Non-biological parents: please share your stories

By “non-biological,” I mean adoptive parents and step-parents, and also persons raising, say, nieces & nephews, cousins, grandchildren, etc… If you feel yourself to be the parent of a person who is not your genetic child, this thread is for you.

How did this relationship come to be? How old was the child when she or he came into your life? How deliberate was your choice? How long did it take you to come to love the child in question? Have you any regrets–any thing you wish you had done different or better?

And, of course, you should feel free to add more questions.

I’m the stepfather of a 15-year-old boy, who was 12 when we met. I’ve been the evil stepfather (not his opinion, just how I think some people could view it) - I swooped in, married his mom, and dragged him across the country away from his real dad. Our relationship has been an ongoing process, with its ups and downs. Teenagerhood is never fun. Overall, I think it’s gone better than average, and better that his mom and I have expected. He accepted me as an authority figure very quickly and has never seriously challenged it - I’ve never heard “You’re not my real dad!”

How deliberate was my choice? I loved his mother, and knew he was part of the package. Simple as that.

As for regrets - sure. There are a lot of things I could have done better. But I don’t think there are many more than his mom has. Every parent has regrets. I don’t think I’m any different in that respect.

The best thing I did in all of this was to ask his permission, instead of her father’s, for me to marry her. He didn’t really have a choice, of course, but I think he appreciated the show of respect.

We’ve been raising our nephew at the Dragwyr household for the past 2.5 years. I’ve posted about this before, but I will give the abbreviated version here.

This relationship came to be because my nephew’s mother went from being an independent small business owner to homeless in under one year due to substance abuse and continual bad parenting. She was always a bad parent, but when we saw she was going to lose her home, we had to step in and do something, so we got a “Limited” guardianship of nephew awarded to us.

Nephew was 10 when we got him. The decision to take him into our home was a very deliberate decision. In fact it was my idea. Nobody else on my wife’s side of the family was able to take him… They were either too old, too young, or just not able to handle him. If we didn’t take him, he would have ended up homeless like his deadbeat mother. We had to step up and do the right thing, so I told Mrs. D that we needed to take him.

My wife’s family has always been rather close, so it didn’t take long at all for her to start loving him as one of our own. Its been tougher for me because he has not formed any type of emotional bond with me. Of course his entire life has been one of disappointment by his natural father, so having a father figure suddenly in his life is a real big thing for him. It has been over 2 years and he still doesn’t like to talk to me or do things with me unless it is a direct request for something. I try to be there for him, but he is so hurt inside. It may take years before he can look at me and consider me his parental figure, let alone actually feel any kind of emotional connection to me. I try to be understanding of his situation while at the same time treating him the same as the rest of my children, but it is extremely tough when all I get back from him is a look of glaring hatred.

Do I have any regrets? That is a question I’ve asked myself every day that I’ve had him. Some days I sometimes feel like there is no hope for him and that all our efforts to raise him are for naught, but then I think about where he would be if he wasn’t with us. In the end I always end up feeling that I never regretted doing the right thing by taking custody of him.

What would I have done differently? I’d like to think that if I could go back in time, I would hire a hit man to kill his deadbeat, no good, druggie parents, so that there would be no way they could continue to screw up his life. Although its a nice thought, I know that I probably wouldn’t do anything different. I’m not a violent person. I get frustrated easily when I have to deal with his loser mom and loser dad, but I know the way we are handling the situation is as good as its going to get for him. I’m just now coming to realize that his parents are never going to change, and nephew is just starting to realize that as well. Now that he can see them for what they really are, I’m hoping my relationship with him will improve.

My husband and I adopted our 18 month old son. We first met him when he was less than a minute old (we were in the next room, at his birthmother’s request), and took him home from the hospital when he was five days old and the appropriate papers had been signed. We finalized his adoption eight months later in court.

Obviously, it was a deliberate choice. My husband and I do not seem to be able to have biological children (though doctors are hesitant to say the word “impossible”), but we both wanted very much to be parents.

