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A good friend of mine, Jessica, adopted a child from China about ten years ago.  When Jessica's daughter was around four, she exhibited a lot of anxiety whenever Jessica left the house.  Jessica would want to pop out for a trip to the grocery store, coffee with her friends, or even a date with her husband, and her daughter would go into a rage, screaming and clinging to her mother, begging her not to leave her.  Jessica had two other children, neither of whom exhibited this behavior, and she was perplexed as to why her daughter would feel so insecure.  And why she would do it now when she hadn't been that way as an infant or toddler. She told me about the… [more]

Well, soccer season started again in earnest last weekend!  (So far we're 1-1: Daughter's team won, son's team suffered a tragic loss...)  My daughter is playing in an all-girl league--it's more recreational and is pretty laid back. My son is in the more competitive league and he's been with this same group of boys for several seasons now so they have gelled as a team.  But this year there is a new player on the team--a girl who was adopted from Ethiopia about three years ago.  This girl is a sweetie--she's energetic, she's joyful....and most importantly, she's a cracker jack soccer player!  When I heard she was going to be on the team, I decided to hang out at a couple practices… [more]

I watched a wonderful movie last night; it won a Sundance Award for Best Documentary in 2002 so you may have heard of it: Daughter from Dananag.  It is about a young woman who had been a part of Operation Babylift, the 1975 removal of thousands of Vietnamese “orphans” from Vietnam to the United States.  Of course, not all of the children were orphans, which was one of the tragedies of the event.  The girl--born Mai Thi Hiep, but who became Heidi Bub--was taken to the orphanage because her mother, like so many Vietnamese mothers at the time, believed that her daughter, born to an American GI, would be burned to death by the North Vietnamese because she is mixed race. Heidi is… [more]

A friend of mine, Susan, recently asked me for my opinion on something that happened at her house.  One of Susan's daughters has a friend who has been adopted from China. This little girl was at their house recently and said she was "so lucky" to have been adopted. Susan said that the comment made her a little uncomfortable and she asked me what I thought of parents who told their adopted kids that they were "lucky."  She wanted to know if I had ever told my kids that they were lucky. Now, I understand that the in today's adoption parlance, most adoptive parents say that when it comes to "luck" it is the parents who are the lucky ones.  But when Susan asked… [more]

Last week a couple of other adoptive  moms and I hosted our second annual heritage camp.  I blogged about last summer's experience with our camp a couple weeks ago, and now that the second one is over I thought I would share some of the activities and insights that the other parents and I got from this year's event. One thing I learned?  Less is more!!   Last Wednesday about twenty kids--campers and their friends--converged on my house to prepare a traditional Indian meal, and I'm STILL eating leftovers!!   We had a LOT of different food and it all tasted good, but it's clear that we prepared too much.  But while the girls were here, it was crazy--girls were making mango fruit… [more]

I have been very sporadic in my blogging this summer--well, not sporadic as much as absent!  Sorry about that.  I just can't seem to get in sync with all of the summer activities:  pool, camps, sleepovers, bike rides, playdates....  I find myself running from sun up to sundown.  When school is in session the kids are just as busy (or actually, more so) but at least they go to bed early, so I can get up early and blog.  During the summer, they are up really late--and so I am up late, and then I sleep in. But I saw something in the paper last week that really touched me and I felt compelled to blog about it.  I saw an… [more]

My dear sister-in-law was a chiropractor, and she was one of the smartest people I ever met.  I remember her once talking to one of my nephews who had recently suffered an ankle injury and telling him about the scar tissue that develops around the site of the wound.  She talked about how vulnerable and inflexible the surrounding muscles are even after the original wound heals because they have to adapt to the inflexible scar tissue.  She was telling my nephew that he was going to have to be extra careful because that ankle was now going to be more prone to future injuries because of different tissues. My sister-in-law's lesson on injuries led me to think about that primal wound of… [more]

It's Father's Day and across the country dads are opening up presents: ties, barbecue tools, car gadgets, the latest technological mechanism guaranteed to make their life easier.  Or perhaps they are going to spend the day on the golf course--after breakfast in bed, no doubt!  Whatever it is, I hope all dads get to celebrate. I've made this observation before, but it seems that the adoption literature is full of stories written by adoptive mothers.  We hear their voices and know their perspective.  No doubt it has to do with the fact that when it comes to adoption, often it is the woman who is the driving force. But what of adoptive fathers?  Who are these men who willingly go along with their wives… [more]

One of my former colleagues asked me recently if I would come to her multicultural education class and speak to her students who are studying to become teachers.  I did this last summer and she would like me to do it again.  The gist of last year's message was sensitivity--I told stories about my kids and their experiences with some of the assignments that came home with them that were a little complicated because of their adopted status.  Many of my son's teachers don't know he is adopted mainly because we choose not to share that bit of information, but not doing so can make for some frustrating experiences.  (The girls are a different story as their adopted status is a… [more]

If there's a theme in the upcoming week at our house, it's CAMP!  My 17-year-old left today for four nights to attend a leadership camp at the University.  (She's actually staying in the same dorm where I lived....ahem....a FEW years ago!)  Tomorrow I take my 12-year-old to camp for 5 nights.  He's never been gone so long and I'm a little worried--for myself!  (I'm also more than a little interested if history repeats itself: Last year he went to this same camp for 3 nights and when he returned home, I was going through his stuff for laundry I noticed that his bar of soap was still in its paper wrapper!) My youngest isn't going on any sleepovers this week but she is… [more]