My Adopted Child Is Rejecting Me - Weekend Wisdom

Question: Hello, thank you sincerely for your podcast and the work you do. It has helped me feel less alone and allowed me to better navigate foster parenting and adopting from foster care. My husband and I have two amazing boys; they have the same bio mom, and two older siblings each in a different family. Our youngest is 5. We met when he was 3 months. Our oldest is 8. We met when he was 3. He was removed at birth, then placed with his bio mom at 2 months, removed at 8 months, moved to a new foster family at 10 months, and placed with his legal father at 2.5. His bio mom took him illegally after a few months (with the legal father's consent). When he and his baby brother were removed and placed with us, he was sad and scared. We formally adopted our boys three years ago. He has grown into a beautiful, highly intelligent, and athletic boy. However, he has never accepted me as his mother. 

He refuses affection, pulls away, and looks at me with what I perceive as disgust. We are close with his bio family (siblings and mom), and he is regularly upset that he can't live with his bio mom. Sometimes he blames me. I try to explain, but he shuts me out. His siblings are not with their bio mom either. I keep trying to build a connection, but after 5 years, I am losing hope. It is very easy and natural with my youngest. When we are affectionate, I am afraid my older son will feel left out, but he pushes me away and often won't even let me be near him. When we have special time (just the 2 of us), I plan activities with him that he likes and is excited for, but he often complains and is unhappy during his time with me. He does not remember his life before we met very well, but will recollect things we did and say it was his bio mom. 

His professional evaluations report that he is well adjusted, but my husband and I have concerns. I know this may be normal, but I desperately want to connect with him. The constant rejection is painful. Any tips or advice are greatly appreciated.

Resources:

• Why Foster Kids Create Fantasy Families
• Attachment-Informed Tools for Working with Kids
• 6 Tips for Creating Attachment
• 8 Ways to Strengthen Attachment with Your Child
• Navigating Challenging Behaviors: Practical Strategies for Parents (Free E-Guide)

