“There must be something wrong with me if my own birthmother wouldn’t keep me.” I’ve heard this expressed in adoption circles many times. Interestingly, I’ve only ever heard this from adults involved in adoption. Birth parents, adoptive parents, others will wonder if this is what adopted children might think. I’ve never actually heard this statement from an adopted child of any age. (I’m sure this is not because it’s never been the feeling of an adopted child. I’m only noting that in all of the adopted children I’ve had or heard of, I’ve not heard this comment.)

When I’ve heard this comment discussed, it’s always regarding situations where the adopted child was very young when placed into the adoptive family. The concern is, I suppose, that the child will wonder that was something inherently wrong with him that his birth mother didn’t “want” to parent him from the get-go. (For more discussion on this idea, try these blogs: Birth/First Parents, Adoptee Blog or this post on the Open Adoption Blog titled Questions) I’ve considered this thought as it impacts younger adopted children. However, today I gave more consideration that a child adopted from another country at an older age might not also feel this way.

A teen daughter of mine and I attend regular therapy with a trained attachment therapist. I’ve done this with many other children, but this one daughter is proving to be a tough, tough child to figure out. She’s so very angry, but loves to pretend life is beautiful. The problem is that faking isn’t one of her finer skills – at least not one that she’s successfully convinced this mom with. In the ongoing search to discover one of this child’s honest feelings, we finally learned a bit today. “There’s something wrong with me.” What would that be? “I don’t know. Ask my mom. Ask my other parents. (This child is ours after a disrupted adoption.) They know everything about me. And your job is to help me, so you should already know what’s wrong with me, right?”

After a little more digging (that’s all she would allow), she clearly revealed that, because she is adopted, there must be something wrong with her. She couldn’t stay in the same place, with the same mother, for her whole life. This somehow equates to my bright-minded 15yr old girl that something must be wrong with her.

I feel like a giant window opened up today as to what might be going on for this girl of mine. As suspected, her anger is directed at herself. What I didn’t realize was the extent that this has to do directly with the act of her adoption. Self-deprecation is not just an issue for those adopted as babies….older adoptees with totally different adoption scenarios also may feel that their adoption happened because something was wrong with them.

Now, adoptive mom needs to find some ways to help adopted child with this issue that is new to us although not new to the world of adoption.

(A blog series written in interview with another older daughter coming from a disrupted international adoption can be found here: Caroline's Story of Russian Adoption, Disruption, and Re-Adoption