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My friend Indy, over on the Adoption.com forums posted a wonderful question. Have you ever wondered “What if?”
Oh boy, have I ever played the “What if?” game. I look back at Sammy’s early life and how differently we parented then. I look at how much we didn’t know and things we did that I would now advise parents not to do.
What if I had stayed home with Sammy like I did with Hannah? What if I had known about attachment disorder from the very beginning? What if we had started therapy right away? What if we had started with the biomedical interventions when we first heard about them rather than being skeptical? What if we hadn’t adopted Sammy at all? His was the first profile that we were shown.
It’s easy to play the what if game. You know the old saying “Hindsight is 20/20.” My rose colored glasses came off a long time ago, and I have learned a lot, especially in the past four years.
However, all the forewarning and education would not have changed Sammy’s mental illness. It wouldn’t keep him from having Bi-Polar Disorder or ADHD, or many of the other diagnosis that he has.
Hannah HAS benefited from my experience with Sammy. I can also sit back and wonder what my life would be like if we hadn’t been through everything we have. I might not have found ATN and made the friends we have. If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have Hannah, and we might not have had Kory and Mackenzie. With all the pain we suffered with the loss of them, I wouldn’t trade the days we did have.
You can spend days, weeks, months or even years beating yourself up for the choices you made or didn’t make, the knowledge you had or didn’t have and the dynamics of your family, but in the end you will have nothing but regrets.
I don’t think there is a parent alive who doesn’t wish they had done things differently, and those are the parents who are parenting emotionally healthy children. We are going to make mistakes and we are going to have regrets, but doing the best we can at any given moment is the best we have to offer.
There is a quote that I love, and I think it fits parents particularly:
“I did what I knew, and when I knew better I did better.”
The child with RAD either takes the ‘leap of faith’ and gambles on trusting, or he doesn’t. That is inside the child, and the parent does not get to control that, no matter how great the parenting ability. You gave Sammy the opportunity to feel as safe as he could about taking the leap, that was your gift to him. He did not choose to take that leap. You didn’t cause it, he came home that way. Three of mine have RAD, two attached, one never did. Oddly, the one with so much damage did attach, the most normal one did not. I am thankful for the relationship with my two sons that made it, and I feel a large sense of loss over the one that did not. Your quote at the end of the post is a perfect description of parenting. John
You have made a difference in Sammy’s life no matter what, probably sometimes he might not acknowledge it or realize it now.
Stumbled on an article about a Southwest Florida woman who played a role in raising 100 foster children:
http://www.winknews.com/news/local/12900876.html .
Perhaps you might not have reached that number of children, you still have made a huge impact in whatever you are doing now. Keep up the good work!
I had always wished that we had started medication sooner with our now 19 year old daughter. When she killed animals at the age of 9 I wanted her to go to residential. Her caseworker and therapist wouldn’t consider it. I believe they would have started her on meds and our relationship wouldn’t have been so rocky those first 6 years. We could have disrupted her adoption, but we stuck with her. The last couple of years she was at home were good ones when we finally found a combination of meds that worked.
I’m stealing the quote.