There are all sorts of things I could/should be doing right now. But Tim and Esther are out of the house on a "Daddy date" and Daniel is at school, and this blog post has been rattling around in my head for a while. So I am going to let the dishes and laundry and photos and cards and packages sit for a while, and write!
Before adopting Daniel, we of course did a lot of reading and studying about what things can be like with the adoption of an older child. We are so blessed that so many things have gone well, but as with raising any child, there have also been some expected and unexpected challenges. So today I want to make a list of ten top challenges (in no particular order), and the blessings that more than make up for them.
Challenges:
1. Boundary testing: This has gotten better, but for a while I really felt like I had two four-year-olds in the house! Like the time in China when we had just finished disciplining Esther for jumping on the bed, and Daniel decided to jump on
his bed! The boundaries he pushes are generally minor things, but he has made me prove over and over that when I say no I mean no. One recent afternoon he came home from school while Esther and I were playing outside and decided to join us. We had a very fun and healthy hour of playing, but in that hour I also had to correct or redirect him six times for behaviors he knew were not allowed in our household. Once every twelve minutes doesn't sound like much if you've ever parented a toddler, but the need to be on the alert for problem behavior can be tiring.
2. "Pian"ing: I'm using the Chinese word that Daniel uses because I'm really not sure what to call this in English. I define "lying" as "communicating something that is not true with the intent to deceive for one's own advantage," and that is not what Daniel does. It doesn't even qualify as the "crazy lying" that many adoptive parents report, where a child will do something in front of the parent and then deny having done it. What Daniel will do is tell me that he did something that he thinks I won't like (or failed to do something that I had required of him), and then watch my reaction. He used to routinely come home from school telling me that he had lost his jacket (when he actually had it in his backpack), or that he had thrown away his math worksheet (when in fact he had worked hard on it and brought it home). He told me that he didn't use any English in a presentation that he did for English class, when in fact he did use a few words. So I never know whether or not to believe his reports of what he did at school. To the best of my knowledge, he has never misreported someone else doing something "bad," and never lied to me in order to get out of trouble. Of course I can't confirm everything he says, either...but I'm pretty confident he is truthful in other arenas, he just likes to give me the impression that he's been naughtier than he has been. Strange, huh? Part of this "pian"ing is that he, like a couple of people in my family of origin, has a personality that enjoys "pulling someone's leg" or "getting a rise out of someone." But that doesn't account for all of it. And the rest of the reason? My best guess is that it is a safe-ish way for him to test out my reaction, to figure out what I will do when he displeases me and what actions on his part will displease me. But I really don't know.
3. Language: I know people manage to adopt older children without a language in common, but it boggles my mind that that can work! Daniel and I have adjusted well enough to each other's mode of speech that we can communicate everyday needs and wants and also have pretty deep conversations about things of emotional importance. But there are times I just get weary trying to explain something (a math concept, retirement income, governmental regulations, why we won't give him our computer password...) when I don't know half of the words I need, and I'm not sure if the words I've chosen are communicating the nuances that I intended. So there are a lot of things I would love to say to Daniel that I don't. And there are times that he wants to tell me something and I don't understand, and he gives up. And oh, yes, then there's the whole translation thing. It gets really old being asked by Daniel to translate any conversation that I have with Tim, whether or not it concerns him. Meanwhile, it gets really old for Tim having our dinner table conversation taken over by Daniel in a language Tim barely understands.
4. Rudeness: I don't think Daniel was ever taught to speak to people respectfully, nor accustomed to having people speak respectfully to him. I was rather disconcerted one day early on when I looked up a word in my dictionary that I had heard Daniel using a lot, and discovered that he had been calling me "stupid"! He hadn't been saying it with any particular malice, and after listening to him talk to his friends back in China in the same way he talked to me, I concluded that that was just the way he talked. (And he will call himself stupid as cheerfully as he will call anybody else stupid.) But it is
not the way we speak to people in this household! I really do believe that one's feelings about people and about oneself can be shaped by the words one uses, and the words Daniel was using were not leading him in a good direction. We are making great progress in this area (more on that in another post, I hope), but in the meantime, there are times when I have been really happy that I am the only one who can understand him!
