They cry, grieve, and manipulate their environment in any way they can. They can bring adoptive parents to the point of exhaustion and can upset an entire household for months. Parents begin to question their parenting ability. Along with those doubts, quiet anger bubbles up to cause frustration. They need to see their child much like they might see any other person who came as a guest and ended up staying.
Real parents love real children in a realistic length of time.
Fantastically unrealistic parents bond to fantasy children immediately. Somewhere between success and failure, liking and disliking, acceptance and rejection, your child lives. He lives independently of you and yet is completely dependent on you. He is the child that will grow up to be the one that challenged you the most and yet gave you the greatest sense of pride and success in yourself and in him.