"We Didn't Even Know What We Didn't Know."

"We Didn't Even Know What We Didn't Know."
Adoptive Parent & Author of Six Books Shares Her Insights To Help Others Through Challenging Process
BY marguerite paolino 

Jayne Schooler and her husband David didn't plan to become foster parents. It could have been chance that brought that first foster child into their lives. Maybe, as Schooler believes, it was part of God's plan for them.

"It wasn't on our to-do list," she said. "But a young man asked us a question, and we said yes."

The Ohio couple welcomed Jeff into their household, which already included their 18-month-old daughter by birth, in 1978 - long before information and support for foster parents was easily accessible. They thought the 14-year-old would be grateful for the opportunity to have a family. They expected he would be glad for the stability of their home. They were sure he would thrive on the love they offered him.

They were wrong, and the experience shattered the assumptions Schooler had about foster children and how to care for them.

"They need so much more than that," she said. "We didn't even know what we didn't know."

Saying Yes

Today, a nationally-known educator, consultant and author, specializing in adoption and foster care, Schooler looks back on her early experiences and marvels at her own naiveté

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"When kids come in from the child welfare system, they bring so much woundedness and trauma," said Schooler, who will be the keynote speaker at the 35th Annual New England Adoption Conference on April 5 (see related story) in Westborough. "They just can't do what we ask them to do. Many of these children have not developed the capacity to tell the difference between right and wrong. They don't see things the way they are. They lie about things they don't have to lie about.

"I could say, 'You're wearing one red sock and one blue sock,' and they would say, 'No, I'm not.' That's the way they've learned to survive in their birth homes. Had we known that the kids lie with no thought of it, we would have responded by not getting so emotionally pulled in. Families need a lot of help managing their own emotional responses."

The Schoolers were not discouraged by their first foster care experience.

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When 14-year-old Ray came into their lives soon after, they said yes again.

And when they had the opportunity in 1983 to adopt Ray at age 16, their answer again was yes.

"There was a lot of humor and a lot of laughing with Ray in the house," she said. The Schoolers provided foster care to other children until 1986, when Jayne became an adoption and foster care coordinator for a public children's agency in Ohio.

"Adoption is an absolutely joyous way to build a family. And like any other family, a family built through adoption has joys and challenges," she said.

Reaching Out

Through her work with the children's agency, Schooler was able to share some of her experience with other families, but she wanted to reach a wider audience. In 1996, she became a trainer and consultant, traveling the country to speak to parents, educators, and other adoption professionals about the challenges of parenting traumatized children.

"Parents are going to be challenged in ways that they never thought they would be challenged," she said. "People who have not parented these kinds of kids have to learn a whole new way of parenting - not because it's an adoption but because of the trauma they bring in with them," she said.

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She published her first book, The Whole Life Adoption Book: Realistic Advice for Building a Healthy Adoptive Family in 1993. A revised and updated version will be released in April, making it's debut at the New England Adoption Conference.

The other books she has authored or co-authored include Searching for a Past, Telling the Truth to Your Foster or Adopted Child: Making Sense of the Past, Journeys After Adoption: Understanding Lifelong Issues, Mom, Dad … I'm Pregnant: When Your Daughter or Son Faces an Unplanned Pregnancy. Another book is scheduled to be published in 2009.

"Jayne has been at the forefront of the movement to recognize adoption as a whole life experience," said Nancy Harper, executive director of the Adoption Community of New England, which sponsors the conference. "Her work has had a great impact on the field."

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Deb Shrier, a social worker at Wide Horizons for Children, an adoption and child welfare agency based in Waltham, often recommends Schooler's book Telling the Truth to Your Adopted or Foster Child to parents she works with.

"Her books offer adoptive parents useful ways of speaking openly and honestly with their children - especially on difficult topics," Shrier said.

Looking Back

Schooler doesn't look back at her earlier parenting years without regret, but hopes that sharing her insight will continue to help others. If she had realized, for example, how far behind a child can be developmentally, she would have adjusted expectations for her family.

"A child may be a 10-year-old agewise, but emotionally and socially, that child may be a 6-year-old," she said. "If I had known that, I would have learned to have no expectations and go from there."

Schooler also wished she had understood how long it can take to develop a sense of family.

"We adopted Ray at a time when teenagers are pulling away from families. We tried to pull him into the family," she said, but at 15, 16, 17 years old, Ray pulled away anyway. "We expected him to bond with us, but that didn't happen for a long time. At 21, he decided no place was better than home."

She laughed. "We told him he had it backwards. But the reality of adopting older kids is that when you adopt a kid who is 10 or 14, you may not have the relationship you wish you would have had until he's in his 20s. Our best years with Ray are now - the last six or seven years. When you adopt, you adopt for a lifetime, regardless of what happens, you're in it for the long haul, just like a child who's born to you."

After examining her own family's experiences, Schooler encourages parents to be proactive in their child's transition to adulthood.

"A lot of adopted kids take two steps out [of the house] and three steps back," she said, adding that Ray moved back home at least four times before he married at 30. "These kids are still playing catch up."

Her son has caught up - and passed many along the way. When Schooler holds her year-old granddaughter, Lacey, she knows that the single act of adopting Ray had an intergenerational impact.

"By changing the course of life Ray was on, we changed the course of generations to come," she said. "If we had not adopted Ray, Lacey would not have any paternal grandparents to dote on her," she said, adding with pride that Ray is "an absolutely great dad. Lacey clings to him like glue."

Marguerite Paolino is an award-winning freelance writer from Hopkinton. She writes frequently on adoption issues for Bay State Parent magazine.