child not given up, but taken

Always interesting to me when old, OLD threads pop up :) I originally wrote on this thread in 2004. My sons were then 8 and 9 ... now 12 and almost 14. We took my 13 year old to reunite this summer - and yesterday I was cleaning out an under the stairs closet and asked him if he wanted his "file" because it was easy to access. His answer - is it big? Yes its big. Would I have to read it all? Yes, well its all information. Do I know everything? yes you know everything. Ok then no, just leave it in there. So my advice -- now all these years later is pretty much the same. Be HONEST -- even brutally honest, and know that the truth with eventually come out, but be COMPASSIONATE and supportive at the same time. Raising kids that come from troubled backgrounds takes more than love - it takes wisdom, strength, honesty, advocacy etc etc etc

Many women love the children to whom they have given birth, even though the children wound up being removed from them by the courts. Yes, they made some very bad decisions in their lives. Some took drugs. Some stole. Some became prostitutes. Some lost their jobs because they were always drunk. Some made bad choices of husbands and lovers, picking men who were violent and abusive. Some fell so low that they could not afford to buy food. Some even harmed their children, or abandoned them. But deep inside, they loved their kids. Most often, it isn't a very mature love, of course. A lot of the women, themselves, were abused or neglected, or never had role models who taught them about how to nurture children. Many of the women were young when they gave birth, or had mild developmental delays or mental illness, or were around people who treated babies like the dolls they never had, or who had children because they wanted their boyfriends to love them. But on some level, they still loved their children, even when they struck them because "that kid cried all the time", and they didn't have the impulse control to put up with it. Even if it was the only thing they did right and out of love, they gave their children life.Do these women "deserve" losing their kids, as well as going to prison if they committed acts of abuse or neglect, even if they say they love their children? I don't like the word, "deserve", but yes, because our system of justice cannot just let people go free when they break the law, even if they came from a tough background. And our legal system places a great emphasis on the obligation to ensure that vulnerable citizens, including children and the elderly and the mentally challenged, are protected and provided with appropriate care. If women are unable to appreciate the difference between right and wrong because of mental illness or some other problem, then they need treatment in a secure facility, instead of prison, but they still can't keep their children, if they can't keep them safe. For children in foster care, there is a very strong emphasis on giving their birthmothers a chance to get their lives back on track, before making a decision to terminate their parental rights. But ultimately, if their birthmothers have continuing issues that prevent them from keeping their children safe and taking good care of them, their parental rights will be taken away.In my mind, it's not hard to tell a child that, from all you know of his/her situation, his/her birthmother probably loved him very much, and probably still loves him/her. However, even adults make very bad decisions occasionally, or have such serious problems that they can't keep a child safe and give him/her proper care. If you know any specifics about the child's case, when he/she reaches an age where he/she is intellectually and emotionally mature enough to process the information, you can give a lot more details; your child deserves to know the truth. But that truth needs to include the fact that most mothers love the child who comes out of their bodies and carries half of their genes, but quite a few mothers, despite their love, are not capable of providing a safe and caring home for him/her, so that the child needs another family in order to reach his/her full potential.I also agree heartily with the poster who stated that it's important to say, "Your birthparents could not take care of any child," rather than, "Your birthparents couldn't take care of you," because having parental rights terminated has almost nothing to do, in most cases, with that particular child. Yet many children feel that they "caused" their birthparents to relinquish them or caused them to lose their parental rights, just as they often believe that they were the cause of a parental divorce, a foreclosure on their home, etc. Kids take things very personally, but they need to understand that THEY didn't make the bad decisions or do the unsafe things that caused their Moms and Dads to lose their parental rights. As soon as a child has the intellectual and emotional maturity to process it, adoptive families should give him/her honest explanations of the events that led to his/her removal from the home, and should be reminded that, while his/her birthparents almost certainly loved him/her and still do, the things they did, and that they may still do, showed that they were not capable of raising a child.Sharon