Question: I was the one who wanted to adopt. My husband agreed because I wanted it so bad, but now, I’m the one who wishes we hadn’t done it. We adopted a 5-year-old little girl, who is now 7. The awful truth is that I don’t love this child. I don’t even like her very much. I wish I could turn back the clock.
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Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Welcome, everyone, to "Weekend Wisdom" by Creating a Family. This is our chance to answer your questions in a five to ten minute segment that we drop on Sundays.
So welcome. Please note that you can send your own questions in at info @creatingafamily .org. Sometimes we answer the question without an expert and sometimes we bring in an expert to answer the question.
Today we brought in an expert because the... the question is from a parent who is failing to attach to their adopted child. Our expert today is Melissa Corkham.
She is an adoptee and an adoptive mom and the co -author of Reclaim Compassion, the Adoptive Parents Guide to Overcoming Blocked Care and Neuroscience and Faith.
So here's the question. I was the one who wanted to attach We have two sons and I really wanted a girl and thought this would be the perfect way to add to our family. My husband agreed because I wanted it so bad,
but now I'm the one who wishes we hadn't done it. We adopted a five -year -old little girl who is now seven. The awful truth is that I don't love this child. I don't even like her very much. My husband and sons love her just fine and she is much closer to them than to me.
She doesn't act like she likes me so much either. either, so I guess it's mutual. I'm nice to her and meet all of her needs, but she is very needy and demanding and it's exhausting. I know you probably think we went into this with rose -colored glasses,
but I really did go beyond what was required as far as training. I thought I knew what I was getting into. I just wasn't prepared that I would be the problem. I wish I could turn back the clock. Melissa,
if you were talking with this mom, what would you tell her? her? We try really hard to always start with validation and compassion, you know,
that this must feel awful, and that she's not alone. This is not the first story like this that we've heard that has similar themes. So we definitely try to connect people to community that also will validate and have compassion,
potentially even connect her with someone. someone with a similar story who's just a little bit further along. It's a process. It's definitely a situation where I would say, you're going to need to come into community and connection with people who can hold your hand and walk side by side through this with you.
You know, it's not something that is going to be solved in a paragraph of a Facebook post. It's the connection. It's the community. It's not just the parent education.
and training. And I think the other thing is when we reclaim compassion for ourselves, we have to be kind to ourselves that overcoming blockcare, especially while you're still in the midst of the thing that triggered your blockcare in the first place is a journey.
And it's not one where it's like, okay, if I do X, Y and Z in three weeks, my blockcare will be gone and all things will be magically better, right? We call the practical things in the book like practices,
like, we are always always at risk of the stresses overwhelming our nervous system and putting us back in blocked care. We have to know that some days will be better than others. We can get to a season of feeling like we've overcome it and something might happen.
You know, that daughter might go to middle school and have some other behaviors and we could cycle all back all over again. So I think the important thing to know is one, it's a journey.
It's got a lot of up and downs. and we can get to a season of feeling like we've overcome it and we can get to a season of feeling like we've overcome it it's forward steps and backward steps, and that doesn't mean that it's not possible to reclaim compassion and that it's never a one and done.
Right. It's a process to get into this. It's a process to get out of this. I hope that was helpful for you. Remember that you can send your own questions in at info @creatingafamily .org.
And before you go, let me tell you about a wonderful resource we have here at Creating a Family. It is a training, our support group curriculum, either one for foster,
adoptive and kinship families. We have 25 curriculum in the library and each curriculum is on a different topic. So you can select and customize your training to the group or to the person.
It is an interactive training and we do facility training. training so that you can facilitate this interactive training support group curriculum. You can get more information at parentsupportgroups .org.
It's all one word, parentsupportgroups .org. Thanks for listening to this week's Week in Wisdom. Do us a favor, tell a friend. Thanks.