I once thought when my 39 children were grown, that I’d be overflowing with free time, having earned it the hard way including my 25 years in the public school system.
The more grandchildren I have, the less free time it seems I’ll ever have and then there are the legions of issues emanating from my grown children. Even parents of birth children know that age 18 means nothing.

A mom recently pointed out the obvious that I’d never noticed before. In today’s economy no one is able to make an adequate living on minimum wage, rents aren’t what they used to be when I was a young adult, and jobs are increasingly hard to come by. No wonder so many young adults struggle.

I’m halfway through my parenting, halfway by the numbers with 19 grown, but while I’ve parented for 34 years, I still have 13 more years to go until everyone hits the non-magic age of 18.

What I’ve really found surprising is the number of my children who apparently paid zero attention to every lecture I ever delivered around here regarding personal finance, balancing a checkbook, saving money or paying bills.

I find it equally as surprising that even when hit with the consequences, such as eviction or their cell phone cut off, they don’t learn from this experience. How many past due bills must one receive in order to understand the bigger picture?

I remind myself every day that the adoption of older children means not only lost valuable years in which we could have bonded and they could have been nurtured, but the double whammy of the lost years involving neglect and abuse.

Their birth mother’s pregnancies meant in utero dosages of alcohol and drugs, poor nutrition and other traumas that have made their brain synapses misfire and other neurological mishaps. That’s not a scientific explanation; rather it’s my own personal observations of my children with memory and focus problems.

I reign in my irritation at these constant bumps in the road, I sigh at the fact that likely I won’t get to go to the Atlanta Braves Spring Training Games for a very long time, and I hug and love on my grandchildren who have all been spared the hell that their parents endured before adoption. And I applaud my children for making that fact possible.

Photo Credit Cindy Bodie 2008