Adoption Under One Roof

We have all heard the old saying of “stick and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Unfortunately, that saying is not true. I know many people who have had their bones broken by their abusers. Their bodies eventually healed, but the hurtful words spoken by their abusers left a permanent mark in their souls and spirits. Being told you are worthless can haunt you much longer than a broken bone.

I have heard that it takes 100 compliments to make up for each hurtful word you tell a child. If this is the case, then those of you who are parenting foster or adopted children really have your work cut out for you.

The problem is that, when abused children are told hurtful words by their abusive parents or other caregivers, they internalize those messages. For each time the abuser told the child that he was worthless, the child replayed that internal message hundreds of times. The more hurtful words the child heard, the more he internalized a very warped view of himself. Your job as the adoptive parent is to help the child break free from this very warped view of himself.

How do you do this? You have to replace those negative messages with positive ones, and your adopted child might be quite resistant to hearing your positive messages. As your child is ready, the most effective way to “undo” the hurtful words is for the adopted child to internalize his own positive messages.

What worked for me was running a mantra through my head. The three messages I most needed to hear from childhood were, “I love you. You are safe. I’m sorry.” I repeated these words over and over in my head, and I truly did not believe a word of them. However, over time, just as the negative messages became a part of how I saw myself, the same thing happened with the positive messages.

As your adopted child hears positive things about herself – that she is precious and deserves to be loved – she will eventually begin to internalize those messages. However, you cannot control what she does in her own head. Only the adopted child can choose to make the effort to undo the damage inflicted upon her by her abusers’ hurtful words.

Photo credit: JulieC