I fell in love with our son pretty much immediately, even though I had promised myself that I would hold back until at least the preliminary papers had been signed. Two years earlier, we had experienced a spectacular failed adoption - we had a baby boy in our home from birth to two months, and he was then removed. (Long story. Short version: the agency (now shut down by the state because of their egregious violations) lied to us repeatedly and flagrantly disregarded the rights of biological parents. Bad scene.) After going through that awful experience, it took courage I wasn’t sure I had to sign up for the ride again, and I didn’t want to give my heart away too soon. That lasted thirty seconds or so.

I don’t know how much of this is seeing what we wish to see, or learned behaviors, but it seems like our son was absolutely meant to be in our family. He has cystic fibrosis (diagnosed at three weeks). I have multiple cousins with CF - we had a network of people built in who understand the condition and are a great support system. He acts like us. My husband and I are both very outgoing, and he has, from the beginning, been interested in the world and friendly. When he was teeny-tiny, he’d squawk if you held him in a traditional baby hold - he wanted to be held facing out, so he could see.

I have no regrets as far as him being a part of our family, or how we went about it. I already have regrets about my failures as a parent (mostly relating to a lack of patience), but I’m working on that, and also working on not beating myself up about it. Too much.

Two adopted children, one from birth, one from 18 months, deliberate choice. Instant love and bonding. Wouldn’t change anything.

I have my own (biological) son, two step children (who I refer to without the “step”) as well as my niece (who I do call “my daughter”).

My step children became mine 12 years ago give or take some months. At that time they were 7 and around a year old. My youngest is almost 14 (and giving me fits) and her (biological) brother is 19. My husband had custody of them when we met, so it was a natural transition over the course of dating and then marrying…I have ranted about their mother in a different thread so I will save it for now, but over the years she has lost the legal say-so (legal custody) and I was granted legal guardianship, and custody (if my husband is absent) so for all intents and (legal) purposes I am essentially their mom, so I just call them my kids. I have raised them as if they were my own, with all that entails, and they will refer to me as “mom” to others but call me by my first name. So they will say, “Let me ask my mom. Hey, Mitze, can I…” There have been ongoing custody battles and their bio-mom gaining and losing visitation time over the years, and the family relationships are really quite a mess (especially right now, going through a hard time with my youngest daughter) but that’s our family, for better or worse.

My niece (who is my older daughter) has had an equally weird time. She has been with me off and on since she was a toddler (she’s almost 17 now). Her parents just weren’t prepared and her father made it clear he didn’t want her from birth, so I was an easy babysitter. The babysitting stretched into longer and longer periods of time, until she was living with me, but when I tried to make the arrangement legal her parents would decided to take her back so that couldn’t happen. Eventually they realized it was best for her to stay with me, and I needed legal custody/guardianship in order to get her insurance coverage. Her father put up a token fight, but it was really nothing, and her mom who does love her really wanted to do what was best for her, and simply couldn’t afford a child either financially or emotionally/mentally. So she has been with me for I don’t know…maybe 14 years? She visits her mom often, but hasn’t seen her dad in a while. She too refers to me as “mom” but calls me Aunt Mitze.

All the kids call each other brother and sisters and make no distinction between the “steps” or cousins.

Pretty messed up family, but we do what we can. :wink: If I had it to do all over again, right now I’d have to say I wouldn’t, but that is probably because of the difficult time we are having with our daughter. A year ago I would have said absolutely I’d do it all over! :wink:

I love my kids, but they were not dealt the best hand. I only hope that I am making their lives better than it would have been without me.

Adoptive mom of one and a half. #1 I adopted internationally when she was 2 1/2. I really wanted to be a mom, and was drawn to older children. At that time (almost 7 years ago), 2 1/2 was considered unusual in international adoption; now it is fairly common. I’m in process for a 6 year old, also internationally.

It has its moments, but honestly, I don’t regret it at all. Months after #1 came home, Mr. Punky ran off with a floozy. I feel bad for her that he added to the instability of her life, and I wish that I had picked a life-partner who also wanted lots of kids. I do wish I had a husband to share all this with, but I don’t, so I’m happy and thankful for what I have.

Dragonwyr - May I suggest that you do research on attachment, maybe even find a professional attachment therapist? There has been a lot of research done recently, and the brain chemistry of children who have undergone childhood abandonment and trauma is different than other children. Your nephew may need more than time to heal from all that. This might be a helpful place to start.

