Adoptive parenting is also parenting surrounded by family, friends and community members who lack information about adoption. Adoptive parenting is creating a family with children who have meaningful connections before life with the adoptive parents. The adoptee has prior connections with a birth family, foster families, caretakers in orphanages, etc. whether or not they are acknowledged. Parents must understand the dynamics in adoption that result from this variety of relationships. These dynamics, this variety, create the gray area, the balancing act, the fine lines.
Fine lines can be intrusive or retiring.
They can be irritating or can sensitize. They can be ignored or acknowledged. They can be wedges in family relationships or create opportunities for parents to model life s lessons how to solve problems, how to communicate effectively, how to take care of oneself without being in control, how to express strong emotions, how to make mistakes in relationships, how to be part of a trusting relationship in the worst of times, how to ask others for help. The cycle of attachment and the marital relationship Attachment relates to relationships. The basis for all healthy relationships is trust and what we learn about trust as infants affects our ability to form positive enduring relationships for the rest of our lives.