May 16, 2008

It figures!!!!

I can't whine about anything without getting my hands slapped it seems...

For the record, I Love my Son. I didn't carry him in my body or birth him, but I have spent 8 years loving and caring for this kid, trying to turn him into a responsible young man. I have heard so many people get into the discussion about how adoptive parents love adopted kids less then their biological kids, and someone seems to think that I have this issue. So, I will bite......

I don't think that it is less love at all, I love him differently yes, but not less. I do love Turtle differently because she is my daughter, a girl, and an infant, but not because she has my DNA. I did wait a long time for Turtle, and tried like hell to have her, but that in no way changes the love that I have for Kent. It is harder some days for me because I know he is not my biological child, and I really wish he was. There will always be a degree of separation between the two of them, to think that there isn't would be totally bullshitting myself, and the rest of the world. I think that when you adopt a child as an infant or as a toddler it is easier to wrap your heart around them as you would a child that you give birth to, still different, but closer to how you would feel about a biological child. I don't know that from personal experience though, so that is just a guess on my part. Older children can and usually do come with a bevy of issues that have to be dealt with, especially if you adopt from the foster care system like we did. So, with Kent you throw in the emotional train wreck that he was on top of his physical disability, and you have your work totally cut out for you. You will never know what we have been through with and for this young man, so I don't appreciate your comment at all. I cannot and will not go into it all here for obvious reasons, but I have spent years undoing the damage that this child's birth family did, and if you see one comment about a card as ungrateful, then I guess you are entitled to your opinion no matter how wrong and off base it may be.


I hear a lot that people think an adopted child should be thankful or grateful that they were adopted, I don't think about it like that at all though, I simply think that he should treat us the way that he wants to be treated. I asked him how he would have felt if I had done the same thing on a special day to him, and he admitted that it would have hurt his feelings to. I told him that I expected a card and a gift from him BECAUSE he is my son, not because he felt obligated to because we adopted him. I love that I am his mother, and that until this year he has gotten with Clark and gotten me something, but therein lies the problem, he relies on his Dad to handle everything, so, this year we decided to let him handle it all on his own.... you see where that got me. Now granted I used this as a teaching moment for him, because he is an overly selfish boy, but that doesn't mean it hurt any less that he let me down.

Now, you shouldn't pretend to know anything about me or my family, and I really think that your comments were out of line. Let me ask you this, would you put the picture of a child who was forcibly removed from his family, and that you had adopted from DSS on your Blog?? I mean come on, the Internet is there for everyone, and by putting his picture on this somewhat anonymous site, I would be leaving myself open to his family finding out about this Blog, and God himself only knows what would happen then.

Frankly any adoptive parent out there who tells you that they love "all" of their children the same is full of shit, because I know from asking that parents who have only biologically related children that they love each one differently. You would have to Love them differently in my opinion, because they are not clones of each other, so they are in fact different people, to be loved differently.

DNA is a word, and Kent has a little sister that will look up to him and love and adore him for the rest of her life, matching DNA or not.

So go get bent jackass.

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