Today, at the orthodontist office, a lady wanted to know if she could ask me some questions about her 13 year old grandson that she now has custody of. I obliged for a few minutes, she’s bumfuddled by the behaviors that she sees. It’s not like he came out of foster care where these behaviors are explained in a MAPP class to prospective parents.

She’s seen this young boy all his life, she’s been his grandmother, and they’ve enjoyed a close relationship. Now that she is the disciplinarian in his life, he resents her. He’s simply angry that his own mother, for whatever reason, is not taking care of him. I didn’t even ask why the mom is out of the picture, that’s not the issue.

The grandmother just needed reassurance that this was fairly normal behavior in the adoption of older children. She herself didn’t look very old, maybe 40s, maybe 50s…I couldn’t tell.

We all know that this young man is angry because his previous world seemingly ended. He has no clue, nor any appreciation of the fact that his grandmother prevented him from going into foster care. He doesn’t get it, any more than my own children understand that I’ve made all sorts of personal sacrifices of my time, my money, my energy, and myself in order to provide for them, to keep the brothers and sisters together, to give them a normal life.

It’s reverberating in my head, what a therapist told me last week, “expect nothing in return.” While I do comprehend where she’s coming from, and I did not adopt children for the gratitude that they’d give me, I do need to impart to them an understanding, just mere politeness, that when someone gives you something you need to express gratitude.

If anyone hands you something please remember to reply with a polite thank you. That is minimal behavior. When someone thanks you, respond with a “you’re welcome.”

How hard is that? Simple logic that must transcend trauma if one is to have any sort of successful human transactions in life.

Some of my much older children are finally realizing where they would have been otherwise…had they not been adopted. My nearly 30 year old daughter had emailed me a sweet note yesterday, figuring she’d have been dead, or living in poverty, had she and her sisters not joined our family. In her case that’s an accurate assumption in that she tested positive for tuberculosis 15 years ago, we had it successfully treated, and she came out of a very poor country as Honduras in the 1980s was in tough fiscal shape.

At 13, while not rebelling as she was a good student, rebellion came in her 20s, she did not understand the concept of adoption at all, nor what I’d gone through to get them into America. They resented the fact that I wasn’t their birth mother. It’s taken decades to understand the process.

So this grandmother that I met today has a long way to go. The child did have Medicaid and I referred our family therapist to her. This young man is as grief stricken as is the grandmother. This is not an easy role for either of them, not an easy undertaking, and I recommend for everyone involved in the adoption of older children, that they find a family therapist, an emotionally uninvolved third party, a referee nearly, someone who can help navigate the treacherous footings.