Mr. and Mrs. Dursley were perfectly normal. Seriously, they are normal white collar, middle class people. Most fans of the Harry Potter series see them as the evil adoptive parents of Harry Potter. However, lets take a look at the family.
Mr. Dursley has a job in which he has some success. He loves his wife and son and appears to want to provide them with everything he feels they deserve. Mrs. Dursley is a stay-at-home mom, who also loves her husband and son. She loves her son so much that she too would do anything to see that he gets the best. In fact the only fault you really see in the Dursleys is that they DO tend to spoil their son, Dudley. However, honestly, haven’t we all been out at the mall or in the community and seen the family with the child that could do with fewer toys and a few more boundaries?
The Dursleys were perfectly normal. I bet their neighbors got along with them well enough. They probably had a few good friends that they spent time with on the weekends. They probably had lofty goals for their lives where they would earn their fortune or obtain fame.
During the course of reading this series we will hopefully tackle some very real situations that are “abnormal” and that foster/adoptive parents are asked to handle on an everyday basis. However, at the beginning we think it’s a good idea to celebrate your normalcy.
My wife and I discovered after being married about five years that a pregnancy for us would be nothing short of a miracle from God. No worries. We both had always considered adoption as something we would like to chase after in our married lives. We were normal. We still yearned to have a family. We wanted to teach a little girl to bake cookies and show a son how to properly kick a soccer ball.
We had bought an old home that we were completely gutting and remodeling into the home of our dreams. We had lofty goals of opening up a coffee shop and making a business that showed off our talents of hospitality and creativity. We were (and still are) a couple in love, but we still had the occasional argument – you know the ones where you swear all the neighbors heard it. We are normal.
Why does all of that need to be celebrated? Simple. We are a couple like you. We share the same feelings and emotions as you. We have our proud moments that we would like to shout to the world. We have our dark secrets that only a couple of people have seen in the back of our deepest darkest closets. We can relate well with many other foster/adoptive families because we are all normal. Since there is normalcy, there is no guilt for feelings or actions because we all can relate to each other. The normalcy takes away judgement, condemnation, and guilt.
How are you normal? Let the discussion begin in the comments below.
- What makes you unique as a couple? as a single parent?
- What are the qualities of your household that you feel are “perfectly normal”?
- Have you started your foster care/adoptive experience? Do you ever feel abnormal? alone?
- How do you feel like you as a couple/single parent are doing?
Scale from 1 (surviving) to 10 (thriving)
Parents’ Discussions:
Ch. 01 | Ch. 02 | Ch. 03 | Ch. 04 | Ch. 05 | Ch. 06 | Ch. 07 | Ch. 08 | Ch. 09 | Ch. 10 | Ch. 11 | Ch. 12 | Ch. 13 | Ch. 14 | Ch. 15 | Ch. 16 | Ch. 17
Kids’ Discussions:
Ch. 01 | Ch. 02 | Ch. 03 | Ch. 04 | Ch. 05 | Ch. 06 | Ch. 07 | Ch. 08 | Ch. 09 | Ch. 10 | Ch. 11 | Ch. 12 | Ch. 13 | Ch. 14 | Ch. 15 | Ch. 16 | Ch. 17