5. Poor boundaries: This has been a biggie. And part of it, I'm sure, is cultural confusion. China has a much, much smaller sense of personal space than the U.S. does, so there are many kinds of touching that are taboo here except for intimate relationships, but would be just fine in China. However, Daniel's issues go beyond that. If someone doesn't like how Daniel is touching them, his attitude is not that he needs to respect their wishes but that they are being too sensitive and they need to get over it already. I'm sure that was people's attitude toward his wishes when he was a kid in an orphanage. But he could get in sooooo much trouble as he grows up if he doesn't learn to respect "no!", especially when it comes to touching girls. He has already had issues at school with hugging girls who didn't want to be hugged (and hugging at school is against the rules anyway). After weeks of being understanding and making allowances, his teachers have finally started holding him accountable to the same rules as everyone else. Since he understands the rule and is quite capable of controlling himself, this is working well. He may not believe that other's boundaries are important, but he does not want detention! Not all of this issue is about hormones, either. One example from his early days home is that several times a day he would try to forcibly wrench my socks off and rub my feet. Now there's nothing wrong with offering a footrub, but it is very annoying to have a footrub forced on one! I have also been mortified on a couple of occasions when he has rubbed the bellies of some of our heavier friends, and then made hand motions indicating how impressed he is with their girth.
6. Possessiveness: Daniel really, really values my attention. This is good. But there are times, like when I can't have a short conversation with Tim without Daniel interrupting to start his own conversation, or demand a translation, that I wish he didn't want my attention so much of the time! It can also be a problem when I'm talking to someone on the phone and Daniel demands to know what's going on while I'm still in the middle of the conversation...and occasionally picks up another receiver and starts talking to me in Chinese over top of said conversation. He also monopolizes me if we go to a group function where he doesn't know anybody (although he does fine at church, where he has his own relationships with people). We have severely limited social situations like the above, but we don't want to be hermits either. And then there have been times where, say, Esther and Daniel and I were sitting on the couch and Esther put her head in my lap, so then Daniel had to put his head in my lap, and then they got into a shoving match and we ended up with nobody happy.
7. Role confusion: Daniel has had a number of female caregivers and/or mentors, several of whom he calls mama. But he still seems to have some confusion over what exactly a mama
is, and how he should relate to one. There are times when he very much wants me to baby him and do the things for him that I would have done if he had come into our house in infancy. Some of those things, like helping him brush his teeth and pick out his clothes for the day, are perfectly fine and I'm happy to do them. Others are not so appropriate for his age and gender. I'd love to be able to go back in time with him, but some of those windows of opportunity have already been missed forever. And then there are the times when Daniel tries to treat me like a peer. To give one persistent (and annoying!) example, he frequently addresses me by my first name. For the last five months, unless the matter is especially urgent, I have been ignoring him until he calls me "mama" or some variation thereof, but he still hasn't given up on calling me other things. Finally, there are the many questions of how to be intimate with a mama. In families, for example, is it appropriate to wear one's underwear around the house? And how does one show physical affection? And when, as a parent, do you teach your child behavior that is appropriate to their chronological age, or allow behavior that is appropriate to their emotional stage? Trying to figure out where our own boundaries lie, and then communicate those to our son, is an ongoing challenge. And this is an issue where having Esther in the house didn't prepare us, because things that are appropriate for a four-year-old are sometimes not for an adolescent, especially when that adolescent is busy attaching to the opposite-sex parent. So we can't just teach house rules we already had, we have had to figure some out from scratch.
8. Self-image: Daniel's first month home, he drove me crazy talking about how "tiaopi" ("naughty, mischievous") he was. Many times a day he would say, "Mommy, look, I'm being naughty!" or "Mommy, I'm a really naughty kid, huh?" He seemed to take great pride in this identity. I believe that the way we talk about ourselves can become a self-fulfilling prediction, so I really worked hard not to agree with his insistence that he was "always naughty," and to find other words to use to describe him to himself. Now, he almost never talks about being "tiaopi." From time to time he will talk about how much he wants to grow up to be a good person and how he feels that he is getting a little better every day. So now the negative self-concept we are working on is "stupid." I think we have made a little progress here too, but we still have a long ways to go.
