You suck, Brad Pitt

I want to use this blog to call Brad Pitt out as a cowardly crapsack who hedges difficult-to-answer question and responds with some bullcrappy platitude. I was reading last week's "People" magazine (yes, this is what I do at 3 in the morning at work) and there was an article in which "commonfolk" could write questions to Fantastic Brad and he would answer them. One woman asked "Brad, my husband and I have 2 children and are considering adoption, but I am worried that I won't be able to bond with my adopted child. How did you bond with your adopted children and is it different than with your biological children"? His answer? "well, that is a great question and I thank you for it. What I can tell you is that I love my children each individually and I can't imagine my life without them" HUH? How does that answer this woman's perfectly valid question? It doesn't. It makes light of and minimizes just how difficult adoption can be. Yes, it is rewarding. Yes, it is a wonderful thing to do. But it is often very, very difficult and not at all the smiley, happy picture people try to paint of adoption. Particularly older child adoption. Or transracial adoption. Or adoptions where there are cultural barriers. I try to stay positive when I post on this blog, but right now, I need to be honest. I deal with adoption related challenges every day. Multiple times. Yes, my Haitian kids are different from my biological kids, or even from Ewan, who was adopted at birth. They were raised, during the most important years of their lives, in a completely different culture with no secure attachments. You cannot expect them to be the same, or act the same. We have had hundreds, if not thousands of dollars worth of our property destroyed by our 9 year-old, and he does not appear to be learning that it's not ok. Our 11 year old refuses to try in school, and is functioning at 2nd grade level, despite 3.5 years of intensive academic help. Our 19-year old left for two weeks to fly to Kansas with a ticket she talked some guy into buying for her, to see a different guy, whom she had met on MYSPACE!!! She told nobody where she was going, or when she was going to be back, we had no idea where to find her, who she was with or what had happened to her. This is pretty routine, and even mild stuff in the course of adoptive parenting. Am I saying my bio kids are better than my adopted kids? Absolutely not. I marvel that these kids are as normal as they are, considering what they endured in their lives. But I wish someone had sat me and Joseph down beforehand and been brutally honest with us about what we were signing up for. We were very naive and figured that since we love being parents and loved kids, and we would have to do is "love" these kids and everything would be Norman Rockwell perfect. It isn't. I can't count the times I have had to go in my room to cry or scream out of total frustration. I love my kids. I know that our family is the way it is supposed to be. But I am not going to lie and say it's easy. I am disappointed that Brad Pitt is such a liar. But, maybe it's totally different when you have an army of nannies raising your kids for you. In any case, this isn't a bid for sympathy, I just needed to get that off my chest because these last two weeks have been very, very hard and Mr. Brad Pitt thinks he is so clever and sweet and admirable, dodging somebody's perfectly good question. You suck, Brad Pitt.