She told me about the conversations she had with her daughter, repeatedly telling her that she was going to come back and that she shouldn’t worry, but no amount of talking would change the behavior, her daughter still cried and still clung.  The situation had become so unbearable with Jessica becoming a virtual slave to her daughter’s anxiety, either refusing to leave the house without her daughter, or sneaking out while she was distracted, or waiting until she was asleep.  None of the solutions was ideal and Jessica knew that she was just putting off dealing with the problem that she now saw spreading to her other, younger children, who started to exhibit similar behaviors.

Being the intelligent woman that she is, Jessica decided to solve the problem by giving her daughter things that she valued.  One day, before a trip to the mailbox to retrieve the mail (a trip that would take less than five minutes) she approached her daughter and told her how upset she knew she became when mommy left, but this time, Jessica was going to give her daughter something she knew that Jessica valued.  She gave her daughter her wedding ring.  She said, “I love my wedding ring, right?”  Her daughter nodded.  And she said, “I would not ever want to lose my wedding ring, would I?”  And her daughter shook her head.  Jessica then asked her daughter is she would watch it while she ran outside to get the mail.

The strategy worked.  Her daughter clutched the ring as Jessica went to the mailbox, and gradually Jessica would leave for longer periods until she could be gone for the entire evening.  Sometimes she would change up the routine, leaving her driver’s license or another valuable thing, and gradually her daughter came to understand that her mother was not abandoning her.

I thought this was a wonderful strategy–and it might work for others whose kids exhibit similar behaviors.

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Watching her interact with the boys has reminded me of my daughter’s arrival here ten years ago and her elementary years when she was still struggling with how to negotiate her new environment.  And I have noticed that the guys on the team are a little aloof when it comes to interacting with her.  They hesitate to pass the ball to her and haven’t quite figured out how to integrate her into the team.  I am happy to report that my son is a noticeable exception to this rule though.  I don’t think my son is qualitatively different from any of the other kids on his team–he has the same angst as all of the other pre-adolescent boys, BUT he has spent his life living with two girls who don’t share his skin color, so I don’t think she is all that unusual to him–she’s a girl and she’s his teammate.  He sees her different color of skin, but it just isn’t big a deal to him.  As a result, she feels comfortable with him too.  She seeks him out during their breaks and it’s sweet to watch.  I’m proud of my son, and it’s neat to watch as the other boys come around too.  They’re beginning to see this new girl as a person too!

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Heidi is flown out of Vietnam and grows up the daughter of a single woman in Tennessee.  After a falling out with her adoptive mother (This documentary does not portray Heidi’s American mother very positively at all!) Heidi decides to track down her birth mother.  She is one of the fortunate few who was removed from Vietnam by an agency that worked diligently to keep accurate records of the children leaving Vietnam despite the chaos that was going on in that country as the U.S. was pulling out.  (I recently read The Life We Were Given, Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam by Dana Sachs which is a remarkable accounting of that turbulent time in Vietnam’s history and most of the kids have absolutely no records of their identity or their families.)

Heidi was older, however, 6 1/2 years old, when she is removed, so she has some hazy memories of her childhood, and with the help of the agency, she is able to find her family.   The focus of the movie is on Heidi, a.k.a., Hiep and her reunion with her mother.  It’s incredibly touching and it speaks so much to the adoptive experience and what makes us the people we are, our genetics or our environment.  Heidi is Americanized through and through and has difficulty relating to her mother and siblings in Vietnam.  At one point she says she feels suffocated by the closeness of the bunch.  Her mother in the U.S. was cold and distant, so she is unaccustomed to the physical and emotional closeness of her siblings.

Much has been written about the end of the movie when her Vietnamese family asks her to support her mother financially, and Heidi breaks down into tears saying that she feels so used by these people whom she doesn’t have a relationship with. I wish someone had done a better job preparing her for what she might experience.  Her Vietnamese family is not greedy, children who have the means are expected to care for their parents.

If you haven’t had a chance to see it, it is an incredible film and I highly recommend it for anyone who has adopted or who is thinking of adopting internationally.

