What Children Forgot

"In their dealings with children adults do not become egotistic but egocentric. They look upon everything pertaining to a child's soul from their own point of view..."

I finished a book yesterday titled "What Alice Forgot." I found it wildly fascinating. The plot centers around a woman who faints during a workout at the gym and wakes up thinking it is 1998 when, in reality, it is 2008. She has forgotten ten years of her life. Throughout the course of the book it becomes glaringly obvious that much has changed about her life in the last decade and very little of it is for the better - hers or anyone she knows. The hard part in reading her rediscovery of these changes is how shocking each revelation is to her. She has no time to deal with or process the changes as she encounters them. She isn't "participating" in these changes as she regains her memory - they're just being presented to her by other people, other people who know what happened, what steps were taken to move forward, and how life is different since the changes. And throughout the book they continually project their own emotions about the situations on to Alice since she can't remember them. She is forced to learn about and accept these life altering changes through the eyes and ears and perceptions of other human beings.

And so it is with our children. They're told mom and dad are divorcing and how to feel about it. They're told mom is going back to work outside the home and how to feel about it. They're told dad got a promotion at work and won't be home as often and how to feel about it. They're told Grandma died and how to feel about it. They're told another baby is going to be born or siblings are being adopted and how to feel about it. And who does the telling gets the pleasure of forming the "how to feel about it" part. For whatever reason, it's like we believe our children aren't able to live out these changes with us. Sadly, though, accepting change and living through change to see the other side (especially difficult change) is a life skill children aren't born with. So if we don't teach them, how will they learn?

Let me share a very personal example with you. For those of you unaware, our family has recently adopted two African American children out of the Arkansas foster care system. This is a decision that was formed over several years and actively pursued since November of last year. When we began the actual, formal process of adopting, we talked with our biological children about the decision. We tried, as best as possible and appropriate, to keep them informed about the process and how it was going. They had lots of questions and we answered those as best we could, even if the answer was "we don't know." We did very well about involving the children in this process right up until the moment the adopted children came to live with us. Then I dropped the ball.

As a mom, I was overwhelmed with the stress and the change taking place in my family. I didn't anticipate feelings akin to post pardem depression (what I now know to be an actual problem called post adoption depression). I wasn't ready to deal with emotions I never knew I would have to face - feelings of inadequacy and insecurities about what we had done. But I was taking all the right steps to deal with these issues and successfully work through this change in my life. And as I was dealing with it, I projected all I was doing onto my children and told them "we're fine." If I could successfully handle the change and the transition period, then everyone and everything would be okay. But what about the other five people in the house? It's not like my husband and the children can "forget" the change and simply wake up a few months down the road to be told by me how it all went. We all have to go through it. We all have to adjust.

I've learned that if I'm exhausted and tired, the four and five year old boys probably are, too, and may need a little grace. If what the seven year old says is annoying to me, it might be annoying to the 11 year old, too, and she needs some space and time alone. As I learn my new routines and patterns, everyone in the house is learning them, too.

One of my biggest outlets for stress and frustration is talking to people in my inner circle. I need that sounding board for all I'm going through and to have people say "you're okay." But I wasn't allowing my children to talk about how they feel. I wasn't even asking. I had several people, several times a day in the beginning, calling and asking how I was. But I never asked my children if they wanted to talk. Steven and I would stay up half the night talking things over, but never ask the children if they had opinions or concerns. We were living their change for them and telling them how to feel about it.

Whatever changes are going on in our family, we don't need to try to live the change for our children. We shouldn't project our emotions and feelings on them. They're entitled to their own view of the situation. They may not (and probably won't) cope just like we would. But they do need to learn to cope and unless they are given opportunities to learn, they will enter adulthood expecting other people to deal with their changes and decisions for them.

Our children don't have memory loss. They're going through these changes at the same time we are. We have to help them learn to live through those changes to see the other side. As parents, we have a wonderful opportunity to set good examples of how to cope and come out stronger. We should be talking with our children about how we handle change, what we do when we feel anxious or worried, and, as scary as it may sound, allow them to see our struggles from time to time. Then it won't be about what we hope they "forgot" but so much more about what they learned.