This was a saying that Hannah’s Mama J and Daddy T had taught the kids in response to declarations of love for inanimate objects such as a piece of clothing, ice cream, etc.

The irony of this comment became very obvious when we had “the talk” in February when Hannah learned that she would not be returning to their home, but that we would in fact be her new parents. She very quickly became detached and began to call them by their first names. This happened before we ever left the restaurant. The level of her lack of commitment became so apparent.

Sometimes we love kids who don’t love us back. I have picked up the Katharine Leslie book “When A Stranger Calls You Mom.” I have heard great things about it and will make the time to read it.

Katharine maintains that love is not an automatic feeling. Sometimes we don’t love our kids right away. A kid who is smearing feces on the wall and cussing you out on a daily basis can be very hard to love, or even like for that matter.

One of my friends made a great post on the Adoption.com forum, and she has given me permission to repost it, and I have selected a small portion of what she wrote, but it conveys this exact message so clearly.

“

…..My parenting experience is loving my children unconditionally. It really IS unconditional because I am not loved in return. I have been bitten, spat at, scratched, my arthritic knees kicked at, my hair pulled, my breasts elbowed, hard. I have been felt up as an act of violence. And in return, I love them. And they don't love me. And I endure…..

…..I would not have left my kids crying in their cribs, wet, starving, utterly unheld and unbeloved. I would not have lost my kids to the system, and thus, my kids would not have been in multiple placements, and would not have been brutally beaten and sexually molested, repeatedly.

Big difference: if they were my birth kids, and if I had done all of those terrible things, they would still place me above the sun and the moon and the stars. As it is, I am their adoptive mother, and despite my total commitment to their healing, they reject me as their mother. They would pick their birth mother over me at any point, and never look back.”

While her post may sound harsh, it is so very true sometimes. I am fortunate that Hannah has become very well attached very quickly. She loves me as her mother, and I don’t think she has any desire to return to her birth mother. Sammy is the complete opposite. He accepts me as his mother, but does not love me with the same intensity of his birth mother, despite the horrible things she has done to him. Given the opportunity to return to her, he would do so without a second thought. I am fairly confident that he would return to me eventually, since she has made no changes to her life, and has continued her destructive patterns.

How do you love a child who doesn’t love you back, or puts you in second place? It is very difficult, I assure you. I do love my son, and a large part of that began before I ever met him. I fell in love with the picture of my little boy, and even while I was reading his profile, my heart was breaking at the things that he had been through in his five short years.

A large part of this is also acceptance. This is not an easy thing. When you pour all your heart and love into a child only to have very little, if anything returned takes a long time to learn.

Yes, it is true. You can love someone who doesn’t love you back.

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