Funny, I was just thinking about starting a step-parent thread.

He was 4 when we (his Mom and I) started dating, married when he was 7, he is now in his late 20s. I was never and will never be his “Dad” except when money is involved. He has a Dad who is very, very protective of his rights yet, at the same time, has no interest at all in any of his responsibilities. We made our peace with that long ago. Parts of the journey have been very rocky but I can’t blame it all on the step relationship. The step-son has a very different personality from me, he is exactly like his dad, so I have little insight into why he does the things he does and that causes a lot of friction. In the end, his dad is a deadbeat and the son is following in his footsteps somewhat, although we have managed to steer him away from some of the more serious problems, like hard drugs.

So, the step-son lived with us all those years until he went away to college. No child support, only demands for more visitation, complete with round trip plane tickets, from the dad. After all these years the son moves in with the dad to save money because neither has a job. Last week the dad calls to tell my wife that he thinks we should be sending him money each month to cover his own son’s expenses. We had a good laugh and a cry at the same time.

I started dating my now husband when his son was three. We married when he was seven. I deliberately decided that love was an action, not just a feeling. Until my heart cought up I would do all the actions of love, because that was what was most important to this little boy. He’s 22 now, and going through some troubles, but is a wonderful person.

The Punkyova, thanks for the link. It looks like a good resource and I will check it out. Nephew has been seeing a very good counselor for the past year and a half who has been giving us suggestions for his attachment problems. One of the big things the counselor told me was that play is a good way to get nephew to open up. The problem is that he doesn’t even let me play with him. Nephew has a big interest in computers and electronics, which happens to be my profession, so I’ve been trying to engage him in things like having him help me set up new electronic equipment when I get it at home, or work with him on connecting the PS3 to our home network, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much. I think the biggest thing he needs is time. Even if he never acknowledges me as a “father” type figure, I hope he will come around and at least be more communicative toward me… or at least stop the glaring when I talk to him.

I co-parented my brothers (6 and 8 years younger than me); part of the consequences is that the youngest didn’t see me as anything resembling a “peer” until he was a teenager and discovered that Big Sis Has Some Cool Records. I had been his go-to person for difficult questions since the first time he had one, though (our parents weren’t very good at dealing with those; the usual reactions involved getting angry, refusing to answer, laughing at whomever was asking or just playing deaf). So it wasn’t a normal sibling relationship, but he did trust me. I was perfectly happy with that and I’m perfectly happy with our current adult relationship.

Another consequence is that sometimes they call me “Mom” by mistake, which irritates our shared, very much alive, queen-bee of a mother no end. She’s having to deal with it, though.

Nava, I’m curious as to the circumstances that led you to be a “co-parent” for your younger brothers.

There were like three main phases; the biggest factors were Mom’s bad health, her attitudes about housework and childraising, and Dad’s situations at work.

Mom hates housework; she also has a bad back, and she’s very good at taking bad care of herself. In recent years she’s been known to make herself sick on purpose; I don’t remember it as bad when I was little, but she did offload as much as she could on me as soon as she could. Most of my college classmates hadn’t started learning to cook until their last year in high school; I was handling my own breakfast by age 7, cooking pasta, rice and beans by 10, and in charge of our three breakfasts and 6 lunches per week by 12. My brothers’ “childhood recipes” are Nava’s macaroni with tomato sauce, Nava’s meatballs, Nava’s fish…

Whenever Mom isn’t too sick, she has “a plan” for every afternoon. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t so. So we’d get home from kindergarten/school, and I’d feed my brothers their sandwiches and head down to the supermarket or the butcher’s (Mom bought the fish).

This got even worse when Dad got promoted to Factory Manager. He was almost never home, and when he was, he was in a horrible mood (with good reason, as he was being mobbed by his superiors); Mom had achieved her dream of being Mrs. Important Husband’s and rarely came home before 8:45 (we’d have dinner at 9:00 on the clock). This lasted through my being in 9th and 10th grades. Middlebro got diagnosed with dyslexia, he was already starting to have homework, nagging about homework and helping with homework got added to my duties.

