When one adopts older children, one takes on their sad past. There’s no way around it. Children come with memories, good and bad, real or imagined, usually projected into impossibilities; fantasies if you will, devoid of facts that were documented, scars that are visible, and diagnoses that clearly exist. You can’t have a dozen well-trained doctors say one thing, yet have one uneducated person say another that flies in the face of facts.

I remember my three Honduran daughters describing their imaginary life before they joined our family. In a moment in which I was attempting to hold them accountable for some bad attitudes, they yelled at me about their former upper class existence, totally forgetting the fact that I’d seen their dirt floor house with no running water, or that one of them had black decayed stumps for their back teeth, and the other had tested positive for TB exposure. I’ve stood my ground since that day in 1988, two have now graduated from college, the third one will finish this May.

Is this “talking bad” about them, or is it stating the facts? I’m charged with speaking openly and truthfully about the realities of adopting older children whose baggage is sadly immense. I’m paid to do so, to encourage other families that what they are going through is “normal” in the adoption of older children. I do so in the hopes that they will stand firm and not quit as I have been tempted to do on so many occasions. I’m not Superwoman, I have feelings too, a fact that has been greatly lost to my family members over the years as they work out their issues, usually lashing out at me, blaming me while their birth families go on with their lives apparently unscathed. Adoptive parents get hurt time and time again both physically and emotionally.

I beam with pure pride when I see former foster children, once relegated to a life of special education classes, become adopted, graduate from high school, and begin to attend college. Praise God, that happens. I watched eyes open to realities, I’ve been given many apologies and much gratitude and it is this that prompts me to continue. I’ve seen most of my grown children marry well and have happy families.

I cringe at times when I’ve parented kids for many years, and in spite of the fact that I’m strict and watchful, they steal, break laws and lie to me, to others and to authorities. I can only pray that with maturity, they will someday begin to understand that it is not mean old mom making stupid rules, but these are policies, procedures and laws enacted by society to prevent anarchy and chaos.

I continually pray for my own ability to hang in there.