Our support group has found that puberty is a critical transition for those adopted as older children. Problems of identity, emerging sexuality, and the desire for independence all become much more problematic for those adoptees. What for birthfamilies might simply be "normal" parent-child alienation during the teen years, with some relatively minor acting-out behavior, can often take much more serious form in adoptive families. It's as if the ambivalence which has always characterized the parent-child relationship becomes so intense that, in some cases, it can no longer be contained within the same household.

Ricardo

After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you." So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you." Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked together. Isaac said to his father Abraham, "Father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." He said, "The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.

When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place "The Lord will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of Lord it shall be provided." [Genesis 22:1-14; NRSV]

This horrible story--this seemingly incomprehensible story of divine child abuse--took on new meaning for me during a crisis with our son, Ricardo. His birthmother had been killed when he was a toddler. Now as a teenager, as the anniversary of this event approached, he began showing new openness to this painful loss. After talking to a therapist one day, a tear came trickling down his cheek, the first tear I had ever witnessed about this part of his past. On another occasion he told my wife and I that "the shell is beginning to crack." He knew how well covered was the gaping wound inside.

Yet this vulnerability was intolerable for Ricardo at other moments and led him into attempts at inordinate control over others. Setting limits on his behavior only met with escalating threats of what he would do if he didn't get his way. We had to keep watch constantly over our money and keys. The terror he had felt as an infant led him on a few occasions to threaten us with serious bodily harm. Other times he would escape the overwhelming feelings through heavy drinking or marijuana.

When we adopted Ricardo we had pledged to ourselves and to him that he would have a family "forever." The adoption party had a wedding cake, symbolizing the intentional commitment we had made to each other. Yet now it seemed like the family was breaking apart. There had always been tough times, even ordeals to get through. But I remember thinking during this crisis, "It can't go on like this. I don't know what to do anymore." I let go of my efforts to manage Ricardo exclusively through our own resources (or helping professionals chosen by us).

Shortly thereafter Ricardo was hospitalized in a caring place with a special focus on adopted children. Ricardo wanted to go himself; he knew he wasn't safe at home. Gradually we as parents realized that a hospital stay of even a few months would not be enough for our son to work through these problems. A second stage would be needed: a therapeutic residential school, where there is staff sufficient to supervise the students 24 hours a day and with resources available to handle crises. So Ricardo is now in such a place--a small good school which offers many chances at therapy. We do not know whether he will be able to come home in a year or two, or whether he will move from that school into an independent adult life, but we do have hope.

As we have talked with different individuals and groups, we have found that this experience with Ricardo is certainly not unique and not even that uncommon. The teen years are difficult for any young person. They are even more difficult for adopted children who have faced severe trauma early in life. Many adoptive families have had to choose residential placement for their teenaged child(ren) for periods of months or years. We have been assured that, appearances to the contrary, we were doing the loving thing for our son. Not to have intervened during this crisis in some dramatic way would, in fact, have been to abandon our parental responsibility.

Which brings me back to the story of Abraham and Isaac. When we first started thinking that Ricardo should not live in our home at the present time, I felt like I was killing off my son. I was betraying the vow we had made that he would be with us "forever." How could I do that as a father? How terminate that fatherhood which had given me so much joy and which I cherished so much?

But slowly, bit by bit, it began to dawn on me that Ricardo, and my own raising of Ricardo, had become an idol to me. Keeping him in our home, and raising him by "our" resources alone, was more important than helping him to heal. As the proverb goes: "It takes a village to raise a child." While Ricardo might not be living in our home, placing him where he could get effective help still meant I was being a father. We had not relinquished parental rights; we had not given up loving him, worrying over him, or spending time with him on visits. In some ways, perhaps we were being better or more effective parents now than before.

At last I could identify with Abraham and find some meaning in the story. I could feel Abraham's incredible anguish as he contemplated the loss of his son, his only son, the son for which he and Sarah had dreamed and waited for years. And I knew first hand the inner transformation Abraham must have undergone, in surrendering his own claim over Isaac's future and his own pride over his handiwork. We do a disservice to this story, I think, when we focus on the murderous command. To me, the story has become a sign of the need to relinquish whatever idols we bring to the process of parenting our children. It is a powerful reminder of the need to kill our own possessiveness in order that our children might be set free to heal and to grow.