14 People Shared the Turns Their Life Took After They Adopted a Kid

Adopting a kid is a difficult process full of hopes that changes the habitual flow of life completely. Some people instantly get a new family with a bond even stronger than the ones in ordinary families, others spend years trying to gradually build up relationships, but eventually fail to find any common ground.

We at Bright Side are sure that people who’ve decided to adopt a kid not only have a big, kind heart but also courage and patience. And if they do, there is a chance that the adopted kid will become just like one of their own.

1.

My parents adopted my older brother. All their friends were sure that they wouldn’t be able to raise a normal person and that this story wouldn’t have a happy ending because of GENES. Eventually, my brother graduated from school and university with honors. He is the only person who always supports me and who always stays kind and sincere regardless of the situation. I appreciate and respect my brother who became a sibling a long time ago. Genes are genes, but love and upbringing make miracles. © Overheard / VK

2.

My mentor and good friend decided to adopt a kid a while ago. She collected a lot of documents for the process. Since she adopted a “troublesome” boy, I was one of her official warrants (basically the person who guaranteed that she was able to raise a kid, that she has sufficient income, and that she was emotionally stable). Everyone kept saying that it would be extremely difficult for her: the boy looks small for his age (1-year-old), he is weak, and will lag in mental development.

He is 14 now and they live in Montenegro. He keeps winning awards in various sports competitions and gets certificates for the best performance in school. My friend said, “I simply saw that he was lacking love!” © Timofey Kryukov / Facebook

3.

My husband and I lived without kids for 8 years and, at some point, we realized we are ready to adopt a kid. We wanted to adopt 2 boys who were 2 and 3 years old. But we were offered a 6-year-old boy and were told about his unhappy life. We wanted to turn them down because only the things that we’d heard were terrible (and we had no idea what to expect from the kid’s mental condition?) But when we saw his photo, we realized that this was our baby. No, the photo didn’t show a sweet baby, but a hairless lop-eared boy with a toothless smile. At this point, neither his terrible life story nor his emotional condition and future issues mattered to us. We had a clear feeling that this was our kid.

However, the story gets a little bit more difficult with adopting our second child. We were offered a 1.5-year-old boy without any issues who looked so sweet at our meeting. But we didn’t feel he was ours. The orphanage authorities started to say, “You are not shopping to choose!” and that was the softest thing we heard from them. But we were already familiar with this feeling, we had already some issues with the older one, but the feeling that he is “ours” never disappeared and it helped us to move on. They reluctantly offered a different kid, but he did not feel like ours either. They gave us an ultimatum — either this kid or no kids at all. We were very worried but turned them down anyway. And the authorities started to dislike us. If it weren’t for our success with the older boy, they wouldn’t have communicated with us at all.

Then a miracle happened. I saw a photo of a kid in one volunteer community and my heart started to beat faster. I showed the photo to my husband and he said, “This is the baby!” We tried to get him for 6 full months and finally, we succeeded. We have been parents for 10 years. We’ve experienced many things, good and bad, we had issues and times when we wanted to give up, but we didn’t because they are our kids. They are 100% ours. © mari.ar / Pikabu

4.

8 years ago, our family adopted a 4-year-old boy. My parents spent all the money they saved for buying a new car to do all the paperwork and buy clothes for him. My mother left her work to help him adapt to his new environment. We did our best to create a good life for him. But now we no longer have any desire to love him or to consider him our son. He steals things at home and at school, he always lies and doesn’t do well at school. He is lazy and arrogant, and he’s not even a teenager yet. He doesn’t respect his parents and believes everyone owes him something. These 8 years have been full of tension and quarrels. © Overheard / VK

5.

We adopted our daughter when she was 8 and we already had a 13-year-old son. I couldn’t have more kids, so that’s why we went for adoption. That’s when we saw this wonderful girl in the orphanage, whose family had died in an accident. Now she is 19, but she never called me her mother. Everything is fine, but I still have the feeling that she is a visitor in our home, like she doesn’t feel completely at home here. All of her relationships with us look like gratitude. But I want her to feel like our daughter, I want her to know that this is her home too. The words that she shouted out 11 years ago during our first quarrel are still in my head. She said she already has parents and that she will never have other parents. But we love her so much. © Overheard / VK

6.

