Why Older Adopted Kids Act This Way: One Theory

I apologize in advance that way too often my blog is personal rather than informative but all I have is experience, not necessarily any answers but usually an understanding or empathy regarding what others are also encountering in this tough world of raising older adopted children. This means traumatized children.

I’d had a hard weekend and it showed through in my posts.

I’d picked up an older Dr. Phil (2001) book, Self Matters at a yard sale for one of my kids and I was skimming through it until I really got caught up in it. One chapter in particular summarizes life with traumatized children.

He calls it ‘defining moments’ which in the case of children who’ve lost their parents for whatever reasons are critically negative.

Dr. Phil says, “Assuming you are 40 years old, you have lived a total of 14,610 days. You probably cannot separately distinguish in your mind 14,610 of those days, but 10 of them you can and already have.”

A renowned psychologist, Alfred Adler, spoke of this tendency that we have to form mental pictures of ourselves based on our history. Our minds tend to condense all of our experiences around those happenings that are most important; this relatively small portion is critical to one’s perception of self…the core of each person’s personal truth.

So my kids come to me with miserable memories of abuse, neglect, pain, lack, anxiety, injuries, rejections and abandonment and I expect them to smile, behave and be grateful that they got adopted?

Am I nuts, or what?

Decades later my older children who’ve had many good memories of beach vacations, graduations, marriages and beautiful children can still retreat into that shell of a person who once arrived in our family scared and damaged. They have to mentally fight their way back to who they are now; it takes great effort and much willpower on their part to remember that the past is past.

So on this Monday morning, after I retreated out to my large back garden to move stones, dig quack grass and haul wood chips, I’ve worked out my own kinks; my anger at the destructive acting out that we experienced all day yesterday. There’s been apologies and make-up behavior, lectures and consequences, and we’ll move on, knowing that this isn’t over, that it takes a lifetime to grow and to heal.

I’m in it for the long haul, although yesterday I mentally packed up and went to an imaginary and uninhabited Caribbean Island where no one hollered, “Mama!” constantly. Where there was a mud hut for me, therefore no busted sheetrock or broken furniture.

Now I’m back to reality and we’ll continue forward, taking our usual baby steps.

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