Adoption Musings

In this space and in real life, I’ve been pretty transparent about being an adoptive dad. But I don’t often share much about what it’s like to be an adoptive dad. Not particularly interested in delving into every intimate detail, but thought that even a cursory take would be interesting to put down in writing.

Parenting is so fraught, being responsible for a little human being and then watching them grow up and make decisions that you may or may not approve or that downright terrify you. Kids are a wild card from the moment they burst onto the scene all the way through their pre-teen and teen years. It is a trial that can test the sanity of even the most grounded person.

But when you have kids biologically, you have largely controlled the pre-natal period. And your kids are basically an amalgam of yourself and the person you made them with, which means they literally inherit much of the collective you: mannerisms, looks, predilections, strengths, foibles, and all. Which is not to say that they are predictable; far from it. But, these things are quite familiar to you because they came from you.

Adoptive kids may live under your roof, but genetically they have their own characteristics that may be foreign to you. Amy and I marvel at this all the time, with both good and bad traits that are nothing like how we were as kids.We have to remember that things that came naturally to us as kids may be foreign to our own kids. And we beam with pride at ways they shine that we could never have when we were their age. Like much of parenting, it's wonderful and maddening and takes your breath away sometimes.

Importantly, one way our childhoods were different from theirs is that we did not grow up as adoptive kids. We can give them language and empathy about how being adopted is a beautiful and worthy part of their identity story. But we cannot directly empathize with their lived experience because it was not ours. And there are days we feel that limitation, as I’m sure they do or will.

Adoption is a beautiful way to make a family and I would not trade it, or any of our kids, for the whole world. Indeed, part of the beauty is having a front-row seat to the maturation process of someone who is not from you but who God has put into your life to love and cheer on. What a sacred responsibility and precious joy. Yet what a bewildering experience it can be at times.