Adoption—the Sacred and the Sorrows: Gary Chapman and Laurel Shaler

If we don't adopt, help the people who are. Do special things for them and for their children.

There's lots of ways, whatever we can do to reach out, because that's what Jesus did, and he's our model. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com.

This is Family Life Today. Well, we started a conversation yesterday with Dr. Gary Chapman, Mr. Five Love Languages, and another doctor, Dr. Laurel Shaler, who's sitting back in our studio. And we're going to apply this Five Love Languages concept to adopted families. What's the title of the book? Loving Adopted Children Well. I loved our conversation yesterday, and I think it's really helpful.

If you missed it, go back and listen to it. But one of the things you get into in the book, like halfway through, is not just how to apply these love languages, but when there's struggles in adoption or in adopted families. And I don't know that. We haven't adopted. We have a son who has two adopted kids. But we've heard stories and stories of struggles with adopted kids.

Well, especially in the teen years, some of those struggles come out. That can be whether they've come into adoption at a later age or maybe they were adopted at birth. Can there be struggles at any stage of their adoption process? Yes, I would say there absolutely can be struggles that come about at any point because the children are still learning their story and they're still processing their story and they're going to get different pieces of information at different stages in their life. And it really does depend on the child. My seven-year-old daughter, she knows that she's adopted and she understands what adoption is and she will ask questions about her adoption story. My four-year-old son, even though it's a part of his story and we tell him that he's adopted and we talk a little bit about that, he doesn't understand it yet at all.

So there'll come a point when he does. But even though they don't yet necessarily know the full story of their adoption, that doesn't mean that the adoption doesn't impact them. It doesn't mean their exposures, the prenatal exposures doesn't impact them because it does.

The things that they experienced while their biological mothers were pregnant with them are going to impact them now and potentially in the future. So I've heard that before, that term in utero. So even when they're within the mother, in her pregnancy, they can still experience trauma.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Any baby can, I guess. Right, any baby can, definitely. And not all women who choose to place their children for adoption are using drugs or alcohol or tobacco. But they're all in some sort of difficult circumstance where they wouldn't choose to place their child for adoption or they wouldn't have their child removed at birth. So in the case of our children, they were both removed from their biological mothers for various reasons. One of them was born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. So the biological mother had to use drugs while she was pregnant. And so as a result of that, this kiddo was born going through withdrawals. So had to go through treatment for that. And it's very difficult and that can have an impact far beyond just those first few weeks of life.

Now, you're both doctors, so I'm guessing you both are experts on this question. Does every adopted child go through some struggle at some point wanting to know their biological parents? I'm not saying, I guess I shouldn't say every, but is it pretty common?

I think it's very common. We of course have been in this adoption world now for over a decade if you include the time prior to us adopting our first child. And I've certainly met some adoptees who are so incredibly grateful for their parents, the ones that adopted them, who became their parents. And not everybody is all tied up in knots about their history or wanting to know their biological parents. But I think that there is still a natural curiosity about who am I? And sometimes the question becomes, where do I belong?

Where do I fit in? I remember meeting a woman at a conference who had several biological children and they had adopted one child. And the struggle for that child was that very question.

How do I fit in here? You know, I'm different. I'm the only one that's been adopted. And the mom just tried and tried to show the child love and really struggled. And that's when we began talking about, well, how does that child best receive love? Have you talked with her about what makes her feel loved? Have you gone through some of these questions where you can compare something that would be attached to words of affirmation versus something that's attached to physical touch to see what does she lean towards?

And it really, from my understanding, got the mom to thinking about, okay, I know I love this child. I know I treat her the same as my other children. But maybe there is a reason to treat her different in the sense of maybe her love language is not the same as these other children.

