ADULT CHILDREN

My mind has been heavy in thought these last few months. I have really been thinking a lot about our adult children. Merrill and I have come to the conclusion that raising children that have some sort of disability is the easier part. The harder part is learning how to accept the fact that they become adults with a disability. It is painful on many levels.

We have seen marriages that do not last, relationships that are often painful, their children neglected and then their rights taken away and their children now adopted by someone else. We have had to go to court to keep our grandparents rights, but reality is, rights or not, the "new family" often wants to forget about the "old family". Face it, as parents of adopted children, we know all to well that path is easier.

Some have gone to prison, several to jail, one is "wanted" and another one registers. It is a very hard and vicious cycle for them. Jobs come and go, mostly they do not work. They have done drugs and have fought their addictions, sometimes winning and sometimes loosing.

Important life events are not important to the adult children. They get married without telling us, they move across country without telling us. Things like Father's Day and Mother's Day as well as birthdays and nearly all holidays are forgotten. The one exception is often their birthdays.

It is still painful, but at one time it hurt so much more than it does now. Now, as with so many other things, we have come to accept that is how their FAS brain works. That is what drugs did to them while in utero. It is how an adult with mental handicaps does life. That must be what Reactive Attachment Disorder looks like now that they are grown up.

I wonder what their future holds. Will it still be full of pain? Will they ever come to have the family I always thought that they would have? Will they ever see beyond themselves and their needs? Will they ever be able to really take care of themselves? Are they able to understand that a family is always and not just when you need them? Can they ever see the value of having parents and siblings? Have they cut each other off so much that there is no mending fences? Do they care? Will there ever be such a thing as trust with them? Will they ever hold down a real job?

I do not have the answers to any of these questions. They are just what I spend my time thinking about. I love each and every one of our children. Maybe that is why this journey takes on a new pain when they cross that threshold into adulthood. There is no turning back the clock. Sometimes I do long to hold them, laugh with them, mother them, show them the way. Those days are gone. It is their road, their pathway, their destiny.

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