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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 me if I had ever told my kids that they were lucky, I had to be honest, because the truth is that I HAVE told my kids that I thought they were lucky.  But the conversation and the explanation didn’t stop there.  I broke down the notion of luck:

Is my older daughter lucky that her first mother died?

Is my younger daughter lucky that she never knew her first mother?

Were my daughters lucky that they don’t live in the culture they were born into?

Of course not!

But were my daughters lucky that I adopted them?

Yes…. I told them why just like I am going to tell you now.

My kids are lucky because I love them unconditionally.  Not all kids, whether they have been adopted or not, have that.  So they should feel fortunate.  My kids are also lucky because I am on their side.  Again, not all children have that and so they shouldn’t take that for granted.  And finally, I have told all three of my kids at various times that they are fortunate because I believe in them.

They are remarkable and inspiring children and I am privileged (and lucky!) that I get to be their mom.

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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 drinks, peeling carrots, grinding spices, sampling various chutneys, making crackers….It was wild!

On the first day, one of the moms–the main organizer of the event–asked the girls to think about “adoption” and write down what it means to them.  It was all done anonymously, so I don’t know what my daughters said, but I thought other parents might be interested in the comments the kids made.  The girls ranged in age from 10-17, and here is what five girls wrote:

What Adoption Means to Me

“I don’t know.  I think of it a lot.”

“Adoption is something special to me.  I don’t feel different from my family because I have two brothers from India.”

“I think if I didn’t ever get adopted, I probably wouldn’t be alive.  So, I was saved with a new life.  Even tho sometimes I feel very different from my friends and kids at school.  It’s hard to fit in, but I realize I am different and I’m just going to have to deal with it.”

“If I wasn’t adopted I know I wouldn’t be here today celebrating the same holidays or wearing the same clothes.  Being adopted is the best thing ever!”

“Adoption:  Bad–I don’t know what I feel, and I HATE explaining why I am different.  Good–Everyone in the family tries to understand and show love.”

I think one of the best things about the camp is to help those girls who feel “different” to see that there are kids who have had exactly the same experience.
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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 obituary that really made me sad.  The deceased was only 37–which is sad enough–but what stood out for me was the opening phrase of the obit.  ”Mary Smith (not her real name) adopted daughter of Roger and Paula Smith, passed away at her home on Tuesday, July 19th….”

The phrase “adopted daughter” hit me hard.  Whoever wrote the obituary–Mary’s parents, siblings, or friends–felt compelled to include that word “adopted” in the opening line of her memorial.  It was as if her adopted status  was the central characteristic of her life, the overriding feature and nothing she did in the 37 intervening years she was on the earth could usurp that aspect of her identity.

It made me wonder about Mary herself and if she felt different from her siblings because she was adopted.  I hope not.  And I guess that most I can hope for is that it was written by someone not close to her or her family.  I know that historically there has been a certain amount of shame associated with individuals who have been adopted, but I thought that our attitudes had changed enough so we no longer parse people out based on their adopted status.

This obituary suggested that we still have a ways to go.
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My sister-in-law’s lesson on injuries led me to think about that primal wound of adoption and I think there is a lesson here for those who live with adopted children who may feel that wound of relinquishment.  I think seeing it literally, as an actual tear on the child’s heart has helped me to understand my children a little better.

Because my two youngest were adopted at birth, they didn’t have a cognitive understanding of the circumstances regarding their birth parents.  Instead they relied on me and the other adults in their lives to help them make sense of that act of relinquishment at the various stages of their intellectual development.  I can only hope that I have framed the situation and the circumstances so that they never see the relinquishment as a wound, but rather as an act of love, and they won’t ever form that scar tissue that my sister-in-law spoke of.

If an adopted child doesn’t have an adult to intervene and frame that event early on, then he or she will be on  his own to try and make sense of the relinquishment.  One of the unfortunate things about kids is that their egocentric natures will lead them to attribute all of life’s events on them.  I KNOW that my oldest was totally convinced for a time that her arrival caused my husband to die.  ”People in my life always die,” she would say cavalierly at times and heartfelt at others.  (My husband was diagnosed with cancer 3 months after she arrived and he died 9 months later.)

