Loving an Adopted Child: Is it Possible?

Is it possible to love a child not born to you?

Is it possible to feel a sense of connection to a child who is not your own blood and who does not resemble you?

Is it possible to accept as your own a child who was born to someone else?

If you are considering adopting a child, you may be plagued by such doubts. Additionally, you might not have the whole hearted support of family and friends, who with their best intentions, tell you that bonding with an adopted child is not the same as bonding with a biological child.

Now if you are in the process of deciding to adopt a child or have already decided to adopt one, but feel apprehensive about the process, read on! You are probably not sure if your kin would welcome your child and accept her. You could also have a small nagging doubt about whether they are right in their apprehensions of adoption and wondering if you are heading for disaster.

Read on to know about some positive aspects of adopting a child and realise that you indeed could have taken the best decision of your life, even if things don’t appear that way at this moment.

• The first thing to remember is that any decision taken in life would have pros as well as cons. No decision in life comes with a tag saying your life will be awesome once you implement it. So, is the case with adopting a child. It would have its positives as well as challenges. But once a decision is taken, it is up to us to choose what we wish to focus on and build on the same. So, you either worry about all the things that could go wrong once you adopt a child or you focus on all the things that could go right. And when you focus more on the things that could go right, you end up doing the right things and things begin to work out for you!
• A child is a child is a child. Period. And when you become a parent, an adopted child is as much your child as one you would give birth to. It may be normal to wonder if that is really possible. But the fact is that bonding, with any living being- humans and even pet animals- happens over time. Having an open mind would allow you and the child to bond with ease.
• Adopting a child gives you an opportunity to be more than who you are. It gives you an opportunity to love without boundaries and distinctions. It helps you realise that love is not always about blood and more about bonding. If you have a biological child already, it helps you see how capable you are of loving two children, who have come to you in different ways, but are nevertheless yours. It gives you a whole new perspective to love and children and enriches your life.
• Imagine you were adopted as a child and you had a loving family. Would you feel good about being a part of your family and feeling loved? Or would you feel miserable that you have a loving family? Most people would obviously be happy to have loving families. Human beings naturally tend to gravitate towards love. Your child, when cared for with love, would grow up to enjoy having you as family and will become very much a part of it. So, any worries about the child losing his love for you once he finds out he was not born to you may be unwarranted. Yes, he might be curious about his history but that does not mean he would stop loving you. Remember, love grows and remains where it is nurtured.

Adopting a child is a huge decision. However, it does not have to be a painful decision taken in desperation.

When confused about whether it is a good decision or not, remember that it is certainly a good decision. You are adopting a child and becoming a parent. It is something to be proud of and celebrate!

All that is needed is a shift in thinking, preparedness to parent, openness to experience and willingness to love.

Look at the positive aspects of adoption and celebrate the process, with the confidence that you are equipped to handle any challenges you meet along the way!

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Being a Parent...

Being a parent, whether you are planning to become one or whether you already are one, is a challenging job. It is bound to have several ups and downs on the way. It helps to be aware of your role when it comes to parenting a child and especially a young child, who is dependent on you for most things.

• The adult chooses to bring a child into this world- A child does not pop into the world on her own. It is the adult who is responsible for bringing one into the world. Often, adults have children and  love them no doubt. However, at times they feel the child is a hindrance to their lives. Being a parent means being aware at all times that bringing a child into this world is a choice that is made. And when the adult happens to make that choice, he (or/and she) becomes a parent.
• The child is precious and entrusted in the adult's care- A child is a new life and is precious. A child is also dependent on the adults for her needs. Being a parent means the adult being aware that he would be responsible for the care, safety and comfort of a new life and taking as many positive steps as  he can towards the same.
• The adult's life will change completely once there is a child in it- The adult may have got used to a routine in the absence of a child. But having a child in her life would certainly change that predictable routine. She would have to set plenty of time aside for the child. It helps to be aware that this is also a phase that can be enjoyed as much as the phase when she had all the time in the world for herself. It needs a slight shift in perspective to look at this phase as an enjoyable one. It is after all going to last just a few years and after that the child will be an independent entity. So, one might as well enjoy this phase while it lasts.
• The child is entitled to a life all her own and the adult is responsible for giving her a solid foundation in the early years-  It helps to be aware that being a parent does not make the child a shadow of the parent. In other words, the child is a new being and will lead a life of her own one day. Keeping this in mind, giving the child a good foundation in her early years becomes the adult’s responsibility; a foundation that would help the child develop confidence in herself and a positive outlook towards life.
• The adult would have to spend a lot of physical as well as intellectual energies in order to aid the physical and intellectual development of the child- Being a parent means the adult being aware that he would have to use a lot of his physical energy in order to physically care for the child and intellectual energy to provide meaningful learning opportunities for the mental growth of the child (apart from what is learnt at school). A lot of learning and assimilation happen during the early years and it is the perfect time to sow the seeds of mental, intellectual and emotional development. This would require constant planning and preparation on the adult’s part to ensure that the child is exposed to the best that can be offered. 

