Adoption.

[Shimatoree]

I have often wondered about adoption of young children by other famiies.
How does one handle the issue of rejection by one’s own biological parents when one comes to know about it.
The simple answer is that it depends on each individual. An intelligent sensistive person can be devastated and this problem can haunt them for all their life even though they might be able to function very close to normal on surface.

I spoke with a psychiatrist about this topic and he agreed to discuss one such case with me. Here is the short history of the man.


Ricardo Gueterriez was born at the Mission Hospital in San Pablo, Mexico.As an infant he was given up for adoption by his un wed mother and was adopted by Jermain and Melissa Gueterriez who lived on a small farm. Their house had no running water, no electricity, no telephone and no inside bathroom.

Ricardo learned his work ethic from his parents(adopting) and in addition to other things he learned to drive his father’s tractor at 5. He went to a one room school and rode his horse 2 1/2 mile to and fro from school. After graduating from is school, he went to his high school next which was 20 miles away. He lived with some other students in a room and returned to his parent’s home to help with the farm work on weekends.
After high school, he went to college first in pre-engineering but then shifted to pre medical. He sang in the church choir and graduated with Major in Chemistry and biology.

He needed help with the expenses of his ambitious education plan. So he saved money by living in a local Children’s home for delinquent children and he mentored and helped with their education. He worked also in construction in his spare time like paving the roads, building metal grain bins, building caskets, driving gravel trucks. He worked also a s night watchman, a driver for dairy delivery and a cleaning man for a bar.

After gradation, he married his college class mate who was a nurse . Ricardo wanted to become a doctor and both husband and wife worked to make that possible. After graduating from medical school he returned to practice in a town near his parent’s farm where he lived and practiced for 25 years when he retired.

Two years later he had a heart attack and by-pass surgery following which he became chronically depressed. Ten years later, one day he had a stroke and die a few days later.

Ricardo never got over the trauma of having been given up for adoption. It was as though something was always eating at him. He was a great friend , a jolly individual who told many jokes, laughed a great deal and made others laugh.
In spite of all of that and the success that he able to achieve in his life, there was melancholy about him. While in the operating room, in between his cases, he would be lost somewhere while waiting.
But he was able to cope with his demons, till he had his by-pass surgery.
That stressful incident BROKE his HEART so to say and he came face to face with his adoption. He was advised to find his biological parents and he agreed to file the paper work. He found his mother and two brothers who were thrilled to know about him, but Ricardo was not able to bring his heart and soul back to life.

He existed for another 10 years.........and then he had his stroke and he died.

At the church prayer services after his death, one of his close friends was asked about what he knew about him.
The friend replied........quote

“ Ricardo died when he retired as once again in his life he was separated from the only close friends he had..........his patients. Once he retired, he went back into the emotional and psychological stress that he had lived all his life.........the fact that he was given up for adoption by his mother” end of quote

[Mirza Ghalib]

Shim, Don't know why you alighted on this particular topic, but since you have, here goes. I don't think any hard and fast rules on adopted children and adoptive parents can be drawn. In my eyes, biological parents and adoptive parents are strictly on the same level in the scheme of things. Some are excellent and some execrable. Since my own parents were not the sort to be recommended as parents to anyone, I took against the whole thing from the very start. But my personal problem was I loved and still love children. So by the age of ten or so, I'd decided the only kind of children I was ever going to have would be adopted ones. And that was one childhood principle I never wavered in. Our daughter today is a mature woman and herself the mother of a child. In all the years since she first came into our lives at the age of two months has she ever manifested any sense of missing out on parental love. And she is devoted to her parents in ways that most of her contemporaries know nothing about. And, for me as no doubt for her, the distinction between adoptive and biological parents simply does not exist and has never done so. I know someone else on this blog who has an adopted child. Don't know whether he'd care to come and give us his views on the subject.

And now my question to you Shim: Just what justifies the widely held view by the public that biological parents are in any way superior to adoptive ones?

BTW: My daughter is both an intelligent and a sensitive person.

[Khan_Sahib]

Very Interesting topic Shimatoree Sahib,

I happened to be a parent of an adoptive son. I have 2 kids of my own and we adopted a kid from our own family whose parents died one after another in a short span of 2 years. The kid was 9 yrs old so he was aware that we are not his biological parents.

My view on difference between between biological and adopted parents is that, "It varies"
There is no set standard criteria to differentiate between them and none of them are by any way superior or better then the other. Most of the kids with biological parents (If they are illiterate, ignorant or simply idiots) are neglected or forced into customs, rituals or pushed into forced marriages, forced occupation just to please their parents false ego, to comply with the ridiculous social, cultural, ethnic or simply peer pressure on parents.

I can go on and on this topic as I have seen a lot of broken homes, highly educated kids being pushed to marry illiterate cousins (This also makes a difference between biological parents vs adopted parents as adopted kids are usually held precious and not usually not forced in any way..) My late father was a typical Pathan... Very gentle but he could lose his cool with in seconds but i have to admit that he was very atypical pathan as it was very rare that he would be angry. (Most of the time he got angry when i would not study or have bad grades in which case, I would get proper beating ....
But most of the adopted families, I used to see were very sensitive to their kids and I used to see this difference in almost every adopted family.