It is an unfair burden on a child who had already experienced so much unfairness.

It is probably safe to assume that older children who have been bounced from foster home to foster home have already formed some scar tissue as they try to make sense of the abandonment that they have experienced, so perhaps framing these events is one of the most important jobs that an adoptive parent has.

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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 when the topic of adoption is brought up?  Who are these guys who trust that they will love a daughter or son born to another man?  Who completes the necessary paperwork, contributing their biography for the home study? Who dutifully cleans the house before the social worker comes?  And who often sacrifices vast amounts of money so children can join their family?   Or who attends MAPP classes if foster care is their route to adoption?
Who are these folks who go without sleep caring for their children when they are sick?  Who teach their kids the difference between a ball and a strike?  And the difference between right and wrong?

Who are these guys who spend hours throwing and kicking balls in the backyard, sharing the rules of professional sports–like when a two-point conversion makes sense as opposed to setting for the extra point in pro football?  Who are these special men who sit attentively during music concerts and plays?  Who joyously cheer their children’s achievements on the soccer field or the baseball diamond?

Granted, ALL dads are special, but to me, adoptive fathers are truly a rare breed.  And I think they deserve a special acknowledgement.

Thank you for your courage to trust that you WILL love your adopted children.  And thank you for your ability to actually love them once they are in your home.

Here’s to you!  Happy Father’s Day.

I hope you get the best looking tie in the store!

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My son came home a couple years ago with a “heritage” assignment.  He was asked to research and write a report about his roots–His birth mother’s mother was born in the Philippines so we went to the library and checked out several books about the country, its history and some of the customs and traditions of the people.  He was going along smoothly until he was hit with this question:  ”What family traditions do you have which keep this culture alive?”

Uhhhhhhh….  We didn’t really do anything!  After talking with my son we decided to switch gears and go with Croatia–which is where my grandfather emigrated from at the turn of the last century.  We still have a few traditions and keep that heritage alive.

Right before school was out my youngest came up to me, clipboard in hand, and in her most serious voice said, “Mom, I need to ask you some questions.”
“Ok,” I replied.  ”Shoot.”

“Number One:  What color are your eyes?”

“Uhhhh…..Blue?”

“Yes!  That’s right,” she said, checking off her form.

She then went to her next one.  ”Okay, can you curl up the edges your tongue?”
“Yup,” I responded, as I stuck out my tongue to show her as the flat piece became a U.  ”Can you do that?” I asked.

“Let me try,” she said, sticking out her tongue that did not move.

“Hey, I finally said.  ”What is this for?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.  ”Science or something.”

Any assignment focusing on genetics and inherited traits (like eye color and the ability to roll one’s tongue) are definitely going to be tougher for the adopted kid.

Are there any other school assignments that were more difficult because of your child’s adopted status?  I would love to pass on some stories from other families that might make them more sensitive to the students in their classroom?

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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 starting band camp tomorrow–and this is a really neat program where for kids go and spend time playing (and experimenting) with almost every kind of instrument you can imagine: strings, woodwinds, and brass.  At the end they decide which one “made their heart sing.”  (That’s the question the coordinator asked my son–”Which one made your heart sing??”  He chose the clarinet that’s the instrument he played in band last year.

But really, this post isn’t about any of these camps–rather it’s about what happened when my 17-year-old was filling out the application to attend this leadership camp.  There was a question about her background and why she would make a good candidate for this particular experience.  I immediately thought of her background and coming to America at the age of seven and how she joyfully adapted not only to living in an orphanage, but adapting to a new family, culture, and language and I told her to write that down in the blank.   My daughter rolled her eyes and said, “Mom!  I don’t want to always talk about that!”
Her comment took me aback and it made me question whether it’s more important to me in defining her than it is to her and how she sees herself?   Obviously she doesn’t want that experience to define her, and it doesn’t.  She is so much more than all of that.  And I backed of when I sensed that she was reluctant to share that piece of her story with these people who would use it to determine her worthiness.  At the same time, I reminded her that the way she emerged from those experiences said a lot about her character.  That is not something I want her to dismiss.

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