I have been writing about how I believe that transracial adoptive parents need to "prepare for the worst", and yet at the same time, "hope for the best", when it comes to their child's adjustment into their new family.

The third aspect to this is that while you should prepare for the worst and hope for the best, you should know that reality will most likely fall somewhere in the middle.

While there are no firm numbers on these things, it is only a very small percentage of adopted children that end up having severe attachment problems and/or serious, challenging behaviors that the family can not handle. It is equally true that only a very small percentage of adopted children come home and have extremely smooth adjustments with little to no real challenges in the early days. It likely won't be all smooth sailing, but it is also likely that the ship isn't going to sink. :)

So it is realistic to expect that your new child will most likely not be at either extreme, but will instead by somewhere in between "worst case" and "best case". Your child will likely have some challenging behaviors, but most certainly won't have every possible challenging behavior.

Maybe your child will have trouble sleeping. Maybe your child will be a very picky eater as he adjusts to American food. Maybe your child will struggle in school. Maybe your child will throw knock-down drag-out tantrums. Maybe your child will end up being a few years older than you expected. Maybe your child will reject you and push you away in the early days. Maybe your child will have difficulties bonding with his new siblings. Maybe your child will have behaviors that drive you crazy. Maybe your child will be overly hyper. Maybe he will be very sad and grieve for a long time. Maybe he will take a long time to trust you and love you. Or, maybe he won't.

One of the things I have seen in my own kids and in my friends' kids who joined their families through adoption is that most often, even when there are challenges, the good still outweighs bad. We had some very challenging days when our two older girls first came home, and yet even on our worst days, there was a lot of things to be happy about and lots of reasons to be hopeful that things would get better (which they did).

So, in a nutshell, my advice to parents getting ready to bring home a new child is to prepare for the worst, hope for the best and expect reality to be somewhere in between the two.


*If you have not yet participated, make sure you visit this post and enter the fun giveaway for National Adoption Month thanks to Curls.