So I think that it's really important for us to be able to evaluate that and determine what's going to speak the best to each individual child. I mean, Gary, do you think there's any difference in the way an adopted child feels loved by their parents than a biological child? Or are they pretty much the same? Well, I think at the root of all of it, it would be pretty much the same. But I do think there's a pretty vast difference because if that child has gone through a number of things in their life before they were adopted to these present parents, you know, then they've got all these thoughts and feelings and experiences inside of them. And maybe they've been told by other people, I love you, I love you. And then they were abused in certain ways and all of that, you know, just dealing with a lot of stuff. And that's why there is a sense in which the older the child is when they're adopted, the more history they've had. And that history can be positive or a history can be negative. And so parents need to be fully aware as much as they can about what this child has been through.

You don't always know because you don't always have the full information. And that's why building conversations with that child and having open, honest conversations with that child are really, really important to find out the things they've been exposed to since before they came to you. What do the two of you do when you're talking to parents that are just in the midst of struggling with one of their adoptive children? Like they're at their wits end.

They love them. They want the best for them. But how do you give them encouragement?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is, as a professor, I've had students that are completing their internships, and so they're working with individuals or couples, families. And more and more, I've had students that have families in these situations, especially with adolescents or teenagers who are struggling. And one of the things that I tell them not to encourage the parents is to just give them anything that they want. Unfortunately, many times these parents have come to see the counselors and they've said, we give them any anything that they want. And yet they still rebel. They still misbehave and act out. They still, you know, just lock themselves in their room and don't want to have anything to do with us.

Well, that's not the answer. You still have to be a parent. So you can't show them love by just giving in and caving. I think it's the same way with the gifts about not just giving them everything because we sometimes overcompensate. You know, there's so much loss involved in adoption, and sometimes to try to overcompensate for that, we want to just give, give, give. And we should give, but we should do it responsibly in a way that is going to be helpful and meaningful. So it's kind of a backwards answer to your question, but that is something that has come up many times with my students who are seeing these families, is that you can't give them anything that they want and expect that that's going to compensate for what they've lost because there's no way to make up for what they've lost. You have to help them feel a sense of belonging and trust and safety and connection now, and that takes time.

Would you add anything to that, Gary? I think with those adopted children as well, spending time with them and getting to know them is so much a part of the process. Even if they're acting like they don't like you or want to be with you?

Absolutely. And when they're angry, it's letting them talk and ask them questions to clarify what they're saying, rather than saying, don't talk to me that way, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. No, keep asking questions and let them tell you about why they feel the way they feel and why they're behaving the way they're behaving. Because this is one of the ways you build connection with them. They sense that they really hear me. They're listening to me. They're trying to understand me. So I think being big listeners, especially to older children who are able to talk, listening to them and identifying with them and saying, I can see how you would feel that way.

I am so sorry even to realize what you've been through. We want to make the future different. In our family, we want to make the future different. And they'll come to see that you are really making efforts to make things different. But if you try to stop their anger movements and those kind of things and say, don't do that, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, you can preach to them.

You're just like somebody else that doesn't like them. So listening is a huge part of the process. I mean, do you encourage like if you have biological children and adopted one or two, taking the adopted child away on a trip just for them, for them to feel special?

Or is that like, nah, don't do that. Don't treat them differently than your bio kids. Well, I think having special time with each child is very important. Goes back to quality time. And I think that's a time that you don't want to take away regardless of how the child has been behaving. Let's say you have a kid that loves to play basketball and they want you to play basketball with them every night after dinner. Like maybe the house rule is it doesn't matter what kind of day you've had, good, bad and different. We're still going to go and play basketball after dinner because that's our time to connect.

That's my time to hear from you. And I think it takes the pressure off. It's kind of like play therapy, right? There's not as much pressure. You don't have to sit and look me in the eye and tell me everything.

We're just going to have a conversation and chat as we're playing basketball. So I think in more direct response to your question, it's not that you shouldn't take them away. I think you could have special time with each child.

And I think it would be meaningful to do that. Do you ever tell the parents, because I would say this to myself and then to my friends that were parenting teens, don't take it personally. Do you ever say that to the parents? Like sometimes it's not about you.