9. Into everything: One of the first rules that we had to use with Daniel, starting in China, was "If it doesn't belong to you or you don't know how it works,
don't push buttons or take it apart!" In China, he grabbed a friend's cellphone to examine it and flipped a random switch at the medical clinic in Guangzhou. On our first day home, when our social worker dropped by to call hello to us as we worked in our front yard, he inserted his entire upper body into her car window and started checking out the levers and switches inside. In his first week home he set off our carbon monoxide detector, accidentally set the alarm on our weather reporting station, which woke us all up at 3 AM, and flipped one switch on and off so rapidly that he blew a fuse. (This in addition to many other explorations that did not have disastrous endings.) And waiting with him in a doctor's or dentist's office near all that expensive, attractive equipment was a nightmare. He has come
such a long way in this area. He is still extremely curious, and he still learns with his hands, but those are good qualities. He has now learned to (mostly) leave other people's stuff alone, or at least to ask permission first. I was so proud of him recently when he had a dentist's appointment, for which we ended up having to wait in the room with all the equipment for an hour, and the only thing he played with was pushing the buttons to adjust the chair! Okay, so I'm sure most people don't allow their teenagers to play with the electric chair, but considering everything else he could have been doing (and would have been doing back in July or August), I thought he was being a pretty good citizen.
10. Need for direction: My least favorite question these days is, "Mama, what am I going to do?" This child does not make plans for himself. He may reject every activity I suggest, but he usually leaves it up to me to do the suggesting. (And if I get fed up and refuse to suggest anything, he will either hang around me and complain or start taking something apart.) He also does not "do" hanging out in his room, and is quite self-limiting on computer time. These are very healthy qualities for the amount of time he has been in our family (and probably in general), but I have to confess there are times I wish he would just go entertain himself for a while instead of depending on me to do it!
I could have included health and school on the list of challenges, but those are pretty obvious ones that you could figure out for yourselves! Of course he has medical issues (there is at least one more besides the low vision and the cataract that I think we will need to get checked out), and of course a kid who is six years behind in school is going to take some extra thought and support to get caught up.
Blessings:
1. Trust: When I read about attachment, the first and foundational phase of attachment consists of a child learning that the world is a basically safe place, that adults are trustworthy, and that his needs will be met. Daniel has no trouble with any of this. He may still be working through aspects of some later phases of attachment, but he came to us expecting that we would keep him safe and meet his needs. He has his share of anxieties about life, but for the most part they are not traumatic for him. It is a great foundation for learning to be a family together.
2. Insight: I have said this before on this blog, but Daniel has an extraordinary ability to understand and articulate what he is feeling and why he is acting the way he does. His insights are helpful to us as his parents, since he can usually tell us what emotion he is feeling and what is going on inside, but they are also extremely helpful to him. They allow him to process the hard parts of this transition bit by bit rather than by burying everything until it explodes, and they allow him to correctly connect cause and effect rather than blaming us for problems that are coming from somewhere else. It is this quality in him, as much as anything else, that makes me picture him growing into an adult that I will be proud to be related to.
3. Acceptance and Identification: Daniel came to us totally prepared to accept us as his family and to take on our family identity. He wants to understand our values and standards, and has mostly taken them for his own. (I will be interested to see if he goes through a later stage of questioning and picking and choosing, like most adolescents do.) He wants to please us and to be one of us. And boy, if even half the stuff he has told me about the trouble he got into in the orphanage is true, I am ever so grateful that he wants to please! Because if he wanted to displease, this household would be mayhem.
4. Humor: Daniel loves to laugh, and he loves to make others laugh. Shared laughter has done wonders in growing all of our relationships. And shared laughter can defuse tensions. Best of all, laughter is
fun. And it's natural to fall in love with a child when you are having fun together.
