I could not decide if I should write a post about our diminishing birds population since I’m a concerned environmentalist and I believe we owe it to our children to not mess up the world, or if I should talk about the number of my children who go out of their way to make it clear that they do not love me at times.

Nancy and several others have touched on this lately. How there won’t be a call on Mother’s Day or the children are returning volitionally to their birth parents and turning their backs on all that their adoptive parents have given them, taught them and loved them through…which would be usually the pain that their birth parents caused when they chose drugs or alcohol over parenting.

My use of the term birthparents may seem too negative but so were our experiences. These were not parents who accidentally got pregnant and made plans for their unborn children. In the case of my children, the parents all had their parental rights terminated and their kids were in foster care. I speak only from our own very limited experiences and do not intend to impugn anyone else.

So my children are righteously angry at the world, it’s easier to be angry at me than at anyone else and we all know the sticky, emotional part that a mom plays. We represent the nurturer, the one who should by default take care of children and, in their minds and memories, that was not done for them.

In my case, being single, there’s neither triangulation nor anyone else to turn to when they are aggravated with me. I’m all they have. Of course that often also plays in my favor.

But I’ve walked the painful line of being neglected by my kids, ignored, dismissed, downplayed and mistreated. I used to get hurt feelings or I’d simply be irked as in, After all I’ve done for so and so, this is what I get?”

Until I was finally able to just step back and see it for what it was. Open rebellion and anger that usually had little to do with me at all. I was the one it was “safe” to ignore. Deep down they feared, but at the same time that they knew, that I wouldn’t leave. Now it is nearly comical to me, they almost seem cartoonish in their actions. One daughter started referring to me as, “Cindy,” as in, “You’re not my real mother!” after she turned 17 but it seemed silly even to her and didn’t get a rise out of me, plus she had to work too hard at it so quickly she went back to, “Mom,” but with a dismissive tone of voice. I just snickered and it went away also.

I wouldn’t recommend adopting nearly 40 kids to just get to this hard-shelled point of view but I would advise growing a thick skin. So what if they ignore me on my birthday? My mood doesn’t revolve around mixed-up kids; I can choose how I will react.

And in every single case of mine, even those children who’ve found their birthparents, our relationship has healed and grown stronger. All the bad attitude malarkey was a waste of their time, but quite likely an important aspect of their healing.