Growing Up Adopted.from a teen's point of view.
Many people tell me that I look like my mother; they say that the shape of our faces are similar, and that we have the same nose and mouth. These comparisons are quite amusing to me, considering my mother and I aren't biologically related. Growing up adopted: I am one of the 1.6 million children under the age of 18 adopted in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Like many of these children, I was adopted from infancy in a private adoption without the involvement of a professional agency, and like many, I wonder about my origins. Growing up as an adopted child has left me with many unanswered questions. I have, what seems to me, a pretty normal family: Christmas with my grandparents and extended family, parents who walked me to the bus stop when I was little and drove me to my soccer game every Saturday. But, like most teenagers, I am moody and pick fights with my parents. We have all the arguments of "normal" families, like why they won't let me go out Friday night or why I can't have friends over until I do my homework. I wonder, though, if my attitudes and emotional roller coasters are more than just the normal, hormonal tangents of adolescence, or if they have any connection to the fact that I am adopted. "Everyone I know who is adopted has had emotional setbacks," claims senior Elzmarie Eckert, who was also adopted at infancy. Eckert also believes she had a pretty normal childhood. She recalls when she would sit on her father's lap every Saturday night to watch Xena; Warrior Princess, and say "I'm going to sit here every night, Daddy, even when I go away to college." The nights of daddy and Xena, however, haven't even lasted through high school. Eckert no longer believes she has a normal "parent-daughter" relationship with her parents, and sometimes thinks that it may be due to their lack of biological bonds. "There are just too many differences between us," says Eckert. I want to believe that I don't use my adoption as an excuse to place a wall between myself and my parents, yet sometimes I feel as if I am unable to communicate as well, and lack the child-parent bond that seems to come more naturally to biologically-related families. However, according to clinical social worker Karen Schulz, the fact of adoption doesn't cause emotional or psychological problems. "Everyone is different; it's an issue among many that people are trying to understand, but to say what causes the problems is complex," she says. Junior Samuel Morris, adopted from China at the age of one, does not believe that his adoption has caused any difficulties between the members of his family. "My life seems normal as it is," explains Morris. "I don't remember the time before I was adopted, so there is no reason for me to be unhappy now. I get along with my parents as well as any of my friends [get along with their parents]." Schulz believes the relationships between parents and their adopted children have to be analyzed on a person-by-person basis. "Some adoptees do have a more difficult time bonding with their parents, and some don't," claims Schulz. However, she admits that the only thing that children who are biologically related to their parents have that adopted children don't is genetic material, and "that is a very important bond."
By Betsy Costillo, Page Editor
...the full article can be read here
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