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I received my June issue of Reader’s Digest about a week ago. I love Reader’s Digest… I can read in snippets and small bites, which fits my time frame these days. One particularly interesting story was entitled The Accidental Family: How seven boys became brothers.
This story is about a Caucasian family in Manhattan—mom, dad and two boys (who happened to be adopted as infants.) It begins when the boys were ages 5 and 7. The family lived in a spacious, renovated penthouse in the middle of an ethnic neighborhood. Dad was a Wall Street CEO and mom was a physician.
The older boy joined a street game of baseball one day, and ended up inviting his “teammates” home to play video games. A dozen of them complied, and descended upon the penthouse. Across the board, the visiting boys were blown away by the spaciousness of the home, the endless supply of food, the (very white) mom offering cookies, and the many other aspects of this family’s life that had eluded the lives of these young boys.
Several of the boys became regular visitors. Eventually, five boys were “incorporated” into this family. One had lost his mom to AIDS. One had watched his father murdered in front of him. Most were being raised by single moms, exposed to drugs, poverty and prison.
They had sleepovers (with the parents closely monitoring the group) and reading and educational sessions. They bought the boys clothes and monitored their schoolwork. The boys spent their time after school at the penthouse, as well as most weekend nights and summers. They were assigned chores and began to take part in religious celebrations.
The boys’ biological parents were confused about the “adoptive” family’s motives but began to see changes in their children.
The “adoptive” parents separated for two years but eventually reunited. They stated their marital difficulties were not related to the additional boys.
As the boys became older, the possibility of college loomed… and, according to the article, “it turns out some of the boys had misrepresented their academic performance” to the “adoptive” parents. Imagine that… they hadn’t been completely honest. The “adoptive” family insisted that the boys acquire GED’s or complete high school, and eventually all five boys entered community colleges. The kids refer to their “adoptive parents” as “dad” or “my white pops” or variations of that. They are all grateful for these folks’ influence on their lives and they have made something of themselves.
So where am I going with this? I read these kinds of stories all the time. I wonder, what is different about those five boys and the kids I parented? Or are the differences about me? How is it that these five boys became successful even while they were exposed to all the nasty influences in their lives, when so many other kids don’t get there? Is it simply a roll of the dice?
I’m going to look more deeply at that in the next installment…
Here’s a link to the article and there are some other great stories about adoption and related issues to check out…
I think it has mor eto do with conscious choice in some cases.
A child just gets to the point where they know something is wrong and want to change it, some don’t see a problem with their situation because they become used to it like a bad smell.
But there are depressing cases of people trying their best and knowing what’s wrong but not having a way out of it. Some just see the tunnel and not the light at the end of it.
I think your picture says it all. This whole thing is just a roll of the dice. We adopted a sibling group of four girls. From the outside looking in you would think it was pretty much even. But we know better. Each child was removed from the birthmom at a different age and stage of development and attachment. As a result they all have a different memory and experience of her. Then they were shuffled around in different foster homes, some with more and some with less placements. Those foster homes varied greatly in quality of care. Some children were medicated. Some were molested or abused. Some were ignored. Some had good role models at critical times. All have vastly different temperaments. Now, after years of separation, they have been thrust back together and told that they are again a “family”. How can anyone predict whether some, any, or all of these girls will see an opportunity and grab onto it…or repeat the cycle of apathy and abuse that they came from?
We work from sunup to sundown, trying to parent them the best way we know how. We feel as though we are seeing baby steps in a positive direction, but we also live in fear of some sort of sleeping dragon. Who can know when it might rear its ugly head?