2 of our children are siblings who we adopted after fostering them for 3 years. I would be lying if I said there were no days where my husband and I thought, why did we do this? But not once did we ever truly regret our decision or consider giving them back. Our boys had a huge difficulty adjusting at first but perseverance paid off and eventually they calmed down. They began to realize that they were safe, that no one was going to shout and scream at them for making a mistake, that no one was going to laugh at them for asking a question, and that no one was going to put them down. They realized that they were actually loved.

So no, I am not regretful, it has its challenges and they will always feel some pain. The hardest part about adopting children who can remember their old life is not being able to plug them in and make their memories go away entirely, but aside from that, what child isn’t without problems at some stage in their life? None. So no, I don’t regret my children, I am so thankful for them that I can’t even express it! © William Spencer / Quora

7.

My single friend adopted a 5-year-old girl named Dasha. Everything was great until the moment some “kind” teacher revealed the truth to her when she was 14. Her daughter went mad — she blamed her foster mother for all possible sins, started to run away from home, and started hanging out with the wrong crowd. She even sought help from a famous TV show, asking them to find her real mother. Eventually, they found not only her mother but also her sibling sister who was adopted by another family. Her biological mother is a lost woman who wouldn’t even let her daughter enter her own home. When she asked her biological sibling to reunite, she said that she only has one family — the one that raised her. Dasha was never able to forgive her biological mother who left her or her foster mother who had been concealing her adoption for several years.

8.

A neighbor lost her only child in a car accident when she was 17. She then adopted a 6-year-old girl, named Greta, from a foreign country a few years later when she was 50.
Greta had some emotional & behavioral problems, which later turned into psychological problems. Our neighbor tried various therapists, doctors, drugs, etc. And Greta ended up running away for the first time at 14. And again a few months later. Her main excuse was that she was trying to get back to the family that our neighbor “stole” her from. Greta really loved using that as a reason to torture our neighbor.
Greta disappeared at 16 for over a year and then our neighbor got a phone call from a hospital 5 states away... Greta had given birth and 7 hours later walked out without the baby, but she did leave our neighbor’s name & contact info.
So at that point, our neighbor was 67 and raising an infant. Then Greta comes back a year later and basically blackmails our neighbor (give her money or she’ll steal the baby like our neighbor stole Greta). Greta then disappears for a couple of years only to leave another baby in another hospital. So our neighbor is now in her 80s and is raising 2 kids who have behavioral & emotional issues. © jaimystery / Reddit

9.

My best friend died in a car accident and her little boy was left alone. I adopted him. My husband has twin daughters from his first marriage, whose mother was deprived of parental rights. We were living together as a big happy family and I never even felt that I was raising “other people’s” children until the moment my own parents started to grill me. “Why are you raising these kids? Why do you need such a burden? Why don’t you give birth to your own kid!” They whispered nasty things to my kids during family get-togethers, saying they were foundlings and were a burden for me. The culmination was when they said, “We gave birth to you to continue our kin!” After this, I limited all my communication with them because I couldn’t stand it.

My kids have grown and are now adults. Once, I needed a kidney transplant. All my kids rushed to take the tests and give me theirs, even though I didn’t ask them to and wanted to keep it a secret (my husband told them). Eventually, one of my daughters donated her kidney to me. Only after this did my own parents called her their granddaughter for the first time and apologize. © Overheard / VK

10.

My sister and her husband can’t have kids so they decided to adopt a little girl. The girl was shy and quiet. When her mother-in-law saw her, she started to yell, saying, “Thanks a lot! Do I have to raise other people’s foundlings instead of grandkids by blood? It’s unclear what history this orphan has.” They calmed his mother down, explaining that she was stressed. After 5 years, the mother-in-law still can’t accept the adopted granddaughter. She only buys presents during the holidays for the kids of her older daughter, her grandkids by blood. My sister had to reduce the amount of communication with her mother-in-law in order to not hurt the little girl’s feelings and to not stress themselves out.

11.

