When People Say Stupid Things – And They Often Do
First I have to say that I try not to say the words stupid (or hate) very often. They’re words that come out so easily, yet when I hear my daughter (or other children) use them, I cringe. So I wrote this post title with hesitation. However . . .
Last night I was having dinner with a good friend whose husband was adopted. In the course of our commiserating about husbands, my friend casually threw out that she knew her husband was an “adoptive pleaser”. I had never heard that term before but I immediately got the drift - it’s not a good thing to be an “adoptive pleaser”.
Was it a stupid thing to say to an adoptive mom, an insensivite thing to say to an adoptive mom, or am I over reacting? It went through me like a sharp knife.
My friend’s mother-in-law (her husband’s adoptive mother) recently passed away, and from all indications, she was a mean, angry, bitter person who treated everyone in her path with contempt. I can well understand that her husband has spent most of his life trying to recover – but would it be different if she had been his biological mother? Would less damage have been done? Would she have treated biological children differently?
When I googled “adoptive pleaser”, I could barely bring myself to read the results. I feel like this description, this idea, is somehow my daughter’s fate – according to some. One website which claims to be an Adoption Dictionary says that adoptees are often pleasers (and fixers!) because they fear being rejected by their adoptive family and “abandoned” once more.
I don’t know if I’m living in denial about the depth of feelings regarding abandonment that adoptees have, or if these are sweeping generalizations that simply can’t apply to every adoptee or adoptive family.
I can say that Vintage Girl shows no signs of being a “pleaser” in any negative way. She’s proud when she does something well, but I see her taking her own path with great confidence and often not caring what “everyone else” is doing.
So although I’ll now have this worry permanently planted in my brain – and my heart – I do feel better now for venting and I welcome your thoughts.
June 10th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I went to a conference last year about adoption where I attended a lot of sessions about adoptees and their particular adoption-related challenges. I was a little overwhelmed (and I was no newbie to this stuff — it was just a lot all at once!). But I was there with a couple of adult adoptees who helped me make sense of things. This is what I’ve concluded.
Adoptees follow the same developmental path that anyone does but there is an extra layer over much of it, which has to do with the work of integrating their adoption experiences. Obviously a lot of this has to do with how the adoption happened. Kids who were adopted older or who suffered abuse or were in institutional care have challenges that come from those particular circumstances but even infants adopted as newborns need to make sense of their adoption stories. This is an additional challenge in development.
Of course every adoptee is an individual, too, and how they process that integration looks different for different people. Some WILL internalize feelings of abandonment; some won’t. Just like some adoptees may grow up to be less fearful (posited one expert at the conference) because the worst thing has already happened — they have already lost their first mom — and now nothing else can be as bad.
It all sounded very dire but then I realized that I can inform myself about these possibilities without letting them eat me alive. I can see the needs I must address with my daughter (because I do think adoptees have needs particular to their adoption stories) but I can let my daughter write her own developmental story. I can see her as the resilient, strong, smart person that she is and trust her to make sense of it — with my loving support — and then not worry that she is like this or that because she’s adopted.
My personal struggle has been that Madison has trouble separating from me — her brother who was NOT adopted was the same way but as extroverted as she is, it’s thrown me for a loop. I’d go, “Oh lord! It’s because she was adopted!” and wring my hands then I’d slap myself and say, “Who cares WHY it is, the point is that she needs XYZ from me” and then I’d meet that need.
Anyway. I think generalizations are useful when they give us insight but not useful when they pigeonhole people.
June 10th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Dawn,
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment. I think I was as upset that my friend kind of blurted that out as I was about the “pleaser” idea.
The idea of an extra layer of “stuff” to work through makes total sense to me, and it sounds a lot less “dire” than some other info out there to be sure.
Vintage Girl is also very clingy (though getting much less so as she approaches 8). I have never chalked it up to being adopted; it’s probably because I smothered her with too many hugs and kisses when she was small! And honestly, I just said to my husband last night (who calls us the Suction Cups): “If she can’t hang on to her mom when she’s scared, who can she hang on to?” (this was when she was working up the nerve to play at a piano recital – unimaginable a year ago.)
From all I have read about Madison on your blog, I think that a) she is a remarkable girl; and b) she is in very good hands!
Thanks again.
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June 12th, 2009 at 6:05 am
My two boys are not adopted. The oldest one was (and still is) a clinger. He beat me back to the car when I would drop him at kindergarten for months. I am still the first person he calls if something is not going right. He says he is never moving out, although he has many friends and is well adjusted. He is 19, and is going to a local college so he can commute.
The younger one is 13 has never been a clinger. He took his first airplane trip at 11 with his teacher, one parent chaperone and 7 other kids. They were gone for 5 days. He loved it and was not homesick once. He jumped out of the car every morning after the first day of kindergarten. He has plans to move far away and do everything. Kids are born with their personality. I think nurture can change things somewhat but basically you are who you are in the womb. Don’t sweat the “adoption affects everything” with your daughter, just love her and let her be who she is. Hugs to you.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Hello Lil:
Thank you for that comment! So funny about your oldest; VG is hoping to go to a college where she can visit me “every day” haha! Or as my husband says, “at least see me w/binoculars”! She was the sobbing child on the first day of K too, and remained clingy all year. Some of that has changed now that she’s finishing first grade.
I have lots of friends w/two kids who are entirely different; it’s fascinating!
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