They're just figuring things out and they're hormonally, everything's shifting. But as a parent, we get our feelings hurt. And I think it's really easy to pull back when our feelings get hurt instead of, as you're both saying, pursue them. Pursue them. Hear their story and don't let their anger push you away. Yeah, absolutely. That's so important in the whole process. And I've had parents say, is there ever a time that you give up? How would you answer that, Laurel?

That's a good question. And there are some extreme cases where on occasion there have been families that have, I've only personally known one family that the adoption did not go well. And the adopted child was a danger to the household. And so they went through the process of finding a different adoptive family.

But that's not what we typically do with our biological children, right? You know, we're in it for the long haul as we should be. So my response was, no, you don't give up. You don't ever give up hope.

Thank God he hasn't given up on us and we don't give up on the children that he's placed into our lives and into our homes. I was talking to my son a few weeks ago and he was in the car with one of his sons who happened to be adopted. And I said, hey, guys, where are you going? And he goes, oh, we're just going to therapy.

And I said, I didn't know you were doing that. And he said, yeah, we both are. And he said, oh, we've been doing this with our son since he's been four years old, which I thought that is so wise. He said, yeah, it's good just to have other voices that are talking to him about his adoption of who he is, of where he belongs.

We tell him that all the time. But sometimes it's good to have another person processing that with him. Would you recommend that too? Even if the child seems like they're fine because he seems like he's great. Yeah, I think it's always helpful. Almost all of us could use counseling. Yes, that's why I told him I should be going.

I wish I was in the car with you. Yeah, another whole issue that we do discuss in the book is when you adopt a child from another culture. Oh, yeah. And sometimes another language as well as that. And that can be even more of a challenge, I think, at times because of the difference in the cultures. Talk about that, Laurel.

Yeah, absolutely. I was just thinking about a family I know. They've adopted two children from Russia, and they've had to overcome those language barriers because they met these children when they were young, but they had already learned the Russian language because they weren't infants. And so they had to then learn English in addition to coming to a new country and experience a whole new culture. I've learned from several friends who were involved in transracial adoptions, trans culture adoptions, that you really want to take the time and energy to invest in learning about the culture of your child or children because we don't want to take them away from that and just say, well, now you're part of my family and my culture, so we're going to let all of your own past go.

You know, instead, that just brings more richness to your own family. And so you can learn about that culture and that heritage and integrate that into the family. And I think that counseling can go a long ways, especially if you can find a counselor that has some background knowledge in that, even if it's just that they've worked with other families in a similar situation. So you want to look for counselors that know about adoption, have expertise in adoption, have expertise in trauma, in play therapy and art therapy. So you want to be cautious about who you go see, but definitely seek out somebody. Do you have any stories of families that have integrated that, like, oh, we do want to learn about your culture?

What does that look like? Yeah, for sure. And sometimes the child themselves is not able to teach you because maybe they're too young, maybe they don't remember, maybe they don't know. So it's really, you know, on us to learn. I have a friend who adopted, she's white and she adopted an African American child, and she has sought out other black mamas to help her with her daughter's hair.

So even if it's something that sounds as simple as that, but it makes a difference because you want to use the right hair products, the right hairstyles. And again, that's just a way that she shows her daughter, hey, I see you for who you are, and I'm not trying to make you look like me, I'm not trying to make you look like the other daughters in my family, but I want you to be you. And so I'm going to learn about this for your benefit. Yeah, talk about your last chapter is called Faith Matters. So where does our walk with God, our faith come into this whole thing, especially I'm guessing when trauma starts to happen, but even without it, where's God in this in your opinion? I think for many people, their relationship with God is what led them to adopt in the first place because they know God cares for the orphans and the widows. We don't normally adopt widows, but we can orphans.

So I think that often is the case. And I think as we do adopt, whether Christians or not, I think Christians have an asset because we have a relationship with God and we can say to God, OK, Lord, I'm having trouble here. I need wisdom. And the Bible says, you ask for wisdom, I'll give you wisdom. And sometimes he gives wisdom through other people, whether it's counselors or friends or somebody else that has an adopted child. But yeah, I think our relationship with God is so important when we're working with adopted children, because God is the one who gives us patience and we need patience.

