Are you ever angry at your child's biological "mother"? For families of children hanicapped from pre-natal

Question

trauma or abuse. How do you deal with those feelings of anger?

I thought I had overcome all of mine, and for the most part I have. However, sitting around at Christmas watching my mother open Christmas cards, things bubbled back to the surface. She had received a card from my brothers' biological brother's adoptive family. It told all about how well the almost 21-year-old boy was doing, how excited he was about his new career. He was the 7th born child of 7 biological children, and the only one born (mostly) clean. Hearing about him, while looking at my brothers - my stomach starting boiling with bile again. I love my brothers, and they are both special in their own ways, but... it's not FAIR! Everything they could have been, SHOULD have been was stolen from them by a woman who couldn't even be bothered to stop getting drugged up and drunk long enough to have a baby - and never did manage to figure out how to use birth control. How do others deal with this anger?

Answer 1

people only do the best they can do.My mother was beaten by her older brother,enslaved &sexually abused by her father and forced to by her mother, starting at an early age which as they say can work one way or the other-Make one hate s*x or like it too much,she had  a lot of kids and i remember when i was little that she was begging her doctor to fix her and he told her he wouldn't because she hadn't helped to replenish the earth yet.i guess the adopted out ones did okay but the rest of us spent a lot of time wearing rags going through mens' abuses and starving.

She may have been put through h**l as a child.But i do wish that people would try to stay away from drugs,tobacco ,and booze no matter what be the case.

Answer 2

My son is now 5 yrs old.  He was drug addicted at birth and we almost lost him.  He went through 4 months of withdrawls and it was h**l. He has some problems, especially anger.

But I thank God for him every day, i cant imagine him not in my life.  He had every drug in his system that you can imagine, and he is growing up Strong and beautiful.

When I get angry with the bio mom i just have to remind myself, that if it weren't for her i wouldn't have him in my life.

I use my anger to try to educate people about what drugs do to children.

Answer 3

Yes, there are days that I am angry and I just sit and cry.  And yet my heart feels an overwhelming gratitude to this woman for carrying the child and choosing us as the adoptive family.  She could have just as easily aborted our son, but she didn't.  

The neglect from the bio parents makes me sick to my stomach but fortunately we know our son did not suffer long.  As soon as the birth was reported to the hospital (although no one knows how long he laid on the floor of the apartment before 9-1-1 was called), the state intervened and removed him temporarily from their care in what they "say" was an attempt to help the parents learn how to parent the child (especially because of his life-threatening disorder).  We know that he was in a non-abusive and wonderful environment with his grandparents until we brought him home, but the stories of the bio parents' visits with the child still amaze me.  It saddens me greatly to know that some day I have to "dump" all of this on my son.  Fortunately, we have a wonderful set of bio-grandparents in our corner who will help us to tell the story when he is ready.  We hope that will help to eliminate some of the "sting" for him, to know that even if the bio parents chose not to care, there were many people here who DID care.  

I guess that is why I tend to "rant" a lot about the positive aspects of adoption.  I know that not all situations were like our son's, but in our case, adoption saved our son's life.  The bio-grandparents feel the same way about it.  They tell us all the time that our son would be dead if the adoption had not occurred.  

So yes, to answer your question, I do get angry but in some respects, I also say a prayer of thanks for his bio parents' state of mind to realize that they did not want to be parents and created an adoption plan for their son.

Answer 4

The birth mom of 2 of my children passed away about 4 years ago from alcohol related disease. The kids were quite angry with her because her death was totally preventable, and they were just starting (as young teens) to build a relationship with her. Seeing them deal with their grief and anger helped put my own anger into perspective. The birth mom of 4 of my other kids (not biologically related to the previous 2) is still living the street life, regularly doing drugs and prostituting herself. It's tough to not be constantly angry with her, especially when she refuses to even acknowledge the girls, but tries to contact their brother and cousins. I don't want them to come into adolescence with the feeling that we have tried to color their judgement against their birth mother, because kids go through a "fairy tale" stage at that age. No matter how abusive/neglectful/ignorant a birth parent has been, kids still have a need to know where they came from. I have found that the best way to deal witht he anger is to bring it out into the open and acknowledge it. Keeping it suppressed to 'spare the children's feelings' or excuses like that won't do any good. It might seem harsh to say to a kid, "yes, your birth mom is a drug addict (alcoholic/prostitute/child abuser/etc)", but the kids will deal with that better than having to carry around conflicted loyalties. Once they realize that they can have feelings (good and bad) about their birth parents, they are free to process their thoughts. Biological kids don't have to carry conflicted loyalties - adopted kids do, even if they don't know their birth parents. Part of letting them know it's safe to feel this way is sharing your own feelings with them. It didn't hurt my kids to hear from me, "I'm really p*ssed of at your birth mom for her behaviour". At the end of the day, the only way to get rid of your anger is to process it, keeping it inside won't help you or the kids.

