As you can probably tell, the previous post is a guest post by Daniel. :-) I was just getting ready to write this post when he wandered in and started inspecting my blog, so I invited him to write in it.
We had a couple of extra kids for the weekend. Since they aren't ours, I'll call them Bubby and Sissy. (For those of you who aren't familiar with this-here part of the country, that's "brother" and "sister." Bubby is a couple years younger than Daniel, and Sissy a couple years older than Esther. It's our second time doing respite since Daniel has been in the family, and the first with "older" kids. It's gone pretty well.
I know Sissy has had a good time. She and Esther did art most of the day today, with breaks to jump on the trampoline, play the wii, and take a walk outside. Esther had not wanted her to come at first, and did have some trouble sharing her stuff and sharing control of their play, but I'm pretty sure she enjoyed having somebody to play with. I was worried at times that Esther would overwhelm Sissy with her attention: she followed her everywhere she went, called her until she came, and generally focused on her with a laserlike intensity. A few times I think Sissy wanted to get away, but on the other hand I think Esther was largely responsible for drawing her out of her initial shell and setting her up to have a good time. Esther pretty much ignored Bubby, but I suspect that if he had come by himself she would have been nearly as fixated on him as she was on Sissy. Thanks at least in part to Esther's persistence, Sissy warmed up to us fairly quickly. At one point on our first evening together she ran into the other room to ask her brother, "Bubby, are you still feeling shy?" He said no, and she announced, "I'm not feeling shy anymore either!" Made me smile. And apparently it was a big deal to her that I let her help in the kitchen and didn't care if the (washable) fingerpaints got messy. At one point she said, "I don't think I'm ever going to want to leave this place!" I'm taking that with a grain of salt, of course, but I do think she felt safe and had fun.
Bubby was interested in talking sooner after arrival than Sissy, and he is good at small talk, but he never came very far out of his shell. He brought some electronic games with him and we let him play them for more time than we would have under less temporary circumstances. When we told him they had to go up for a while he complied, then sat around staring into space. He did join Tim (and Daniel) for a science project and a game of pool, but didn't seem to have any ideas of his own for what to do. He declined art projects and helping me cook dinner. He did play some with Esther and Sissy this evening, although I think it was Sissy who initiated it and decided what to do. Bubby also wasn't as proactive as Sissy about communicating his needs; for example, I only found out that he was too cold the first night he slept here because I asked. (But at least he answered my question honestly!) Daniel had hoped to find in Bubby a kindred, electricity-loving spirit, but wasn't able to make much of a connection. So he was disappointed and bored the whole weekend, feeling like he couldn't be himself with strangers in the house, but didn't have the compensation of enjoying the strangers' company. We were proud of him for figuring out his own way of coping. He made a couple trips downtown (walking) to go shopping, spent some time at a friend's house, and worked on a project. And he showed pretty good sense about what of his normal interactions with us (especially me) were appropriate in front of someone we don't know well, and which were not.
Both kids were well-mannered and compliant, and with Tim being off work right now and us having several days' notice to get ready, we were able to clear our schedules and orient the weekend around keeping them comfortable and (as much as they chose) engaged in positive activities. So it was kind of "honeymoon-y," not at all like it would be if they actually lived with us. Despite their good behavior, it took a lot of energy to be attentive to four children instead of two. I won't be sorry to go back to normal when they leave tomorrow afternoon, but I'm glad we're able to provide a safe, caring place for kids under stress, and a break for caregivers who need to get out of town without worrying about their charges. And I think we learned some things about our kids as well. We just need to figure out how to apply the lessons!
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Starting Our Second Year
I have started this post three times now! Once towards the end of the summer, once right after school started, and once now. Now we are approaching a year and a half with Daniel rather than just starting our second year. And this second year has gone in a totally different direction than what I predicted when I first started this post. It almost seems pointless to finish it...but I want to remember how the summer felt, and this will remind me.