And he's the one who gives us a listening ear because he has a listening ear. So I think maintaining our walk with God as we seek to parent them, this is true of biological parents, too. I remember when my wife said when our son was a teenager, she said one day, she said, he's your son, you take over now.

We all get exasperated at times, you know. And so I think our relationship with God is extremely important as we raise adopted children. Yeah, I think it all starts with prayer. You have to be super prayerful about pursuing adoption and don't move forward with adoption unless you know that God has called you to adoption because it is a hard journey and it shouldn't be taken lightly. Sometimes one partner in a marriage, usually the wife, really wants to adopt and sometimes the other partner doesn't. And if your husband doesn't want to adopt, you can't force his hand here. It's not wise for your marriage, it's not wise for the children. So you want to make sure that you're both on the same page, that you feel God's call to adopt and that you pursue that seeking him first. Like Matthew 6 33 says, seek first the kingdom of heaven.

And so we want to seek God's will for our lives and his will for the lives of the children that we might bring into our home. I mean, right now, Nick is, your husband is literally taking care of three kids. That's right. Who knows what's happening in that room right now. Two of them are on his face or head. Hopefully they don't have any markers in there. The green room might not be green anymore. I don't know where they are. We had one guy come in here and his kids knocked those ceiling panels out of the drop ceiling.

What happened? But I mean, when you guys were considering the adoption process, what did that conversation look like? Was it we're both in immediately or was there, you know, longer, longer sort of journey?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I've always felt a burden for children in need of homes really since I was a teenager. But I just felt this sense even though I'm, you know, assertive and certainly speak up plenty. But I just, I knew that that's not something that I could force Nick into, that it just had to be a matter of prayer.

And like if the Lord placed it on his heart, then he placed it on his heart. And I still remember we'd been married nine years and my husband came to me one day and said, I think we should adopt. And I was like, me too. Let's go for it. I'm ready. I've been ready for a long time.

And so then we began pursuing that. Yeah. So even that, I mean, the way you told that story is like you're trusting God. It's like, I'm not going to force this on him. It sounds like you hardly even brought it up. And that is the truth of it.

That is the honest truth of it. What happened in you that you were thinking about this as a teenage girl? Well, I just remember meeting a young lady who had been a foster child. And just from that point on, I just thought, yeah, we need to do that. We need to take people in who have a need for a home. And we haven't pursued foster care yet, but I believe that that probably will be a part of our journey in the future once our other kiddos are a little bit older. Gary, when you've been on before, you've talked about the ministry that you had with kids on the street that really had a rough background. And you just poured into them and discipled them and loved them and mentored them. And Laurel, I'm hearing you and you have this heart for families and kids and the adoptive kids. And so I would love for you guys, I always love hearing families that are passionate because this is God's heart for those that don't have homes, that don't have a mom and dad.

They're the orphan that are alone. Like that's in you, that part of you. For you, Gary, even saying I want to be a part of this book because this matters. Like speak up for those little lives that don't have families. Not to put a guilt trip on any of us, but talk about the need that's out there.

Yeah, there really is a great need. And again, I believe it all starts with prayer. But even if the Lord does not call somebody to foster or adopt, he is calling us all to do something. I remember a friend of mine telling me that when they had received a foster child that their Sunday school class just showed up with diapers and clothes and meals. And she said one of the ladies in her Sunday school class would literally come in and not only bring a meal, but she would wait and then clean up the kitchen after the family ate.

It's like what can you do? Another lady that I know, she has stepped in and plays like an ant role to a young girl who was adopted after a traumatic experience happened in her biological family. She's even taken this young lady on trips to Ireland and England and she's really embraced her and become an ant to her. So it may not be that God calls everybody to adopt or to foster, but he's calling us all to do something to be in the lives of the families that have been called. That's good. You know, Peter, the apostle Peter said this about Jesus. He went about doing good.