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Hello and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. My name is Tracy Whitney. I am the content
director for creating a family, and I'm also your host for this podcast that drops
every Saturday, as well as our other weekly podcast that comes out on Wednesday
mornings. It's an hour -long interview format called Creating a Family, Talk About
Adoption, Foster Care, and Kinship Care. Weekend Wisdom is a short podcast that
enables us to answer a specific question that our listeners send to us to get help
with specific issues or specific challenges they may be experiencing. If you have a
question that you think might be a good fit for weekend wisdom, please send it to
info at creatingafamily .org. We'd be happy to put you in the queue and then we'll
come through our archives, listen to, and read up on some of the expert research
and opinions that we've been grateful to receive from professionals in the field and
put together an answer for you that helps solve whatever challenge you're facing.
That's info at creatingafamily .org. So this question is a little bit of a lengthy
one, and it comes to us from a listener who is in an adoptive parenting situation
coming out of foster parenting and into adopting from foster care. She writes to us,
hello, thank you sincerely for your podcast and the work you do. It helps me feel
less alone and allowed me to better navigate foster parenting and adopting from
foster care. My husband and I have two amazing boys. They have the same bio mom
and two older siblings, each in a different family. Our youngest is five. We met
him when he was three months old. Our oldest is eight, and we met him when he was
three. He was removed at birth, then placed with his bio mom at two months old,
removed again at eight months old, and moved to a new foster family at 10 months
old, then placed with his legal father at two and a half. His bio mom took him
illegally after a few months with the legal father's consent. And when he and his
baby brother were removed and placed with us, he was sad and scared. We formally
adopted these boys three years ago. He has grown into a beautiful, intelligent, and
athletic boy. However, he has never really accepted me as his mother. He refuses
affection. He pulls away and he looks at me with what I perceive to be discussed.
We are close with his bio family, his siblings and his mom, and he is regularly
upset that he can't live with his bio -mom. Sometimes he blames me. I try to
explain, but he shuts me out. His siblings are not with their bio -mom either, and
I keep trying to build a connection, but after five years, I'm losing hope. It is
very natural and easy with the youngest, but when we are affectionate with the
younger one, I'm afraid that my younger, my older son will feel left out. But he
pushes me away and often won't let me be near him. We have special time together
just the two of us, and so I plan activities with him that he likes and is
excited for. But he often complains and is unhappy during his time with me. He does
not remember his life before we met very well, but he can recollect things that we
did and say that it was his bio -mom that did them with him or for him. His
professional evaluations report that he is well adjusted, but my husband and I still
have concerns. We know this sounds normal and may be normal, but I desperately want
to connect with him. The constant rejection is painful. Any tips or advice would be
greatly appreciated. Thank you, Kirsten. Well, Kirsten, thank you for writing in and
sharing your story. I know that this is painful and exhausting, and I appreciate
that you shared vulnerably what's going on in your home. Hanging in there with our
kids as they process their very complex and nuanced adoption stories is very
challenging work. And so let's start with what I hear that you are doing well in
what you've shared with us here. You should take some time to listen back to what
I'm summarizing here and take in the kudos for the good stuff that you are doing.
So I do hear that you are facilitating a relationship with his birth family. And
that's a really good thing. I hear that you are attempting and continuing to attempt
to connect with him through affection, time together, shared activities, fun, and
trying to get into his world. And I think that's really good also. And I want you
to take a moment and acknowledge that. And I also hear that you are caring well
for him. Your meeting is physical needs. You're seeking support with professionals,
and you're even reaching out to us to try and learn more and find some insight as
to what will help. And so those are all really good things, and they are not small
things either. So pause, take some time to acknowledge the hard work that you've
done thus far and the good work that you're doing and hold on to the positives of
what you are doing and have been doing even when you're feeling rejected or that
it's pointless to keep trying. Because the truth is that we can do everything under
the sun correctly and to be sure we don't. But we can do it all correctly,
do it right. And still, our kids may push us away or reject what we're offering.
It's not really as much about us and what we're doing or not doing or offering or
not offering. It's really more about what they're processing and what they're coping
with inside themselves. What you can do is continue to be there for him and keep
on doing what is right and what you know he needs. Here's a couple practical things
that you can do to keep yourself on that path of being present, doing what is
right, and meeting his needs, things that can keep you bolstered and fueled and
encouraged to just keep plugging away. Number one is to prioritize self -care.
Self -care is a huge soapbox for me because I know how much I need it every day
in raising my children, but I also know that our culture has kind of misled us as
to what true healthy self -care is. And so I want to say, self -care isn't just
about pampering yourself, although that could be an element of it. Self -care is
habits and rhythms that you build that nourish yourself and refresh yourself and kind
of put that fuel in your tank to keep going. So the kind of self -care that I'm
talking about would be things like therapy for yourself. Find a safe counselor or
therapist where you can process these thoughts and feelings and gain tools to help
you better process and cope with these thoughts and feelings. Somebody that can help
you figure out how not to take it personally when your son shows an act of
rejection or looks at you with disgust. Another thing that would be meaningful,
healthy self -care is taking care of your physical body, getting sleep, getting
healthy nutrition into your body, hydration, activity. But don't neglect your spiritual
self either. So whether that's habits of prayer or meditation or journaling or quiet
time, whatever you can do that nourishes your whole self.
And don't look at it as just another thing on the checklist to do. Look at it as
habits you are building that will sustain you for the hard times. A second thing
that you can do to keep plugging away after self -care, which should be the
priority, is consider streamlining your life. In this season of very challenging
behaviors and big emotions, both yours and your sons, it's okay and it's even
preferred to kind of strip away the excess in your life. Anything that is
unnecessary that you're doing maybe just because you've always done it or things that
may be draining or distracting you from your true purpose and mission, which is to
help your child heal and to heal the rift and lack of attachment between you.
So this might be a good time to step away from extra committees at work or
volunteering in a community or any other of those extras that take time away from
you and your ability to take care of yourself and your family at this time. When
we streamline our lives like that, we leave space for caring well for ourselves. And
when we care well for ourselves, we have the fuel and the energy to care well for