So here is where we were at the end of the summer:
-------------
Life has been quite the ride lately. I started out our second year with Daniel rejoicing in how much progress we've made. There was the visit to the dentist where he had to wait for nearly an hour, but didn't do anything more disruptive that unplugging and replugging the waiting room lamp several times. He even refrained from playing with the elevator chair when I asked him! Then there was the comment from an adult he is close to in China that he is like a whole different person this year compared to last year. Apparently, some of my efforts at teaching him to speak positively and respectfully to others have been successful! And he did so much better with being out of routine on our long summer trip than we had feared. We had some "moments," of course, but on the whole he was cheerful and adaptable, and had a good time. Even the unstructured time of summer has been going reasonably well, with the kids less rowdy and more capable of (occasionally) entertaining themselves or each other.
However, this summer was intense. I don't think it was as stressful as the first summer we were together. Daniel has calmed way down, and only rarely gets into the "lets have a blast being wild and crazy!" moods that left me feeling last summer like I was just hanging on by my teeth and toenails. And he has learned a few more things he can do to entertain himself, so I had a little more breathing room. So the norm this summer was relatively calm, but the outlying incidents! Well, let's just say that this summer featured both the lowest low points and the highest high points of our relationship thus far. And I am ready to get off the roller coaster and enjoy a little monotony!
I won't invade Daniel's privacy by sharing the low points, but I have wondered about the timing. It seems like the trigger is usually if I do something that makes him feel rejected. I don't know if our relationship has become important to him to the point that the stakes are higher than they were before, or if he has now made enough of an adjustment to his new life that he is ready to deal with deeper-level challenges. Or maybe the summer was just too stressful, what with unstructured time to fill and my demands on him to study with me for an hour a day. But whatever is going on, a trip to "that place" is hard on everyone involved. Hard, because when Daniel is in that mode he can't be reasoned with, can't be touched, but often won't let me disengage. Hard, because he only ever goes there when I'm alone with both kids, so I also have to worry about keeping Esther out of the interaction without scaring her or making her feel responsible. (She has a very unhelpful tendency to inflame the situation by adding her two cents about what Daniel should or shouldn't be doing.) Most of all, hard because I know "that place" owes its existence to hurts that I don't want my child to live with, and that I can't fix. Thankfully, he doesn't go to "that place" often and doesn't stay there very long (although it feels very long indeed). We (me and our social worker, me and Tim, and me and Daniel) have talked about counseling, and all feel that it will be a very good thing for him once his English is enough to communicate. He is very articulate and insightful, and willing to do the hard work of healing. But that still leaves us at a loss as to what to do right now. We've considered medication for anxiety (and are still considering it), but whether it was catharsis from the last incident, the start of school, or just a natural cycle, Daniel seems to be in a better place right now.
Meanwhile, we are still rejoicing in this summer's high points. We got to travel for three weeks to the west coast and see both of our extended families. Both kids did great on the trip, and Daniel told me afterwards, "Now I know who everyone in my family is." We planted tomato and pepper seeds, watched them grow into plants, and enjoyed the fruits of our labor. One day after not having been in the garden for a few days, Daniel went out and saw ripe tomatoes on our plants for the first time. I got the biggest kick out of him jumping up and down and yelling, "Mommy, come quickly! Come look!" :-) Daniel was able to use his English well enough to talk to friends on the phone, and he made great strides in learning to read. He is starting to believe that he could be good at learning. Daniel added his birthday money to money that he has been saving in the bank for months, and bought himself an iPod touch. And occasionally I will find him and Esther curled up on the couch together looking at something on the iPod. :-) We figured out a way for everyone to enjoy the Olympics together: Tim and I and Esther sat in the living room and watched the sports, while Daniel (who is not much for TV) sat on the couch and had me rub his feet.
