I really like the way you handle talking about these issues with your kids. It would have helped me tremendously as a child to be told, “Your Mom was very wrong to do that and you did not deserve to be treated that way”.

Take care,

- Faith

“I tell my kids that I am thankful for the birthmothers because without them I wouldn’t the kids I have, but I hate the things they did to my kids.”

I think this is a good perspective to have.

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“You can point out to a child that the way an adult handled something is wrong, without having to trash that adult or simply saying that the adult is wrong alltogether.”

I am looking forward to reading your post on this topic. I, personally, needed to hear that my mother was wrong. I chose the example I did because it was relatively mild. My mother did much worse things, including ongoing abuse. Another example was when I told her that I was considering committing suicide. She thought it was funny and made fun of this at church, saying how ridiculous it was that children would go to this length to get attention. Fortunately, a friend’s mother overheard this and intervened. Without her intervention, I might not still be alive today.

In my opinion, she was wrong altogether. You ALWAYS take a child’s suicidal comments seriously (and I was dead serious). If a child is lying about this to get attention, then clearly the child has issues.

I am very interested in reading your views on this topic on your blog. :0)

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“It sounds like your mother did not know how to handle her own loss, and she was trying to control how you girls were going to deal (or not) with yours too. If you showed any grief or loss, well how could she deal with it? She could not even address her own.”

Her sanity snapped when my father passed away. Her sanity was always tentative, but it snapped altogether when he died. She was audibly hearing messages from God, and her mood swings were off the charts. I tried to tell other people this, but they did not “hear” me because she was my mother. This is one reason I feel so passionately about this topic.

Thanks for the hugs. It actually does not hurt any more because I have dealt with the pain and grieved the losses. It is nice for the wounds to now only be scars.

Thanks again for the comments, everyone!!

- Faith

When we have spoken to my adopted stepson about some of the abuse and neglect that he has gone through, we talk about how it made him feel, other choices that could have been made, if he were an adult and faced with the same situation what choice he would have made, and how even adults make mistakes. We have never excused her behavior, but we have also done our best as he has gotten older to show him some of the reasons that she is the way that she is, such as her own unstable childhood. We have tried to show him that just because a person makes bad choices, it doesn’t always make them a bad person.

I may have to write abou this today, you really got me thinking about this topic, I too suffered through an abusive childhood, and my father ended up commiting suidice once my mom was able to remove all of us from the situation.

I tell my kids that I am thankful for the birthmothers because without them I wouldn’t the kids I have, but I hate the things they did to my kids.

You and I both know what our kids lived, because we lived it too. They need to hear that what was done to them was wrong.