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The Child and Walking

Has your child just taken his first step?

Are you all excited about his first step?

When young children start walking, it is a huge milestone for them.

They seem to feel as thrilled (or probably more) as adults feel when they learn new skills such as swimming, driving or dancing.

How is their thrill evident?

Just by this fact- once having learnt how to walk, they want to walk over and over again.

They fall down.

They get up.

They start walking again.

Many children also love walking up and down the stairs. Not once but countless times!

These activities related to walking can go on for hours on end and can cause the adult in whose care the child is to feel absolutely exhausted.

The adult does not have either the time or the patience to wait on a child who wants to walk without a break. The adult is usually focused on the next task at hand.

Often, the adult would rather just pick the child up and move on to the next task that he needs to do. But the child seems determined to walk. This in turn causes the adult to pick the child up forcefully and the child throws a tantrum.

Have you ever wondered why this is so? Or what you can do if you ever find yourself in this situation?

The first thing to understand is no one teaches the child to walk. So, the child is not walking to make life difficult for the adults or to show that he has learnt something. Rather, it is nature that drives the child towards walking. And the child walks and walks and walks. He never seems tired of it.

As adults, we would be able to appreciate this better when we understand that the child is doing exactly what he needs to do to develop himself at that stage of his life. Then we would sit back, relax and enjoy every step he takes, rather that fret about when he would stop walking so much and so often.

No doubt it requires patience and energy to keep pace with a child who wants to walk continuously. But think about it. It is after all once in a lifetime that you would witness this amazing phenomenon of a child learning to walk. Time will fly and after some years you just might be complaining that your grown up child refuses to walk even a couple of steps. So, why not enjoy this phase while it lasts?

Take time to witness every milestone of your child’s growth and cherish the early years for the wonders that they unfold.

Let us not carry the child who has just learnt to walk.

Let him walk.

Let us not complain about the child who goes up the stairway fifty times or more.

Let him climb up.

It is nature at play.

The child has the right to master his gift.

He says, “I can walk. Please do not lift.”

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Children and Making Choices

How often do you find yourself struggling to make a choice?

From simple everyday matters, like not knowing which dress to buy or which restaurant to eat at to more complex decisions related to your personal and professional lives.

How often do you rely on others to make choices for you or to approve of your choices, before you go ahead and implement them?

How often do you doubt your own choices and feel that you are not capable of making the right choices?

Well, no one makes right choices all the time. But the fear of not making the right choice must not stop us from going ahead and making a choice that seems best under any given circumstance.

This is exactly what happened to many of us when we were children. Often, the adults in our lives,well intentioned no doubt, did not trust us enough to let us make our own choices. We were thought of as young and inexperienced and thereby incapable of making choices. And many of us continue to feel the same way well into adulthood.

What if we were given the opportunity to make choices from a very young age? Right from what we liked to eat at a restaurant, to which dress we would want to wear to a party, to how much we would like to eat for lunch and what hobbies we would like to pursue. We would probably be better equipped to make bigger choices today.

Encourage children, yes even the very young ones, to make several choices that they are capable of making. Whenever there is scope for the child to make a choice, allow her to make it. This habit ingrained in the child from a young age, will build confidence in the self and the child would carry the same in her consciousness as she grows into an adult.

Trust the child.

Sounds difficult?

Start practising.

Remember how you felt as a child when you were not trusted by the adults around you? When you knew something was right for you at that moment but no one seemed to understand. That is exactly how the children in our lives feel right now when we make all their choices for them.

Trusting the child does not mean that she will make perfect choices all the time. It means giving her the freedom to choose, while ensuring her safety and well being at the same time. It also means being willing to accept the fact that some choices could be wrong. But then making wrong choices is also part of learning in life!

So, go ahead. Do not be afraid. Encourage children to make choices wherever possible and watch them blossom into confident young people, capable of making choices whenever life requires them to do so. 

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Children and Exploratory Learning

Imagine you land on a distant planet, which is going to be your home for the rest of your life. The planet is very different from earth and nothing on that planet resembles anything that you’ve seen on earth. The air smells different, the water looks peculiar, the food tastes unique, everything you touch has a different feel to it and the land looks like nothing you’ve ever seen on earth.

How would you make sense of everything around you?

You would go around, explore the planet, touch things to see how they feel, taste some things to see if they are edible, stop to look at all that is around you, try to understand the sounds in the environment and take in the various smells that you may encounter. As you explore this planet, you begin to make lots of discoveries.

