“With foster care and adoption, you become a mother suddenly“
“They arrived when they were already big, they had wounds that still have not closed today “
“You want to be a mother as much as you can, but you don’t seem to be able. Everyone gives you advice, I did not understand anything anymore. When you become naturally, things are learned little by little. Sometimes I felt lost.“
Luciana Littizzetto, Italian comedy actress, shock jock and humour writer.
The adoption process is a long journey that the couple goes through to become parents. The process begins with interviews with social workers, bureaucracies and courtrooms. A tortuous path that often does not leave parents in the making the possibility of giving birth to their children from their own minds. As many testimonies tell us, we find ourselves, parents, from one day to the next.
Going back to being children is also not that simple. One is pervaded, at best, by the sense of having been abandoned, no matter what the reasons are. Children considered adoptable are people who have the trauma of abandonment behind them. Unfortunately, situations of abuse and neglect are not uncommon. How can you trust someone else again?
New parents are called upon to create a good enough environment where children can feel safe again.
Parental figures must express their maternal function (the maternal function does not belong only to the woman!) Through the translation of the non-meaningful experiences experienced by children. They are often too small for their minds to process what is happening in and around them. The self-representation of children going through these experiences is very fragile. A strong sense of precariousness and an underlying fear of a new abandonment is established within them. Babies can express these feelings in many ways. They may have a provocative oppositional behaviour, or on the contrary, be very complacent and realise the unconscious and undeclared wishes of the new parents (for example, perform very well in school, perfectly support the family culture, use a certain type of strongly desired attitude from parents, etc). If in the first case the parents’ frustration and unsuccessful attempts lead them to turn to professionals for psychological intervention, in the second case we tend to think that everything is fine, with the risk of leaving the child alone in his own suffering.
Another challenge faced by parents and children is the anguish of not knowing what happened before the adoption. Often it is not possible to reconstruct the stories which these children had to face before the formation of the new family. All these experiences remain a distressing presence in the minds of children who are unable to digest such experiences.
We can say that the encounter between children and adoptive parents is the encounter between two traumas. The trauma of biological non-parenting faced by parents and the trauma faced by children who have experienced abandonment and have a strong need (and right) to be present in the mind of a significant other.
This process requires great mental resources on the part of parents, and often a psychological journey can help both parents and children to take care of their traumas and injuries.
To find out more, contact me.
Dr Vanessa Pozzali 