Dad got fired when I was starting 11th grade (the bros, in 5th and 3rd). Both Parental Units went into depression, Mom got bedridden, then she was given the wrong medication… Dad was able to get a new job in July of the following summer and that got him de-depressed, but Mom didn’t get the surgery she needed until September. Between getting into bed in November-11th grade and April-12th grade she’d only left the house three times: one in an ambulance to be taken to a local clinic, once in the car to go see a doctor in another town, the following day in the car to go have the surgery.

So, a combo of “Mom is one of those women who think that ‘giving birth’ equals ‘becoming a mother’” and “she really does have bad health.”

Son adopted from Korea who is now 11 and arrived at 6 1/2 months of age - infertility driven. Also a bio daughter who is now 10 (surprise!)

Love was immediate. It was four months for us between referral and travel and we loved him when he was a photo, two sheets of paper, and a baby half way across the world. We loved him when we were infertile and a child was a ‘probability.’ And we loved him when we set eyes on him. And as he changes - because state change from a “probability” to “whatever he is and will be” is happening all the time - we will continue to love him. A parent’s love is (generally) constant - even if you don’t always LIKE your kids.

I don’t consider myself a parent, really, but have gradually filled that role for my sister since she was about eleven. It probably doesn’t make any sense, but she does feel like ‘my kid,’ but just not my daughter. It started because our mom was ill, and our father was away on business a lot. At first I just added in a little extra help as needed, meeting with teachers, helping with homework, and generally just being there, if my parents couldn’t, and I did more and more as my mom got sicker, and eventually died. Not helping out wasn’t an option. I do wish things had been different. Our mom being alive and healthy would obviously have been the best outcome for our family, but it didn’t happen that way, and I’m glad that I was capable of contributing.

With her being my sister, I’ve always loved her. It was a little weird for her to have our roles change a bit, but at the same time, with her being eleven years younger, we never had a regular sibling bond. Any regrets I have are normal ones that anyone would have when you can look back and see that one reaction or another might not have been the right one, but you never really can know for sure how things would’ve turned out if you’d made a different choice.

I have stepchildren, a boy and a girl, who are twins. They were 14 when we married. Although they lived nearby at the time, they didn’t have much interest in spending time with their dad or his new family (understandable). The boy (M.) moved in with us a couple of years ago because he wasn’t getting along with his mom. About a year later, the mom got cancer, and last year when she died, the girl moved in with us too.

That didn’t last long. The girl had been fending for herself through much of her mom’s illness, and didn’t have any urge to become part of a family. She soon returned to her stepdad.

The boy remains with us, but he has never really been assimilated into the household. His father (my husband) keeps a very loose rein on him. M. comes and goes at odd hours, rarely speaks to any of us, or eats our food. We hope he will hang in there long enough to finish high school, beyond that…I don’t think anyone is looking that far ahead. M. has large sums of money given to him periodically from his mom’s estate, and is pretty much expected to crash and burn spectacularly at any time.

Frankly, my husband’s lack of relationship with his kids bothers me, but it’s irreparable at this point (even if anyone were interested, which they emphatically are not). I don’t particularly like M., and at the same time I think he’s really not a bad kid. My kids complain to me sometimes that he has such a carefree life, while they have chores and responsibilities and expectations to meet. At those times, I point out to them that M’s life is literally care-free…there is no one who cares for him.

:: smacks long-range mind-reading device several times, finally throws it out in disgust ::

This is supposed to be set for Aquaman.

I have been the legal Guardian of my youngest brother for most of his life. I’ve always found the term parent very offensive and perfer to be known as a Guardian.

Back in this threadI described our adoption experience. I wouldn’t trade a single moment that we had together. It pissed me off to get the Census form and see that I would have to declare her as my adopted daughter. Yes, that is how she came into our lives but she is my daughter, 100%, as “real” as my son. No regrets, no second thoughts. I thank God she came into our lives.

She’s 9 years old and will always be my little girl. I took her to a Daddy-Daughter “Cinderella” dance when she was 6. She wore her princess gown, I wore my suit. When we danced I tried not to tear up as I thought that one day we’d be dancing at her wedding. I looked around and could see the same look on all the other dads.

Whew, that explains the garbled voices in my head telling me to do … strange things, with fish. And they all said I was crazy.