Reading Nancy Spoolstra’s post on an adoption disruption situation, I was reminded of stepping up years ago and adopting a sibling group after they’d disrupted.

The caseworker had told me that he felt the first parents were totally unprepared for a group of school aged children, their emotional issues and what it would do to their family of three. Within months the new mom was expecting a baby and decided that she simply couldn’t parent a new baby, her birth six year old, and the four new kids.

She called the caseworker to come to her state to pick up the kids and take them back to Texas.

Within a year I was in Texas meeting those same four children. I knew absolutely nothing about the ramifications of adopting from a disruption. Nothing, zero, not a clue. I already had four children then and was MAPP trained, but totally unprepared for what was waiting for me.

They were wrecks. Their last foster home had mistreated them as well, serving different dinners to the “real” kids and sandwiches to the foster kids.

They were singularly unfocused, ADD, angry and depressed, and I was a young thirty-something greenhorn who hadn’t quite learned that gratitude was not involved anywhere in the equation.

Within months I was furious with the oldest child who did everything to disrupt the adoption as that was all she thought she knew how to do. Sabotaging every single relationship seemed to be her only purpose in life.

Our adoption caseworker was smart enough to slightly shame any disruption thoughts I might have considered, mentioning something to the effect that these weren’t pound puppies, deal with it. She got us to a therapist immediately and even though my daughter then did not respond at all in therapy, we both learned a great deal.

We had four years of a rocky, hellacious relationship before she left for good at age 17. Now at 31 all is well between us, she’s married and almost finished with a college degree in psychology, telling me that she really had been listening all those years ago as we both sat in therapy with steam pouring out of our ears.

I say all this to say that likely no amount of training or preparation can prepare one for the torrent of emotions that follow a disruption. The next parent is going to pay, the child will make certain of that.

Education about the issues will help a parent to step back and understand that it isn’t about them, but honestly I have to say that living through the very hateful actions that follow is particularly tough but eventually worth it.

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