I adopted a little girl when she was 4. Now she is 33 and has graduated from 2 universities. She is a wonderful daughter! Once I asked her, “Don’t you feel odd knowing that you are adopted?” She answered, “No I have been always felt proud that I was worthy of this family and that you chose me.” Later on, I gave birth to a son and now I have 2 wonderful kids. © Erika Cirule / Youtube

12.

When my eldest son was 14 we had an argument about something. In the middle of this argument, he said something I had been expecting to hear for a while, that he wished we weren’t his parents, and that he wished he had never been adopted. I can’t remember how I answered exactly, but it was something along the lines of “Yes, I know.” If I’m being honest, I felt shaken from the argument and his behavior, in general, but also quite relieved that he had finally said it. He left the house that night and spent a couple of nights at a friend’s.
Shortly after he came home, he apologized for his behavior and for running away. He paused for a long time and seemed to struggle to get his next words out. His eyes filled with tears and he said he was really sorry for what he had said, that it wasn’t true and that the thing he really hated was that we weren’t his biological parents. That he hated being adopted and wanted to be our biological child more than anything. That broke my heart far more than what he had said a few days before. I told him I felt the same way. We didn’t hug, just sat on opposite sofas and looked at each other and saw each other’s tears and love. Being rejected by my adopted son was a huge moment in our relationship. Despite many more ups and downs for the next few years, we have been closer ever since. © Ruth Alborough / Quora

13.

My youngest daughter came to live with us when she was 10, when my middle daughter brought her home for a sleepover that has lasted for 13 years. She had been through quite a bit by this age. I realized for the first time in my life that I had to love someone without any expectation of return. She may never love us back. She may never be loyal to us as a family. She stretched me and taught me more about myself than anyone else ever has. Please don’t take this the wrong way, I love my biological children with every fiber of my being and I would give my life for them, but I love her maybe a bit harder. She didn’t have the luxury of knowing that she was safe her whole life. So there is a part of me that wants her to know how much we want her, how grateful we are that she is ours. I don’t feel the need to prove that to my other children because they already know. They grew up hearing every day how loved and wanted they are. She changed our lives. She opened the door for us as a family to have frank discussions about everything. Today, my 4 kids are as thick as thieves. We are her people and she is ours. © Renee LaCoste Long / Quora

14.

I would like to share the story of my friend Roman who adopted a kid in the ’90s. He was a simple truck driver, married, with one son. His wife had gone into the hospital to give birth to their daughter, when some other young mother gave up her kid. She gave birth to a sickly, colicky child and Roman’s wife tried breastfeeding the baby for the first time. The kid was supposed to be taken to the orphanage, but since he was a newborn, he was left with Roman’s wife as per her request. The authorities were supposed to come to take the boy after 2 days. It was spring, all the ice on the roads was melting, and it was pretty hard to get home — like there was no normal way home. Roman carefully brought the babies home and didn’t even think that the boy would be staying with them forever. He thought, once the road becomes drivable they will come to take the baby to the orphanage. When the representatives from the orphanage arrived, the baby was sick and they decided to leave him in this family for some more time. His wife, Jane, then said that she didn’t want to part with the baby. They applied for adoption and kept the boy with them.

Recently Roman said that a “kind” neighbor told their adopted son (when he was 8) the truth. The boy kept it to himself at first, but later asked his parents, who confirmed the truth. The son was silent for a little while, but later said, “Well, at least now I understand why you all are blondes and I have dark hair.”

Roman and his wife Jane moved to our city with their whole family. Now their kids are grown, the older one moved to the capital, and their daughter got married and moved to another city with her husband. They keep in touch with their parents, write to them, and visit them regularly. But it was their adopted kid who stayed with his parents. He lives separately in the neighboring apartment. He is married and works as a truck driver like his father. Roman says, “I am thankful to my life and to my wife for such a son. I can’t even imagine what would have happened to him if my wife hadn’t seen him in the hospital.” Yesterday I learned that their adopted kid became a father and he named his daughter Jane, after his mother. © Sibirskix / Pikabu

Do you know any stories from people who decided to adopt a kid? Perhaps you and your spouse are foster parents?