A supportive friend made this observation recently, “Depression is the occupational hazard of raising damaged children.” I had never thought of it that way, but I have to agree with him. The clinical definition of depression is a disorder that affects your thoughts, moods, feelings, behavior, and even your physical health. The Mayo Clinic’s website goes on to say that sometimes a stressful life event triggers depression. It makes you feel sad, helpless, or hopeless, and may cause crying spells.

You never know when a day of parenting a special needs child will bring about a stressful life event. For example, my blog-mate Julie’s daughter over the course of the past three months has been hospitalized twice for extreme behavior. The behavior is the result of her very early childhood life in an orphanage, which Julie has spent the last nine years trying to repair.

We adopted a daughter at the age of nine even though she killed 12 of our 4-H chickens, painted feces on the walls, and destroyed many possessions with her passive-aggressive behavior. After 10 years of counseling, psychiatrists, piano lessons, riding lessons, summer camps, and missions’ trips, we finally got her to a point that we were enjoying her. Then she turned 18, viciously attacked me verbally, and moved out. This is just another example of a stressful life event.

When you have spent years putting your all into a damaged child, hoping that it will make a difference, trying to fix things that you didn’t break, and taking the brunt of the retaliation from the child, just to fail in the end, that is depressing. That makes me feel sad, hopeless, helpless, and causes me to have crying spells. It isn’t just the major events, though, that can cause these feelings.

We struggle with the fragments on a daily basis and it wears you down. How many times should you have to tell a child just to ask for something, don’t steal, or go without? The dog can’t reach the food dish on top of the playhouse. Please don’t fold wet clothes and towels, leave them in the dryer and turn it back on or tell me. Speak up; I can’t hear what you are saying for the tenth time. Go back and shower again and this time wash your body with soap.

I know that individually these seem like minor annoyances. But, when you have been saying them to the same child for 10 years, with no obvious progress, that is depressing. When you first took on the responsibility, you thought you could make a difference, but you found out that you couldn’t. That is depressing.

That is why we need each other. We need the support of other adoptive parents so we can know that it isn’t just us and it isn’t our failure. We were not the cause, but we survived all of the consequences of another parent’s bad choices. We did the best we could.





Photo Credit Julia Fuller 2007