best teacher.  Certainly a discussion of attachment disorders and the liveliness they have created within our home recently can be it's own blog topic for another day when I slip away, drink overpriced Colombian coffee in an atmosphere of solitude, and miss my children for a few hours. 

What questions did we wish we had asked?  Taking a hard look back, we know that we asked all the right questions.   We did our research.  We read the right books.  We were highly educated in the issues of older child adoption.  We didn't always get honest answers, but looking back we are able to trust that God, in His sovereignty, has a purpose for that, too.  My children love the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors and how God redeemed Joseph's lost and hurt years.  If God can do that for Joseph, He can redeem the challenges we face due to any lack of information we had prior to bringing our children home, and He is mighty to save and redeem their lost and hurt years, too.

And finally, how is our most recent adoption affecting our littlest children who were previously in the home?  Certainly, it hasn't been easy and there have been many struggles.  A mother's heart breaks for her children whenever they struggle, and I have wept many tears for the extra burdens my little ones have carried these past six months.   Children have a way of teaching us things, of showing us the perspective we ought to have on life.  After only two months both our two and four year old were completely bilingual, acting as translators when the grandparents visited.  Communication was never a problem for the children!  My little ones, though they have forfeited much of the attention they were used to receiving from me, have become incredibly compassionate, generous, loving and protective of their new siblings.  Corinn seems to think that having big sisters is the coolest thing ever and Noah truly believes that we adopted Jonah just to be his big buddy.  For years we prayed that they would love one another and God has truly answered our prayers in this.  (This does NOT mean that there are no sibling conflicts in our home - just come on over to see how real we are!)  The bond that all five children have is possibly stronger and tighter than the bond the new children have with us at this point.  While this is sometimes a struggle for this mother's heart of mine, I realize that someday Nic and I will be gone and our children will have only each other, their families and their faith, and hopefully this fierce love that unites them will remain.  In the end, what our two young children are learning now through the challenges in our home will teach them more about Christ's love as they see and live it daily.  Hard doesn't always mean bad and easy doesn't always mean good.  They get the opportunity daily to love sacrificially as Christ loves them and it is a hard lesson, but a good one.

What can you do to prepare for older child/sibling group adoption?

• Read, read, read all you can about older child adoption, attachment and bonding.  Educate yourself, but don't let it scare you off if you are certain God is leading you in this way.  I'll post a list of educational books and blogs in an upcoming blog - one I write when I escape for coffee!
• Prepare your extended family/friends/church for the big change in your life/lifestyle once the children come home.  Educate them on issues of attachment - for example why it isn't acceptable for your newly adopted 7 year old child to hug every new person they meet.  (If you don't know why, it is because newly adopted children need to learn the difference between familiar/unfamiliar and safe/unsafe and family/strangers and they need to learn to rely on their new parents to teach them who is safe to hug.)
• Research and interview a counselor/psychologist you feel comfortable meeting the needs of your family if/WHEN the need arises.  
• Make a list of resources for the just in cases: psychologists, psychiatrists, developmental pediatricians, neurologists, interpreters/translators, emergency child care, emergency prayer warriors, emergency listening ears when you need a safe place to whine, errand runners (when you can't get out of the house to get milk), baby sitters to help at home (for when you come home from the foreign country with a parasite and are sick, sick, sick!), etc.  The more exhaustive the list in advance the less work you need to do upon arriving home.
• If you are adopting out of order or adding children to a household with children already in it: Pray with your children every day for the specific needs of your future children, and specifically for the bonding of all of your children.
• Talk with your younger (or older) children already at home about how life is going to change, but how your love will remain the same and how you will be working hard to make home a safe and loving place for all of the children.  Even the existing children in the home need to be reassured of this.
• Clean, organize and prepare your home in advance because it's not gonna happen when you get home!  ; )
• Pray, pray, pray.