AP's: Do You Sometimes Feel Like Everyone's Mother Here?

Yes. Thank you for this question. (*)

I feel that I am a great Mom to my son- you know what, I'm just going to say it: I AM A GREAT MOM TO MY SON. He is so awesome and I love him more than anything and everything else in this world. I could talk about him ALL DAY. I love it when he's being good, I love it when he's being a stinker-pot, I love him when he's testing my last nerve or when he's planting those extra gray hairs on my head and I love that he is who he is.

I don't have to prove anything to anyone in here and I do agree with the statements in your question. With that said, I have learned alot in here. So, I continue to stay, and roll with the punches, so to speak.

When I first met my daughter, it was wonderful to meet her. It did take us some time to bond with each other. The country she's adopted from has parents do a "bonding period" first before your court date, and so I only could visit her once a day for 2 hours per day for the first 2 and a half weeks. She wasn't used to attention or love at all, so she was not too responsive initially. In the beginning I did feel love for her, but it was kind of the way I love any child I am in regular contact with. I didn't feel that mother's love until our 24 hour plane ride home. She slept on my chest the whole first flight, which was 7 hours. somehow it was there that the bond which had been growing solidified and turned into something greater and more powerful. From there it's just grown and grown, and I'm so happy to be her mom and that we're so close. I've never felt that she wasn't my child, but it did take some time to have that bond that's between a mother and her child.

Hmm, no, I don't feel like mother to the people here (well, except sometimes the teenagers that want to adopt ayap twins and such). Most of the regulars seem to be about my same age. And the adult adoptees already have 2 mothers, at least, so it would seem rather presumptuous for me to be yet another.

I get that that isn't exactly what you are asking, though. But I truly do not feel responsible for anyone elses issues -- or as if anyone has been suggesting that I should be. I guess being here has made me even more aware of my responsibility as an adoptive mother to my own child, so it has made me feel "held accountable" as a mother, but not to those here, just to my daughter. And I am also more aware of the pain that my daughter may feel as an adoptee -- pain that is not my responsibility and that I cannot fix -- but only support my daughter in her feelings and help her to make her own journey.

I AM very careful about the thoughts that I express here and the way that I say them. Some of that, I'll admit, is because I don't want to face negative judgements from people whose opinions I respect. But mostly it is for my own sake, and my daughter's, because figuring this stuff out for myself, proactively, will help me to be a better adoptive parent.

I couldn't have said it better than Cam or Angelcuddle, but I'll give it a shot. I have never felt that anyone here has accused me personally of being responsible for their pain. I do feel that it is my responsibility to learn from that pain and improve my own view of adoption, change the way I plan to raise my children so that I am more sensitive, more responsive, more able to see the world from their point of view. It is very much my responsibility to learn from the feelings that adoptees have. You don't have that issue, having been surrounded by adoption so much of your life. But do I feel as though I'm being blamed for someone else's pain? Absolutely not. I feel that the adoptees here are placing responsibility for parenting firmly where that responsibility belongs...on AP's. I embrace my responsibility as a future AP. I think it is BECAUSE I embrace that responsibility that it doesn't bother me one tiny little bit when an adoptee says, "how will YOU handle this?" It IS my responsibility to think of those things that hurt adoptees, and figure out what I should do when my children are in that position.

I feel like I'm just rambling, so I'll go. Hope that made sense. Oh, and I didn't mean to imply that anyone who feels anything other than what I feel SHOULD feel what I feel, or act the way I act. This answer pertains to me and me alone, and is not a reflection on the way I think of any other AP here.

ETA: I'm totally with Momof5girls, they've got enough people treating them like children. I'm not joining in.

You are only responsible for providing a happy, stable, loving home enviroment. With that being said, your adoptive child's life stories regarding their adoption are theirs alone, and when they become adults they should have the right and choice to decide if they want that information. As an adoptive parent you do not have that right to deny them information once they become a legal adult. That is where i get upset with adoptive mothers on here sometimes, they think it is okay to deny their children information surrounding their adoption,even if they become adults. That it is okay to say things: "be grateful you were adopted" or "be grateful you were not aborted". When i hear adoptive parents say this, it hurts to the core.

Nope. Its my understanding that most adoptees feel like a perpetual child. So parenting them would be the last thing i'd try, besides i'm busy with my own 5 girls.

I don't feel accountable or responsible for anyone elses actions nor do i feel that any one person has made me feel that way. I have to respectfully disagree on this one:)

Actually no, I don't feel like everyone's mother. While I have learned a few things and have empathy for other's here I've never felt responsible for their pain or happiness. Other people made the decisions in their life...not me.

I'm a great mother to a fantastic child. Nurturing her spirit and well-being is the most important thing to me. That's what I'm held accountable and responsible for. Yea, I would like to talk about that more but I've found this isn't the place to do that.

Great question.

As an adopted person, I can assure you that the only people who annoy the hell out of me are the ones who dismiss adoptees who don't fit into their idea of what an adoptee should be. It doesn't matter if they are AP's, PAP's, other adoptees, or anyone else.

Oh ya, and people who think that babies should magically rain from the sky into their already prepared nurseries.

As for whether or not I think anyone here is responsible for MY feelings? No, I don't remember anyone here being there when my life happened.

I like to be annoyed at people based on their own merit.

NO!

I am responsible for no ones issues but my own.

People can take my answers or leave them...I really don't care. I have one person to answer to whose opinion matters....my daughter!

I do not find it necessary to defend loving her and being her mother. Everyone else abondoned her when they moved on with their life!

Good question and thanks!

Interesting question. I can't say I have ever thought this way though.