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Guest Post: A Relook at the Ungrateful Adopted Child

Below is a very insightful guest post about ungratefulness- not just what we percieve in adopted children, but in all of our hearts, and how to deal with it. The full post is here in an extended entry, but feel free to hop on over to this adoptive mom's blog, who is hopeful these thoughts will help other parents. 

A while back, I posted about the ungrateful adopted child.  During the time I wrote that particular post, there was a lot going on in our home.  Not wanting to get angry or resentful, but feeling and observing that Sporty was not necessarily displaying what I would describe as a grateful heart, I chose to flip it around a little bit.  Instead of focusing on what I observed to be an ungrateful attitude in our son, I chose to look at the many ways Christians are ungrateful for all that we have been given.  In short, all of us are ungrateful adopted children in one way or another.  By changing my perspective on this issue, it made a world of a difference.  Instead of becoming angry, I asked God to remind me of my own ungrateful heart, to point out when I was not being thankful, and help me see my child's heart.  Because honestly, I already knew that Sporty's actions and/or reactions had little to do with actually being ungrateful and a WHOLE LOT to do with everything in his life that he has little control over.  I was just tired…completely spent.  The first year home with any adopted child/children can really be a difficult time as families transition and when I just wanted to Sporty to be grateful, he was instead being….pretty much a normal twelve-year-old, except that he was in a fairly new country with a fairly new family, where everything looks, sounds, smells, and tastes completely different.  

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