Just so tired of tilting at windmills

You know, adoption is messy. If you've been reading here for any length of time, I sure hope that statement doesn't surprise you. But frankly, sometimes I get tired of the mess. It's not my own mess that I'm tired of, but everyone else's mess. I spend a lot of time in adoption groups trying to advocate for healthier, kinder ways of parenting children from hard places. I've seen first hand what consequence-based, "if only my kid would just try harder we'd be fine" methods of parenting can do, and I genuinely want to save both the parents and their children some of that pain. It can be uphill work. 

Tonight, I'm taking a break. Once I see the magic letters of RAD or ODD start being kicked around, I know that the odds of anyone hearing me are slim. I call them magic letters because all too often I see parents using them as a diagnosis (and truly, it is often a sketchy diagnosis made by professionals who have no right to be making the diagnosis in the first place because they are out of their league and feel the need to do something in the face of sometimes outrageous behavior) to put the onus of responsibility on their child and absolve themselves of needing to do anything than what they've been doing. (I warned you I was tired.) 

I hear things like, "We tried to love them, but they just rejected us" or "It didn't matter what we did, she wouldn't cooperate and screamed horrible things" or "The constant battles were affecting our other children" as evidence to support their giving up on their child. I've talked to people who have started with these statements. After asking a lot of questions, it turns out they usually all tried everything but extreme connected parenting. Their rules and expectations were more valuable than loving their very hurt child. (Those of you who are ready to pounce on your keyboards, hold on a minute and let me finish.) They were unwilling to bend and change in order to show their child love in a way that child could feel and accept.

All too often, adoptive parents fall in the 'why can't they be grateful?' trap. We did all this for them... yet we had a vacation ruined... yet there was damage done to our home... yet they are still not willing to tow the line, to play the game, to be pleasant. It's as if  relationships are some sort of contract-based interaction. I do this, so you do that. Yet, most of the time, the child was never consulted about whether they wanted to be adopted or cross the world to live in a family. Often that child doesn't have any conception of what a family even is, so even if they were asked, they have no knowledge on which to base their decision. This type of contractual parenting assumes that the child has complete control over their emotions and actions. 

This type of parenting is factually outdated, yet it still persists. There are plenty of studies which prove that when a brain is in a reactionary mode, it cannot think critically, it is making decisions purely on how to stay safe. And having been there and done that, a parent who is triggered and angry and frustrated and fearful is in no better place than the child and doesn't look or feel particularly safe. Yet time and again, I find myself explaining this and sometimes the parents get it and sometimes they don't. Not everyone wants to hear that what they have been doing is not helping and that they need to change. They would rather blame their child and be done with it. 

Now, I know there are cases where it is truly best for the child to be placed in a different family. I am not naive; I've heard some truly tragic stories. The families in those situations do not make this decision lightly, they have literally tried everything, and sometimes the best is to move the child. This is tragic in its own way and not something either their family or the child really ever get over. 

My biggest problem is that every time a parent claims RAD or ODD, who disrupts an adoption without actually trying everything, it dilutes the severity of the children and families who truly do need to make the hard decisions. Very few children have RAD, an extreme diagnosis which means a child literally cannot form relationships and feels no remorse for the consequences of their actions. Attachment issues are a continuum, there are many, many children who have attachment challenges, and some of those challenges can look a little scary, but this does not mean it is actually RAD. It is trauma. ODD is the same thing. Trauma does not do kind things to brains. Children in survival mode cannot actually think critically. Sometimes they are not thinking consciously at all, of course they are not going to be compliant. It's hard to be polite and compliant when you are literally in fear for your life. 

I don't expect parents to be perfect. I know I certainly am not. In fact, a healthy realization that they do not have it all figured out and that perhaps changing how they look at a situation could help. I do want them to stop seeing their child as the enemy, to stop seeing them as irredeemably broken, to stop putting on the onus of change on their child. I'd just like to see a little bit of compassion. 

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Today's fun big brother outing was to the ice cream store, where TM treated everyone to ice cream of a size they never get from me. Four days left. Just four.