Was anyone placed for adoption at an older age (not a baby, but old enough to remember n-parents)?

Question

What do you remember about your home/ situation you were in? i ask only to better understand what you remember? I DO NOT AT ALL want to offend anyone, im just trying to see what my father might have remembered... Both my father and his brother were put up for adoption at older ages...my dad was 4, and only remembered that he has an older sister, and that there was alot of fighting in the home.

What do you remember about your n-parents? or the "home" life you had?

Answer 1

I was also adopted at 6.  I was with my bio parents till I was I was 3 or 4 and in foster care/bio grandparents care after that until I was adopted.  All of it was very confusing to me as a child. I know they say memory doesn't form that early, but I do remember fragments of time with my bio parents....sleeping on nasty mattress in DC,  cigarettes everywhere, playing with my little sister.  And being carted back and forth thru social services.   I really wouldn't wish this upon anyone.  Alot of my problems I have today I belive are a result of my childhood.

Answer 2

I was adopted when I was 6. I remember my mother doing drugs, and we were living with her dealer. He came home one day, angry b/c he couldn't get his fix, and so he blamed her. Then it somehow escalated to her cheating on him. He went upstairs, got a gun, threw me behind a rocking chair, and her on the couch. When he pushed her down, her head put a hole in the wall behind it. I also remember him going to the bathroom to look for the drugs he had hidden in there, while he was in there, my mom called my grandparents and all she said was "Daddy help" and hung up. Next thing I remember was the police all around our house and 6 hours later he gave up. I was soon removed from her and adopted.

Answer 3

A couple of years after I was relinquished, my nmother had two more children from subsequent husbands.  When my sibs were 3 and 5, our nmom took them on a trip to Texas where they stayed with some acquaintances.  After a few days there, our nmom just up and walked out the door one day and never came back.  My sister was 5 and remembers asking her, "Mommy, where are you going?"  She remembers our mom replying, "I'm just going to the clinic.  I'll be back in a little bit."  That was the last conversation they ever had.  She also remembers that our nmom used to cry a lot at night.  She could hear her from her bedroom.  My brother doesn't talk about any of it, as he still carries a lot of anger over the abandonment.  

I wish there were some happy memories for them, but it wasn't that way.  Our mother was a very troubled woman with serious mental health issues.  This was in the 1960's when treatment for mental illness wasn't so great, so she just got worse over time for many years.  By the time treatments were more available, she'd already diminished quite a bit.  She committed suicide in 2001.  When I found my siblings, I had to be the one to break that news.  It was rough.

Answer 4

i am and have been since i was 16 years old.

Answer 5

I adopted two children who were 3 and 4.  The four year old asked me (after we explained this was it - their forever home - no more foster homes) if she would ever see that Linda girl again (birth mother).  I told her that she wouldn't, but when she was old enough if she wanted to see her again she could.  She told me many stories about her birth parents and foster parents.  Most of them weren't pleasant memories.  I wrote them all down and kept them.  The three year was so traumatized it took her years to realize that her Dad and I weren't her birth parents.  She would ask where we had been and why we left her with those strangers that were mean to her.  Nothing really specific.  Now that they are grown they don't remember anything about their birth parents.

Hope that helps.