5. Communication: I am
so grateful for every iota of Chinese that I speak. Every time I can answer one of Daniel's questions with information that is valuable to him; every time I can listen to a story of his life in China and remember this piece of who he is; every time I can provide for him something that he told me he needed; every time I can prepare him for something that is going to happen by telling him what to expect; every time that I can explain why we do something that seems strange to him, it builds his feeling that we are trustworthy and helpful, that we can come to understand him and he can come to understand us. And it helps us, as well, to understand where Daniel is coming from and some of what is going on inside.
6. Desire to love and be loved: Daniel should have never had to wait for a family. No child should have to wait for a family. But I am grateful that Daniel was loved by various people while he was waiting, and that he came to us fully ready to give and receive love. Yes, he is ornery, but he is also affectionate and can be very sweet. And it is easier not to get fixated on the orneriness when it is balanced out by sweetness.
7. Competence: It is just plain hard for anyone to come to a place where the language is different and all the rules have changed. It can really do a number on one's self-esteem, particularly if it isn't strong to begin with. We are grateful that Daniel brought with him some things that he is good at, even in his new environment. He is still good at singing. He has done the special music in church several times (in Chinese), and is looking forward to doing it again. His choir classmates all think he has a good voice, and he has a great relationship with his choir teacher. He is also still good at all things involving electricity. He has done a staggering number of projects around the house, many with great success, and he is always proud of himself when he is finished. And letting him work on projects with Tim is great for their relationship. He will proudly say things like, "Dad and I are both really smart when it comes to electronics!" And, Daniel is still good at helping. He used to help with a lot of things at the orphanage, and now he loves to help out at school. It just makes him feel good to be able to reconfigure a teacher's computer the way she wants it, or help the janitor collect uneaten food in the cafeteria. So even when Daniel is having one of those days where it feels like his classmates will never understand him and he will never learn multiplication, he still has some skills that make him feel competent and gain him respect.
8. Personality: I have heard the word "charismatic" used to describe Daniel more than once. His teachers say that he is a delight to have in the classroom. His vision teacher described him to me this week as "an adventure rolled up in a child." There's just something about Daniel that is hard to resist, especially when he's smiling. I forget that sometimes when he's testing limits, or being rude or demanding. But then there are the moments like when he saw an inflatable Halloween decoration in the grocery store--a ghost that went in and out of a pumpkin holding bags of brand-name candy--and started jumping up and down in the middle of the store exclaiming about how beautiful it was, and I couldn't help but respond to his delight. Some parents on an internet group I belong to were sharing how they handle parenting difficult children, and one mom said that one of the things she does is to take pictures of her children when things are going well, and look at them to remember the good times when she is going through a hard time. Daniel has given us lots of good times to reflect on.
9. Optimism: I remember hearing once that most people have a "normal" happiness setting. It may be interrupted by events that nudge their happiness level up or down, but soon enough it will settle back into its normal. I don't remember the source of that idea, but I have noticed that Daniel's "normal" setting seems to be calm and optimistic. He may get wildly excited about things like discovering that our neighbor has a video security system (I think those particular neighbors already thought we were crazy, but I'm sure they do now after watching Daniel jumping up and down in their yard while shrieking in Chinese, "
I want one of those! We should get one for
our house!"), or he may get angry and discouraged about struggles with learning math or a conflict with a friend at school, but give him some time to settle down and he will go ahead on with hope that things will get better.
10. Support: This last reason is not something about Daniel, but it is nonetheless a gift! We are so grateful for an extended family that welcomed our teenager unconditionally, for friends who asked searching questions, listened thoughtfully to our answers, and supported us 100%, for church family who are fine with us being "different" and who have included Daniel in his own way in everything that he can be a part of, for a school system that has embraced the challenge of educating a child unlike any other they have ever experienced, and for a social worker that we can tell anything to without worrying that she'll over or underreact. And of course, for God, whose idea I firmly believe this was in the first place. We had no idea how blessed we would be, but He knew!
