Growing up and moving out can be as problematic for the older adopted child as was the initial act of moving in.

It hurts to leave, it dregs up the old abandonment and rejection issues, rips the scab off of barely healed wounds, too primal to ever truly heal.

My 20 year old son, hasn’t even been here for eight years, oldest parentified sibling of a large sib group now ages 9, 11, 13, 15, 16 and 18, is talking about moving out. Claims “it’s time to do so.” I don’t have a problem with a kid moving out at age 20, although the truth be told, he sure isn’t ready, his maturity level is not where I’d like to see it, I really believe that I have a lot more to teach him, and he just hasn’t had a mama long enough. I fear that until he totally works out his mother issues with me, his emotional neediness will sabotage any future relationships. So not his fault, but it is what it is, what he has to deal with.

He has a good job and good pay but he’s pretty clueless as to what it costs to live on one’s own.

Older adopted kids tend to pick a fight with me when they leave as though it then makes it easier to leave. Leave mad and you won’t miss mom. After about the 8th kid did this, my caseworker pointed out that it seemed to be predictable, whereas I, so deep in the muddle, didn’t notice that this is what they’d been doing.

This particular son of mine is emotionally very close to me, very attached, a sweet easy-to-parent grown child. He will have a very tough time saying good-bye to me, and I can easily see where he’s going to push me and provoke me into fussing back, so that he will then feel justified in storming off. We’ve been there, done that. I tried to talk to him about it yesterday and received a predictable shut-down response from him.

I’ve really only had one son leave without drama. When he left to move 15 minutes away into a dorm, I cried. He moved back in the next year and commuted until second semester when he got an apartment and again, I cried. He joined the Georgia Army National Guard and left for Basic Training in an attempt to get his tuition paid so as to take the burden off of a mama with 39 kids, but again I cried. The drama was mine, not his. He’s mature, capable and strong. I miss him every day.

I sniffled yesterday at church when one of his long-time friends came up and gave me a hug, made me miss this sweet son all the more. I’ll see him in two weeks when he graduates, but then he’ll go to Fort Gordon for training, another couple months separation.

This other son, who’s getting ready to move out, is not as emotionally solid as my Army son, I fear that it won’t be pretty and I know his six siblings will be devastated, he’s been everything to them for many, many years.

Yet it has seemed to be a pattern in many adoptive homes.