In my own home, me and my wife treat him equally (he goes to same private school as my other kids and he goes on all his school trips etc) BUT I must admit that, it was very difficult for him to adjust in our family. We are very self sufficient, independent family where my 10 (then 10) years old son will get up in the morning and get ready for his school, where my daughter who was about to be 16 still would ask permission from my wife, if she could use the internet and both had to comply with strict curfew time (Lights off at 9.30 p.m. ...) So initially my adopted son gave us a tough time .... (Won't listen, won't talk much, won't smile, won't ask for anything) but with in 2 years Mashallah, he has transformed and now have gelled very well with us. He now smiles, chuckles, discuss his school day, asks me of my day, ask for toys/holidays and now after this experience, we are ready for another adoption. (Any one can help us as we are looking for an infant, toddler girl this time

Saying all this, I as a doctor, still think that he does have some deeper issues and we are planning to take him to a child psychiatrist / Psychologist as he had a very painful time around his parents death. In my humble view, biological parents (not all but most of them sadly..... if you raise your bar above the so called, usual upbringing of our kids per our culture) take their kids for granted and non-biological parents are usually very sensitive to the needs of their kid.

Coming to the emotional dilemma of the adopted kid, I think that any adopted kid should have an input from a psychologist at an early stage (To have a closure..... Closure is very important in any kind of loss...... specially the loved ones..)

In the end.... I have a comment on the story posted here.. Being a heart surgeon, I know that "Depression" after cardiac surgery is "Normal" and is a "recognized" complication after open heart surgery (Different topic ... http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/27/healt ... wanted=all) Ideally he should have been seen by a Psychiatrist for that depression (I think at that time, this complication was not known to cardiac surgeon's either! http://heartdisease.about.com/library/w ... 21901a.htm ) and his death / stroke was again the usual end point for these patients. After all, we all have to die even in old age, of some disease! (Bottom line: his death has nothing to do with a broken heart though it was contributed by heart disease/surgery)

Would love to hear others views on this sensitive topic....

[Shimatoree]

Mg

I brought this story up because though the names are changed, the story is true.......each and every word of it is true. I knew this ENT surgeon for 38 years myself and he became a great friend of mine. I knew early on that he had " ISSUES" long before his heart surgery and as time went on.........I sort of got a sense of where the problem lay.........it lay in HIS view of what had transpired in his infancy. In my view he died when he had his heart attack /heart surgery. The rest of his life consisted of existing.

Now as to your comments about adoptive parents..........I am in 100 % agreement with you that MOST( not all) adoptive parents are very good and that is simply because they are PARENTS by strict CHOICE, desire and design........and maybe just a bit more sensitive because they do not have the feel of OWNERSHIP.
I also agree with you that a lot of biological parents are not very good at all.

Having said all of that, I think that we must look at the YEARNINGS of the adopted child for wanting HIS/HER "OWN" .......the sense of a just a little bit of alienation esp if they had been given up for adoption........an issue of SELF WORTH intertwined with rejection. It would take a long time with very intelligent, understanding thoughtful people around to be able to learn to cope with trauma such as that.-( for a sensitive soft soul)-.

As to why I placed this story.........well I do not go to funerals but I went this time...........and I sat on this story for a while......and then one day the end of Ramadan made me do it as Eid was coming and I thought about this guy on Eid.
Someone made me write the stuff.

Khan _sahib

To reply to you, I need a bit of time.

[Mirza Ghalib]

OK, Shim, thanks a lot. If it was for personal reasons you wrote your piece, I understand completely and can only say you were right to bring up the matter.

And I'm so glad Khan_Sahib came on too and described his own experiences. I'm not a great believer in psychiatry, psychology, etc. myself, so I shouldn't encourage anyone to go down that path. But that is purely a personal matter. Anyone thinks psychiatry can help in any given situation, sure they should go ahead and make use of it. Apart from that, I think I said all I had to say on the subject the first time round. Nothing much to add, unless it be this: If you as a parent see no difference whatsoever between biological and adopted offspring, chances are your kids will grow up with the same attitude of non-differentiation.

[Mirza Ghalib]

Jacky Barren, hello. You really floored me with that question of yours. Freedom and liberty, two of the hardest things one can attempt to define. But let's try at least. The first thing is of course that neither is absolute, but relative only. Then both are subject to a certain set of rules. The rule of law as we call in today but which has gone by other names in times past. Also natural laws. Which can never be contravened. Much as I might like to fly or live for ever, etc, nature will not allow us to do so. So that puts an end to any notion of unlimited freedom any of us might hold.

Freedom implies all the choices which we human beings are faced with in our lives, choices which we should be able to exercise without any intervention of the arbitrary on the part of those in power. The arbitrary might only then be justified if by choosing a person puts his own life in danger (drugs is a case in point) or that of others (ownership of unjustified weapons, terrorism, etc.). In such cases it is the duty of the State to intervene and keep its citizens in line. Otherwise we should move through life without any outside intervention whatsoever. Unless our behaviour happens to clashe with existing law. Then we lose and the law wins - and rightly so.

Liberty then is the space and structure in which we can exercise our right to freedom without outside intervention. If we look at it in the political context alone, our freedom dictates our right to protest if we feel that we as a people are not being treated as we should be. A government can never be allowed to be all powerful. A government is not allowed to harm the majority of its citizens to the benefit of a very small minority, etc., etc. I'm not talking about dictatorship versus democracy here. Many a dictator has proved more considerate of his people than many a so-called democratic government.

So there we are. If you yourself feel you are not living in a free country, Jacky, then let us hope you find like-minded people to join up with to fight the tainted powers that be whose only task consists of depriving us in every way of the freedom which was given to us as our birthright.