One day, you encounter a bunch of aliens. Now, would you like these aliens to stop you from exploring their planet? Or would you rather that they permit you to explore and probably even encourage you to explore?  Of course, you would also hope that they would stop you when you are about to enter unsafe territory.

Now, come back to planet earth.

The child is the new entrant to this planet, this world that is completely alien to him, HE is the explorer and WE are the aliens. So, would the child rather have us stopping him at every step or would he prefer having the freedom to explore?

When very young children touch a stone, smell a flower, stop to watch a dog, listen intently to the sound of an aeroplane or try to taste things that are not even edible, they are NOT doing it to be naughty or to trouble you. That is their way of exploring the world around them. They understand the world by exploring it through their all their senses. That is why they are always on the move and cannot sit still in one place as mere spectators.

The urge to explore seems particularly strong at a tender age. That is why when adults try to stop them, they get a negative response from them. That is because the child does not want anyone interfering in his exploration. They are also labelled as hyper or stubborn by the adult community when they refuse to stop doing the things they are asked to. Once again, young children are not on the move to be stubborn or hyper. When you understand that this need to explore is part of their nature at that stage of development, you step back and learn to relax. You embrace their learning and their journey.

As adults, while we certainly are responsible for their safety (just as the aliens would be while we explore unsafe territory), let us not become so protective as to stop them at every step. When a young child wants to explore something in this world, let him have the freedom to do it, while we keep a gentle watch.  Let him experience the beauty of this fabulous world through sensory exploration!

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Children and Repetition of Activities

Have you ever seen little children sweeping the ground with tremendous interest and concentration?

Going up and down the stairs for no reason countless times?

Arranging blocks in a particular pattern over and over again?

Washing their hands twenty times or more, long after they are sparkling clean?

Repeating activities so many times that you end up wondering from where they draw their energy and what pleasure repetition of the same activity could give them?

This is a phenomenon that is observed universally among very young children and if you are associated with young children you will have witnessed this at some point.

What do we do when this happens? There are just two options.

Let the child do the activity for as long as he wants to and for as many times as he wants to.

Or

Stop him from doing it repeatedly.

What would prompt an adult to stop a child from repeating an activity? Probably he feels the child is wasting his time doing something that neither makes sense nor achieves a meaningful end result.  

But think about it. Does everything we do in life need an end result? Sometimes don’t we all do things just because we like doing them? In very young children, there seems to be an even greater force driving them to do things repeatedly, for no apparent reason.

As per Dr Maria Montessori (an Italian educator and doctor who is the genius behind the popular Montessori system of education that is followed world over today), it is nature that drives children to perform tasks over and over again. No one knows why this is so but this repetition of the activity seems to fulfil an innate developmental need in the children.  This is evident by the satisfaction one sees on a child’s face at the end of an activity that he has performed to his heart’s content.  

So, the next time a child is found repeating an activity that does not make sense to you and you feel like stopping him, pause for a moment to observe the child. Is he interested in the activity? Is he concentrating on the activity with all his might? Is it giving him a sense of satisfaction? If yes, let him have the freedom to repeat the activity to his heart’s content. Interest, concentration and a sense of satisfaction felt over and over again would also result in the development of confidence in the child. And if it is nature that is driving children to do certain activities over and over again, why should anyone stop them from doing it? Let nature run its course and the little child have his share of joyous moments, while we sit back to observe him in peace and learn to find joy in his joy!

Just as we do not like to be disturbed while doing something we thoroughly enjoy, let us not disturb children when they do the things they enjoy.  

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Bonding with Children

Bonding with children goes a long way in building a healthy and happy relationship with them. Here are some thoughts on the same- four simple ways to bond with children. 

• Smile- A smile can do wonders to establish a rapport with children. A smile tells a child that you are happy to see her.  A smile also makes an adult friendly and approachable. And being friendly and approachable by nature is precisely what would help adults bond with children. 
• Make time to listen - Many children love to talk and to share several stories from their lives with adults. While listening to them at all times may not be practically possible, it is nevertheless important to make some time to listen to them.  Setting time aside to listen to children can work wonders to establish a bond with them. 
• Laugh together- There’s nothing to beat a good laugh shared with a child. If you like to have a good time with your own friends, you will agree that some of your best moments with friends are moments of shared laughter! Laughing together signals friendship and is a great way to lighten things up in the adult-child relationship. So, whenever opportunity strikes, feel free to loosen up and laugh with children!
• Respect their feelings, thoughts and views- Often, adults are subconsciously conditioned to not take children very seriously. As a result, we can end up disrespecting their feelings, thoughts or views unintentionally. While we may not be able to relate to their feelings and experiences, it is important that we at least empathise with them and acknowledge their feelings. This helps build trust and subsequently friendship.

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