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Originally Posted by cnb1099
As an adoptee who is about 6 months into reunion I thought it would be interesting to hear from others in reunion. My question is this..if you could give just one piece of advice to those who are awaiting reunion or first face to face, something you wish someone would have said to you before your rollercoaster ride, what would it be?
Mine is this: You will really have to learn and comprehend the concept of patience. I thought having 2 small children that I knew all about being patient. Then I was reunited and found out that I had none whatsoever. There is no timeframe on a reunion, and everything happens at its own pace and it is different for everyone. So slowly, very slowly for me, I am coming to terms with the hurry up and wait game. But in the long run it the relationship we will build will be worth the wait.
I would love to hear from all sides of the triad on this!
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I decided up front I would be honest about fears, hurts.. no tears until off the phone or alone.
But if I was scared to say something, I told my son I was scared, or asked permission.
We were very lucky he and I, he said it was alright to give advice. Though I was slow to do so and careful how I said things.
I do skirt around some issues and ask questions backwards when I have doubts about something.
What I mean by that. My son 43, spanks his boys.
Why? In my personal experience most people who have never been spanked do not spank their children.
In our first conversation he says to me, "my dad (adad) was an alcoholic who beat my mom but never hit me."
How many abusers never touch other members of the family? Not many.
So the first time I saw him spank his boys, I knew that he had to have been spanked. Just the way he did it.
I was a spanked child, black and blue by my mother. Yes, I did spank my kids, but I never bruised them.
Flash forward 10 years into our union. He is still spanking his boys, now 12 & 10.
I said, you need to stop hitting the boys, they are too old. It won't be that long when the older boy will turn on you. He said he worries about that a little.
My response, a asking but not asking question.
Do you think you hit the boys becasue your dad hit you, do you think? He said, maybe.
How old were you that last time your dad hit you? His response, I don't want to go into that.
He did not deny it, he didn't say it never happened.
He didn't go all, how can you think that.
I wager 15, that was when he went to live with his amom again.
We sometimes won't talk about the bad things no matter how much we want to know.
Or even the good things.
The point, and there is one, sometimes you wait a long time for information. Sometimes that is good, if some had admitted that his adad beat him I might not have handled it well in the being of the reunion.
After all, the adoptive parents were supposed to be better then me, weren't they?
It turns out, the only thing better about them, they had more money.
They weren't any better at parenting then I was.
I married at 17 and had two more children by 19. So, yes,. I can say without a shadow of doubt, they were no better parents then I was.
At least, I had age as an excuse for the stupid things I did to my kids, the aparents were in their late 30s, they had no excuse at all.