the relationships inside of our home. A third thing that you can try to focus on
while you're managing these difficult relationships between you and your son is
educating yourself. And it might feel like it's at odds with streamlining your life
and self -care, but it's really not. Educating yourself is a type of self -care that
allows you to take in small chunks of information about trauma or about loss,
about prenatal substance exposure and the impacts that our kids may feel and
experience from that exposure. Learning about survival responses and what things may
manifest in his behavior when he feels threatened or when he feels scared. Even if
the threat is perceived on his part, he may likely be acting out in behaviors that
are challenging and so educating yourself about what those behaviors might look like.
So while you're learning, you should be processing that with whatever closest safe
adults you have in your life, whether that's your husband or a partner or a
counselor or a therapist, a pastor, a best friend, any of those safe adults that
are in your life that are helping you stay committed to your mission of building a
strong, healthy family, those are people that you should be processing this
information with. And it will help you learn more, but it'll also help them learn
more and be able to key into what it is that your family is experiencing right
now. And then you can also use that information to stir up more compassion for your
son and recognize, again, on maybe a new level, that his internal struggles are not
a personal rejection of you. And it gives you the ability to hang in there with
him when those behaviors feel particularly challenging. A fourth thing that you can
focus on while he's going through this difficult season of processing his identity
and figuring out who you are to him is to be sure that he knows the facts of his
story. You've already indicated that you've told him what you know about his birth
mother's situation and the choices to place him for adoption. And so just keep in
gentle, slow, patient ways, fleshing out the facts of his story to him and with him
as he's growing. Answer his questions as truthfully and compassionately as you can
without speaking ill of his birth family, keeping the door open conversationally for
him to ask questions, even if they kind of feel out of the blue, keeping the
conversation open about why his birth mother does this and why you don't do this,
you know, how she celebrates holidays versus how you celebrate holidays or why he
can visit her for a couple hours on a Saturday, but he can't live with her right
now, those kinds of things. If you can maintain consistent,
compassionate, respectful narratives about his story and his birth family's story,
it will help him eventually put all those puzzle pieces in place, even if he can't
do that now. He may just in his eight -year -old little brain feel like his story
is kind of fragmented and in big puzzle pieces that don't connect. But if you just
keep maintaining this consistent story and this consistent connection with his story,
he can put those pieces together eventually. It's just a matter of hanging in there
with him while he's doing that. Which brings me to the fifth thing that you can
do. Even when you're feeling hurt or rejected and you're struggling not to take this
behavior of his personally, it's essential that you choose to be hopeful as often
and as frequently as you possibly can. Hope is kind of like the gas in the engine
that keeps you going. My parenting coach recently said to me, if you don't actively
hold on to hope while also actively releasing what you cannot change,
you will never survive this. And it was hard for me to hear that from her, but
it's true. If we can hang in there holding on to hope,
but letting go of what we don't have control over and what we cannot change, we
can help them and be present with them as they are shaping and sharing their
identity process. That hope that you're holding on to is for you.
It's for him. It's for you and him together to have a healed, healthy, secure
attachment as you go. But but it's also for him. You're modeling for him that this
difficulty, this pain, this confusion won't last forever. There is a point at which
he will be able to coelate all that information and have a consistent narrative
about who he is and how he got here. Sometimes it would help in the process of
doing these five things to develop a short mantra for yourself,
something like, this isn't about me, this is about his trauma, or it's not him,
it's his brain, or something like that. Eight years old is a hard age. They're
starting to grapple with truth versus fiction. They're starting to grapple with hopes
and dreams versus reality. And then when you add the layers of disappointment at not
being able to be with his birth family or what he thinks his birth family might be
like. He may have this very kind of unrealistic perception of what his life might
be like with his birth family. And he's just trying to grapple with all of that at
the same time. And again, it's just you kind of holding on to hope and saying, we
will get through this. We will get through this together. And I'm holding on to the
hope that we will have a healed, healthy relationship as you do it. And finally,
the last thing is to keep finding ways to connect and have fun. You've already had
a little bit of a taste of it that laughter and shared memories can be a powerful
glue that holds your family together. And there's no better time than now when
things are challenging to try and dig into the fun. That sounds kind of
contradictory to dig into fun because digging in can be hard work. But if you can
leverage laughter in your home in some way, silly games, funny movies,
kitchen dance parties, flag football in the side yard, anything that will get you
and him laughing together, but also the whole family having fun and building those
ties and those connections together. Laughter is like a glue that holds a family
together. He may not remember the specific activities that you do together,
but he will remember and his body will remember the fun. And so he may not be
accurately remembering times with his birth family, but he will accurately remember
the fun times that you are crafting now. And then he won't have to choose between
what he thinks is the fun he had with his birth family and the happy experiences
he had with them and what he could have with you. He can find ways to integrate
those things. Our body remembers things like laughter.
It kind of builds, laughter kind of builds itself into ourselves. And we can
remember things when we've had fun with them. It's why kids learn better when
they're playing. And so you can kind of leverage that same mentality towards helping
him grapple with his story by incorporating as much fun and laughter into your home
as you can. I know that this season feels painful. Feeling hurt, rejected,
and targeted by your kid is the worst feeling in the world. And it's painful.
And I understand how hard it is. But when you keep yourself fueled, you surround
yourself with support, and you stay open to learning and growing together and having
fun while you do it, you can navigate this path forward and you can find some
relief from the heavy and the difficult. So Kirsten, I'm so glad you wrote in and
shared your story with us. I hope that some of these tips help. I would highly
recommend that you join our online Facebook community. It's Facebook .com slash groups
slash creating a family and hang out there with some of the people in the group
and talk with them and find out what they're doing for fun that would help kind of
cover and soften the difficult edges of life with preteens and young kids,
but also find some connection and support for yourself on the journey. Thanks so
much for listening to Weekend Wisdom. I hope this information was helpful, not just
to Kirsten, but also to other listeners. If you have a question for us, send it to
info at creatingafamily .org and market weekend wisdom. Thanks again for listening and
I'll see you next week.