If you want a one-sentence summary of the lifestyle of Jesus, that's it. He went about doing good. We're his children and we're called to be about doing good. So as you say, if we don't adopt, help the people who are. Do special things for them and for their children. There's lots of ways that we can help. And there are many organizations, of course, that work with children who are not yet adopted and they're caring for them in orphanages and those kind of places. And so whatever we can do to reach out, because that's what Jesus did and he's our model.

Yeah. And when you think of what it means to be a Christ follower, it means to love him and love others and to follow his call in your life. And I'm guessing there's some people listening today who didn't even know it before they heard this broadcast. They're being called to do what you've done, Laurel. They're being called to literally adopt somebody. We've been adopted.

We are children of God because he adopted us into his family that we don't deserve to be adopted into. That's the gospel. That's grace. And yet when there's a young one that has no future parent that wants them and we become that parent, my gosh, we're being Jesus. I mean, you're being Jesus to those little kids that we saw run around that lunchroom. I mean, that's so beautiful to think that you were God's choice, you and Nick, to say, I am going to be Jesus through these parents who see you and adopt you and give you a future. And I like that it all started with prayer. Like, Lord, is this something you have for me?

Is this something you have for our family? And then you didn't go in pressure because I could probably have done that. Like, I feel like God is calling us to do this. We are doing this. Because that puts the spot, like, you can make them feel super guilty. Like, we could yield them into it. But I like that you're saying it's a calling.

It is. And even with our third, with the embryo adoption, it was the same way. When I first went to Nick and said, I think we're supposed to bring another child into our family.

And I didn't know at that time what it would look like. At first, he was like, what? Because, you know, you met our kids. We had our hands full already. And I said, just pray about it. And he agreed to pray. And it wasn't long that he came back and said, yeah, I think we are supposed to do this.

And we had talked about our different options. And he said, I think embryo adoption is the way to go. But, you know, we prayed for a year before we went through the embryo adoption. And I mean, hands and knees kind of prayer. Like, I just needed to know for sure that this was what the Lord was calling us to before we pursued that. And now it sounds like you're praying about fostering.

Yes. Again, I don't see that happening anytime soon. I do believe, I've always believed that that would be a part of our family, part of our future. And there really is such a need for foster care. And it gave me chills when you said there might be somebody who in like this very moment is realizing that they're being called. And I just say, answer the call.

If the Lord's called you to pursue foster care, to pursue adoption, to help families that are fostering or adopting, please answer that call because you're very much needed. Yeah. And I would just add as grandparents of two adopted kids, it's one of the most beautiful things. All of them are, and they are no different. Like, it's just a joy. They're our family.

There's no difference. They're the Wilsons. They're the Wilsons. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Dr. Gary Chapman and Dr. Laurel Shaler on Family Life Today. Dr. Shaler and Dr. Chapman have written a book called Loving Adopted Children Well, a Five Love Languages Approach. This is a book based on Dr. Chapman's bestselling Five Love Languages, a specialized resource for intentional love for families with adopted children. You can get your copy right now by going online to familylifetoday.com, or you can find it in our show notes.

Or just give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy. Again, that number is 800, F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. We've been talking about healthy families and how there's lots of obstacles in the way to healthy families. And one of those obstacles is perfectionism, perfectionism that we require of ourselves as parents and consequently that we require out of our kids.

And it can be really difficult for not only us, but our kids. And earlier this week, we had on a guest Faith Chang, who wrote a book called Peace Over Perfection, Enjoying a Good God When You Feel You're Never Good Enough. This really helps believers who are struggling with perfectionism and guilt in their Christian walk. This book is going to be our gift to you when you give to the Ministry of Family Life. You can get your copy right now with any donation by going online to familylifetoday.com and clicking on the donate now button at the top of the page. Or just give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329. Again, that number is 800, F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Or feel free to drop us something in the mail if you'd like.

Our address is Family Life, 100 Lakehart Drive, Orlando, Florida, 32832. Now coming up next week, we have one of our favorites, Nana Dulce. Nana is going to be back in studio to chat and focus on stories of women in the Bible from Eve to Mary. We're going to dive into themes of redemption, obedience, and God's providence, using specifically the story of Esther. That's coming up next week. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.