As an adoptive parent who started out as a foster parent, I frequently wondered if a specific child’s behavior was normal or age appropriate. I had many long discussions with caseworkers assigned to my children about their behaviors and the possible causes. Over the 14 years we have been foster parents, Super Dad and I have racked up literally hundreds of training hours on special needs subjects like lying, stealing, and passive-aggressive behaviors, which has not helped in answering this question. I was reminded of this question the other day when I read Faith’s blog about, “Which Behaviors are Adoption-Related and Which are Not?”over at the adoptive parenting blog.

Initially, Super Dad and I jumped into fostering children who were older than our birth children. This certainly contributed to our confusion about the source of their behaviors. Because we had not previously parented teenagers we thought many of the behaviors were specific to children who had been traumatized or had special needs. Therefore, we assumed their behaviors were outside of normal or age appropriate behaviors. I touched on this subject last week in a blog I wrote about, “The Oldest Sibling Has It the Hardest.”

Unfortunately, there is no magic formula to determine which behaviors are related to early trauma and which are age appropriate. Let’s face it teenagers do some ridiculous things, which has to do with the way their brains process information making their behaviors, age appropriate. We looked at their processing a few months ago in a blog called, “Teen rebellion or Brain Function.”

Some recent events in our home have caused me to re-evaluate the question, “is this behavior age appropriate or does it indicate special needs?” I was furious with Lyn a couple of years ago when I found out she had been stealing money on a regular basis from my purse. As ridiculous as this may sound, it went on for over a year without my noticing. Oh sure, there were times when I thought I had more money, but I just assumed that I was mistaken. Because I had no reason to suspect that anyone was stealing from me. As immature and unchristian as this may sound I believe I have held a grudge against her until recently.

I made the mistake of giving my son my credit card to get gas for his car a few times. He was transporting his brothers to youth group and hockey I didn’t have enough cash to reimburse him for gas. Well he figured out that he could use my credit card to eat fast food. When he got a good job a few months ago, I took my credit card away from him. He was spending nearly $200 a month on fast food and gas. When I checked my credit card online, I found many fast food purchases for under $10. Yes, he had snuck my credit card out of my purse and was using it everyday.

That is when I realized that I was holding a grudge against Lyn for stealing hundreds of dollars from me. That is also when I realized that her behavior might have just been age appropriate or normal.

Dani lied to me every day for a month about finishing her homework. If someone doesn’t check on her periodically, when she is on the computer she will play internet games instead of doing her schoolwork. I was getting really frustrated with her. I thought the behavior would stop once she was homeschooled or once she was adopted. Well guess what, Lane my boy genius does the exact same thing. I guess it is a kid thing. Now, I have a much-changed attitude.

Funny isn’t it that quite often when we pray for someone to change, the change takes place within ourselves.



Photo Credit Julia Fuller 2007