Answer 5

use the energy from the anger. put it in a positive place. use it in a positive way. other than that avoidance and denial work....you cant control someone else and you cant change the past. so your childs birth mom is who you are mad at? we have something in common...although im not angry im mad and dissapointed at her behaviour. the kids get all the effects of the parents behaviour.

Answer 6

This is something my hubby struggles with. HE knows our son has to suffer because of a few poor decisions. But for me I am so incredible greatful that the chose us to parent him. She was considering an abortion because of the drugs, but all in all, I'm not mad, just a little sad that I know it is something he'll have to face. She learned from this and had a subsequent healthy pregnancy. I can't blame someone who had an illness. It something she deals with to this day and nothing anyone can do will take it back,

Answer 7

I am raising and considering adopting my fiance's 16 mo/old daughter (step parent adoption after we get married)

Her biological mother didn't abuse her during pregnancy, but in early infancy. We don't know exactly what all was done.

My step daughter has developmental delays in all areas. At 16 months she cannot walk. She is functioning at a 7 mo/old level altho her communtcation skils are at a 4 to 5 mo/old level.

We have her in special preschool and she is in physical, speech and occupatoinal therapies.

We do not know if her delays are permanent or if she will someday over come them. We do not know what the future holds for her. Will she always be dependent? Will she be able to live on her own?  Will she be complely normal by adulthood??

Yes I do feel anger at her birth mother. She could have called the baby's father to come and get her any time she was frustrated and couldn't handle the baby...

We got her when a neighbor notified my fiance that the mother had left the baby (8 mos old at the time) home alone for 3 hours...Her excuse was that she was tired of always being "stuck home w/a baby"

It is hard to deal with the anger sometimes. It frustrates me to no end when I am the one working with this baby, trying to get her to do simple things she should already be doing and her BM calls to tell us all about the great party she went to last night.

I just tell myself that my fiance and I are the lucky ones. We get to be a part of this lil girl's life and what she accomplishes will be because we have helped her get there. If she dosen't get as far as other kids, then we will applaud everything she CAN do and not worry abt the things she can't....

Her BM will never have the satisfaction of watching the miracle of her finally achieving something after working on it for days.....Her loss, my gain.

Hang in there and love your brothers for who they are.

Answer 8

Yes, I do and no, "it's not fair". I don't understand why she didn't leave any information about her partner, her health, and supposedly a living sibling. As upset as I get, I think my daughter will be doubly so. As for dealing with it, I don't let my daughter know how angry [more frustrated, though] I am and I talk to a shrink about it. I pretend her birth mother was a saint like all adoptive parents are told that we have to do.

The trolls will pounce all over this without entirely reading what I said. My daughter was born in a hospital, or so I was told, but her birth mother died giving birth to her. I don't understand why she didn't give any more info than she supposedly did when she was admitted.

Answer 9

I had a friend who smoked while she had been pregnant and her child had breathing problems, I thought it was selfish how she didn't care about her child's health at all. She kept right on smoking inside her house too.

Answer 10

I am not related to any children like that, but I get mad too.  I can only imagine how growing up with brothers who had difficulties like that, through the absolute fault of someone else, would make it exponentially worse.  It makes me mad that I have friends who can't conceive, yet would be wonderful parents, but then abusive people get to breed like wildfire.  It's so unfair.  Your family deserves so many applause and hugs for having opened their hearts and family to two lucky boys.