Meet the Willets

Excerpted from an article that appeared in The Charlotte Observer, Copyright 9/12/2000.

Every night at bedtime, Jill Willet wondered what she had done wrong.

Most days brought ugly outbursts from her 6-year-old daughter. And when Willet tried to tuck her daughter in, Melissa would scream, shout and kick the walls.

Two years earlier, Willet and her husband, Mac, had adopted Melissa and her older sister, Jennifer, giving them a loving home after a life of foster care turmoil. Now everything seemed to be going sour.

Is my daughter going crazy? Am I failing as a mother? Tormented by doubts, Willet called Melissa's former preschool teacher, who also had adopted older children.

Nothing's wrong with either of you, the teacher assured her. She's getting attached to you, and everyone she has ever cared about has gone away. So now she's trying to make you give her up before you can break her heart.

The next day, Willet told Melissa she wanted to make something clear: "You can't do anything bad enough that I'm not going to be your mom." The outbursts stopped.

Not every adoptive family is as lucky as the Willets. Deprivation, and stress in the early years create lasting challenges for a child, and many families face those rough spots without anyone to help them through. That can lead to heartache, stress, and worst of all, failed adoptions...

Sally Gordon, the social worker who placed Melissa and Jennifer with the Willets eight years ago, said, "There are predictable stages and behaviors."

All adoptive families face special issues, says Kathleen Hayes of the South Carolina Department of Social Services, a leader of the national movement to support such families.

A child adopted as a healthy infant will face identity questions as a teenager, she said. An older children removed from a troubled home will keep confronting feelings about the birth family, and new issues often flare up as the child gets older and feels more secure. Children severely neglected in the first few years, in a home or an orphanage, may need intensive therapy to form healthy bonds with their adoptive families...

Mac Willet, a Charlotte, SC accountant, says that his county social services classes on foster and adoptive parenting taught him more than the college courses it took to earn two degrees. He and Jill explored adopting foster children partly because it's free; private adoptions can cost thousands of dollars, and they preferred to spend their money raising children.

They vividly recall one guided imagery exercise designed to help parents feel what foster children go through.

Close your eyes and picture your parents, they were told. Now imagine a social worker coming to your home and saying you have to leave. She hands you a bag and gives you a few minutes to gather everything you'll take with you. What do you put in the bag? Picture yourself pulling away from your home. Now you're driving up to a house you've never seen before, to meet strangers who will care for you...

"Most of us were crying by the time we finished," Jill recalls. Grown men were sobbing.

The Willets met the girls on Jennifer's sixth birthday, two small faces peeking from windows beside the door of their latest foster home. Melissa was only 4. The girls had spent two and a half years in foster care, moving several times.

Relatives and friends rallied around the new-formed family. The Willets enrolled their daughter in a Montessori school. When they explained the situation, the school put Melissa in a prekindergarten class taught by an adoptive mom.

Despite the classes and support, the Willets faced frequent surprises.

About a year after the girls moved in, the Willets decided they needed a bigger house. The girls asked questions Mom and Dad found strange: What will our furniture look like? What kind of toys will we have? Can the dogs come?

To the girls, moving meant starting life over.

"Forever is not a concept they grew up with."

Because of the turmoil in their lives, the girls started school behind. The Willets chose a Montessori magnet school because it let students work at their own pace. Later, they decided to home-school. If that doesn't work, they'll look for a private school-whatever it takes to meet their daughters' needs, they say.

They've had to deal with questions about how much contact the girls should have with their brothers and how to talk to the about their birth mother.

"Everybody has issues," Jill said. "Nobody has the perfect mom or the perfect dad... Their birth mom was ill equipped to have children. She made some bad decisions, but that doesn't mean she was a bad person. They don't need to feel weird about it. That's just life."

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