How To Support An Adoptive Family
(Submitted by a Guest Blogger)
I am an adoptive parent. My children came into my family when they were ten and thirteen years old. When God first called my husband and me to adopt, we were not thinking of a sibling group. We were not thinking of a teenager.
Our biological children were nine and twelve at the time. The idea of adopting a child older than our oldest child was not something we had even considered. Once we started adopting our children, we were strongly advised not to adopt an older child. We knew that God was telling us these were our children. Leaving them was as unimaginable as leaving our biological children. However, the transition was a difficult time for our family.
I love the below quote from Hudson Taylor.
“God’s work, done God’s way, will never lack God’s supply.”
If God has called you to adopt, he will supply what you need. Your needs may include finances, or they may consist of emotional support. A few exceptional people stepped up and made that first-year work for us.
If you have a friend or family member adopting a sibling group or an older child, and you want to know how to support them, let me give you some suggestions.
Ikea Gift Cards for Room Furniture – When you bring home a baby, you want a nursery ready. However, a baby doesn’t care what their room looks like. You need to make sure they have a safe environment to sleep in.
However, if you bring a teenager home, they need a space that they can be proud of, so they will want to invite their friends into their home. Teenagers also come with their ideas of what they would like in a bedroom. You can’t plan out the room for your new child like you would plan out a nursery.
With our children, we went to Ikea. This was helpful because the bedrooms are already set up. The children found a room they liked, and then we got everything in the room. This is, of course, a considerable expense. We had a family friend that gave us money for this project. An older child being adopted can feel they don’t have control over a scary situation. Letting them pick out a room gave them authority over their space.
Hire a House Cleaner for a Once a Month Clean – This is the gift my mom gave us. We had a lovely lady come once a month for the first year. She did a deep clean of our bathrooms and floors.
I hate dirty bathrooms and floors. Having them deep cleaned once a month made me feel like our home was not entirely out of control.
Pick One Expense You Will Cover for the First Year – That first year there are many extra expenses. Picking on cost and covering it for the year is better than giving money because it takes off the pressure to pay a bill.
We put our children into a private Christian school. A wonderful couple came to us and said they would cover the cost of the schooling for the first year. They ended up coving the price for two years. This was huge for us.
There are other expenses you may want to cover. We enrolled one of our children on a track team and another in horse riding lessons. Both enrollments did miracles for our children. The track gave our oldest a way to run out her aggression; horse riding was emotional support for our youngest. However, both activities were expensive. Eventually, we had to drop them for financial reasons. Paying for an activity like this is very helpful for a family.
Talking to Our Children About Their Emotional Needs – On the first Mother’s Day, we had our new children with us; our daughter was helping in the nursery at church. She was fourteen years old at this point. The adult volunteer in the nursery decided this was an excellent time to talk to my daughter about how Mother’s Day must be hard for her because her mom had died. The adult volunteer told her she could if she wanted to talk about her feelings. My daughter was distraught. Mother’s Day was a disaster that year.
While I am sure the volunteer thought she was a good listening ear, we had our daughter in counseling with a professional counselor to work through her feelings.
In everything you do to support the adoption, you should be supporting the family. You should be pointing the child toward their relationship with their new parents. Your goal should never be to build a bond between you and the adoptive child. Your goal is only to make the bond between the adoptive child and parent.
Today my oldest is nineteen. Our family is doing well. We are thankful to all the people who have supported our family. We would not have been able to succeed without them. If you have a friend or family member that is adopting an older child or sibling group, and you want to support them, I hope these suggestions will be helpful.
