Wouldn't it be terrific if crystal balls could really tell us the future about our children? I am prone to doing what I call "running around inside my head" a lot, too much. Where my children are concerned I can sometimes get caught up in trying to determine their futures by watching their everyday behavior.

When my kids resolve conflict appropriately while they are playing with one another or playing with their friends, I imagine that they will become peacemakers and consensus builders in whatever environment they will find themselves as adults. When they fuss and fight like cats and dogs with no resolution in sight, I fret that they will never learn to be teamplayers and that they will always bounce from one job to the next.

When they break from the pack and make independent decisions, I take that as a sign that they will be able to stand up again peer pressure as teenagers. When they carry on about wanting to go somewhere or do something because that is what everybody else is doing, I become worried that they are as passive as sheep and just as easily led.

It bothers me when I hear people making negative comments about adopted children with absolute confidence as though they were looking into a crystal ball. I wonder if they believe that adoption in and of itself is a type of crystal ball, as if the fact of a child's adoption, somehow, spells out a negative future for the child? A future that is doomed to be fraught with major psychological and emotional issues.

None of us really knows what the future holds for our children. Adoption is not a crystal ball. On the one hand, I understand the argument that adoption is a special circumstance and, therefore, we as adoptive parents must be careful not to stick our heads in the sand about the potential pitfalls that our children can come up against in the future because of it. On the other hand, I see nothing but a bright and promising future for my children devoid of any major issues or concerns. I suspect that the reality is likely to lie somewhere in the middle.