Competent Enough?

I’ve met a lot of adoptive parents over the years and one thing that I can say is true of each of the parents I’ve met - they are all very competent people. They are business owners, artists, entrepreneurs, educators and bankers. They are volunteer coordinators and community leaders. They are knowledgeable and educated. And most, if not all, have had to acknowledge that somewhere along the way, adoption has made them question their competence.

It’s true that having children, either through adoption or through pregnancy, can bring the strongest man or woman to their knees. But when your family is formed through adoption, there is an added layer of unknown. When my bio kids cried at night for hours on end, I would ask myself, “Is she hungry?” or “Does his tummy hurt?” When my adopted children cried inconsolably, I asked all the same questions and more. “Does she miss the sound of her birth mother’s voice?” “Does he miss the smell of his foster family’s home?” “If I sang a different song, would it bring him comfort?” I didn’t have answers and my lack of answers made me question my competence as a mother. And I hate feeling incompetent.

We live in a society in which competence is respected and is often a measure of our worth. We expect competent doctors to heal us. We expect capable financial planners to help us invest well and make money. We expect competent teachers to educate our children. And we expect that we will be competent parents who fix our children’s problems, keep them from harm and save them from a scary world.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it is impossible. We aren’t as competent as we would like to think we are and no amount of hard work is going to cover up our failings. For many of us, our children are scarred from problems not of their own making, harmed by those who were supposed to love them best, and full of pictures of what a scary world really looks like. No amount of competence is going to fix those broken places in our children.

I’m not sure our children are looking for us to be competent. They are looking to us to be loving and kind. And understanding. They aren’t looking to us to fix all of their problems, but to be present and not be afraid when their problems feel too big for them to handle. They want to know that we are reliable, not competent. They want to know that we are loving, not capable.

Recognizing that we can’t always be competent and perfect parents helps us to live in grace. That grace and mercy is passed on to our children. I believe that by honestly owning our incompetence, we allow our children a safe place to fail, be picked up, hugged and loved and together we all move forward.