Regan Ramblings: Challenges of Older Child Adoption from Overseas Part 3

So, once your child is home, then what?! In this post I will focus on the challenges of the adjustment for both your child and for you, as parents, especially in the first year home. For some people there is an initial honeymoon stage. I would say that for us it was more like the grieving hit right off the bat. The honeymoon stage was the five weeks that we spent in Bangkok. But, that first week we got home, life was rough! We all, especially Penny and I, had bad jet lag, which made sleeping hard. Penny was scared of sleeping alone and couldn't handle sleeping on a high, bouncy American bed with both a mattress and box spring. The solution? The first week, I slept on the floor next to her bed and we removed the box spring so that the mattress sat firmly on boards, lower to the ground. After that first week, I moved back to my room, which was right across the hallway, but we left our doors open and a nightlight on in her room. My parents had come out to help us out and I still remember that on the first night my dad got us a big pizza, which was new and different for Penny.

When she saw it she burst into tears, which led to deep sobbing in her bedroom, which was so sad and mournful.

However, I believe it was a good and healthy thing that she felt safe enough to express her sorrow so openly, as hard as it was to see her so sad.

The first day in America, she was SO excited to see snow for the first time, ever, that she went outside and ran around in it, only to get herself sick with altitude sickness by losing her breakfast while we were out shopping at Walmart.

That first week, the only foods that she would eat were rice and eggs. And soon she discovered that we had a small Asian market in our hometown and I could keep her well supplied with familiar snack foods. Very helpful for a teenager!

One thing that can be surprising, but shouldn't be is the need for your child to have to be like a younger child. In fact, if they act younger than their biological age, that's actually a healthy sign that they are wanting to go through those early developmental stages with you as their parent. Thus, she often wanted to sit on my lap.

She kept up her cute Thai peace symbol for photographs at first.

We learned that it was normal for kids who have suffered early childhood abandonment, trauma, stress and neglect, that it could cause developmental delays. So, we should expect her to probably act younger than her biological age. We discovered that this was the case. So, it could make for an interesting display of both childlike and adolescent hormonal patterns together. Note, the poutiness in this photo.

Another really hard thing about that first year was how many times she would get sick. Penny and I both had two terribly painful boils. The only explanation was stress. You can see in this photo, on her baptism day, 10 months after coming home how much pain she was in from the second boil. You'll probably notice, too, how thin I was looking. That first year I kept losing weight, without trying to. It started by eating under-cooked eggs in Bangkok, but continued at home, due to stress.

Jay had stress of his own. On my 40th birthday, just 5 weeks after coming home, he was very unexpectedly given the shattering news that he would be losing his teaching job that he has had since the year before we married. He's trying hard to look happy in this photo, but it was another blow that hit us hard during that first year of coming home.

So, as we, as her parents struggled with grieving the loss of a job, Penny also struggled with her own adjustments of getting used to school in America. We put her back into the last semester of 6th grade, at the suggestion of some wise teachers. You can't tell in this photo, but around the time of her 6th grade graduation in May, she was suffering from a painful foot infection.

That first year there were a lot of firsts, like her very first birthday party she ever got to celebrate when she turned 14 years old. She had learned how to be very TOUGH at the orphanage. But, after singing, "Happy Birthday" to her, I noticed for the first time, ever, she was fighting back tears of emotion.

There were also a lot of new experiences in learning to trust her parents. It was especially heart touching to see her opening up to her daddy, as she had been taught in Thailand, at an all Girls Home, that men were not to be trusted.

One of the stress factors that first year, was wondering, hoping and praying that Thailand would give their final approval to allow us to complete our adoption stateside. Fortunately, that all went through smoothly for us and we were able to finalize the adoption on June 23rd. I guess the reason I was extra nervous about it was because we knew of another family who had brought home a teenager from Thailand and after nine months, had to return her, rather than being allowed to adopt her, after all. I was so overjoyed with emotion, that I couldn't speak a word when the judge asked me about how I felt about the adoption. All I could muster up were tears of joy.

Her reaction when Mom fell down the stairs the night before our first 4th of July together was not one of sympathy. Instead, she was angry. As I think back to it, I think the reason for this was because this was, yet, another one of those uncontrollable circumstances, which kids who've grown up in orphanages, have experienced way too many times. Thus, she was ticked off that I had to sprain my ankle and ruin what was supposed to be her first, ever, perfect 4th of July.

I think one of the best things that happened to us, which helped ease the transition was getting a pet. We really were blessed that we got a very gentle and easygoing cat who became for Penny a close companion, who loved her with an unconditional love. The sweet kitty didn't care about language barriers and allowed Penny to torment her and always forgave her no matter what.

She actually began to excel at school, too. After all, for the first time, ever, she had parents encouraging her and believing that she could learn and grow. She not only started learning English well, she even learned other foreign languages, like Spanish, German and Chinese and began learning to play the violin, too!

But, one thing we discovered was, that with all of that learning and the many adjustments that she was going through, Penny needed a HUGE amount of sleep! Not only was it due to her adolescent brain, but it takes a lot to adjust to a whole new language and culture and to heal from early childhood trauma.

So, I tried to let her sleep as much as she needed. The above picture was taken when she was going through a week-long illness involving a high fever. It was really scary to be a mom for the first time and see your child suffering from such a high fever for such a long time!

But, she did start to adjust! And it helped that another classmate of hers was also adopted at about the same time, also as a teenager.

And it helped, too, knowing that our neighbor girl was adopted, too.

But, it was still sometimes easy to have angry, hurt, irrational feelings of jealousy if Mom ever paid any attention to any other baby, even if it was her second cousin. After all, she was still learning about who relatives were. You can see in this photo that she did NOT want Mom to pay any attention to a cute baby.

But, she did get along well with her first cousins who were a few years younger than her and who were girls.

The above and below photos were taken of our first Christmas together in America. It came a year later than we expected, since we had been delayed in Thailand the year before. But, perhaps we needed that extra bonding time together in her homeland before being overwhelmed by new relatives.