[Alison_inPA]

I think we were reasonably well prepared by our agencies (plural because we were "trained" in two different hosting programs) for a whole array of problems. Nothing was in-depth, but the basic ideas were introduced so that we'd know what the problems were when we encountered them. As I've said on FRUA recently, though, I wish we'd been given very specific instructions on how to deal with a panicked on tantruming older child safely. When you need this information, you need it fast and many people I know needed it from the very first day in Russia with their older children. Jim and I also did a lot of reading and discussing the issues with various people with experience in the process, so we went beyond what the agencies offered. I think it is the agencies' responsibility to start the education process, but we all bear the responsibility of completing it ourselves.

During the time I've been here, this forum has evolved into a very useful resource on attachment and PI issues, thanks to the efforts of some of you who've been in the struggle. When I first started reading here a year or so ago, that wasn't the case. People seemed very unwilling to talk about anything at all negative, and I think it contributed to an atmosphere where people who were having perfectly normal initial adjustment problems felt isolated and ashamed. I am really grateful to the people here who've helped to change that.

One reason that Jim and I decided to be open about our kids' adjustment problems in our blog is that we got a lot of "oh everything will be fine, you'll be so happy" talk from other adoptive parents (online and IRL). Later, we found out that many of these people had struggled with exactly the same issues we had but had never said anything about it. I don't blame people for not talking about the problems and sometimes, frankly, I think it's probably like labor and delivery -- eventually the memory of the pain fades and you just remember the positives. But I couldn't help but think, during the really difficult early days, that there must be something terribly wrong with our kids or our parenting because it wasn't as easy as those people had made it out to be.