One special highlight for me has been Daniel's growing relationship with God. We had a conversation mid-summer where Daniel explored all the different reasons he had for not wanting to follow God. He came out with a lot of ideas, but basically it boiled down to him not wanting anyone to tell him what to do. I left the conversation feeling a little down, although I firmly believe that thinking through all your alternatives is a necessary part of the process of owning one's own faith. But then, the funniest thing happened. Daniel started to become more enthusiastic about all things God-related. And one day, a few days after the most memorable of our "low points," we were having testimonies in church. Daniel asked why people were standing up and talking, and I explained that they were telling us how God had been good to them. Daniel said, "I want to say something too!" So I helped him get the pastor's attention (having no idea what he had in mind to say!), and Daniel told the whole congregation (in English): "When I tired, angry, Jesus help me. Jesus tell me peace in heart. Everybody peace." Not only was it a very appropriately communicated testimony, but I think it was good for our congregation to hear someone testifying about God working on their character, not just healing an illness or removing a difficult external circumstance. On another Sunday recently, Daniel decided to sit by the pastor in the very front pew. He knew and especially loves one of the songs that morning (I think it was You Are My All In All), so he was singing his heart out. Later in the service our pastor got a little choked up about a story he was telling, and Daniel grabbed a tissue out of the box in the front pew and darted up to give it to him. Later the pastor pulled me aside to tell me how much Daniel ministers to him. And it's true, Daniel has been a blessing to a lot of people.
Adopting (or being adopted) is, I think, a lot like culture shock. The "classic" progression of adjustment includes the honeymoon phase (everything is new and wonderful!), the disillusionment phase (everything is weird and dumb and bad and uncomfortable and you just want to get back to the place that feels right to you), and the realism phase (like any other place/person, this one has its good and bad points; you know how to handle the bad and you can enjoy the good without reservations). But real life rarely follows a classic progression, so the first year with a new child can be suspenseful. ("They" say that an adoption honeymoon typically lasts several months, though some kids cut right to the disillusionment phase and others, especially older ones, can honeymoon for a year.) I don't know about other adoptive families, but I periodically found myself wondering: Is this just a honeymoon? Are things going to get worse, and if so, how soon and how bad and for how long? Does XYZ incident mean that the honeymoon is about to end? At the same time, I have been going back and forth between countries for most of my life, and while I have had culture shock on a couple of occasions, I've also had plenty of transitions that went smoothly, with bits of extra stress (and extra excitement) spread out over a long period of time rather than all bunched together. And to me, it looked like Daniel was transitioning much like that: noticing things that bugged him, that he missed, or that he was no longer competent at, and processing them as they came up rather than stuffing them all in until the wheels fell off the bus.
---------------
So, as we got several months into our second year, I was feeling pretty sure that we weren't going to have a wheels-falling-off-the-bus experience. We had worked through a lot of challenging behaviors and were steadily having "Wow, we could never have done that last year!" moments. But I was wondering if the second year wasn't going to be harder emotionally than the first, finding us periodically falling into a morass of old hurts and having to work our way out. In the event, those fearful expectations didn't materialize. (Not that I fear dealing with old hurts, it's work that needs to be done sometime...but the way they were surfacing this summer was a little scary, for us and I think for Daniel as well.) Instead, we are having a year of realizing how far we've come together. And we are so very grateful we didn't miss out on this journey!
So here is where we were at the end of the summer:
-------------
Life has been quite the ride lately. I started out our second year with Daniel rejoicing in how much progress we've made. There was the visit to the dentist where he had to wait for nearly an hour, but didn't do anything more disruptive that unplugging and replugging the waiting room lamp several times. He even refrained from playing with the elevator chair when I asked him! Then there was the comment from an adult he is close to in China that he is like a whole different person this year compared to last year. Apparently, some of my efforts at teaching him to speak positively and respectfully to others have been successful! And he did so much better with being out of routine on our long summer trip than we had feared. We had some "moments," of course, but on the whole he was cheerful and adaptable, and had a good time. Even the unstructured time of summer has been going reasonably well, with the kids less rowdy and more capable of (occasionally) entertaining themselves or each other.
However, this summer was intense. I don't think it was as stressful as the first summer we were together. Daniel has calmed way down, and only rarely gets into the "lets have a blast being wild and crazy!" moods that left me feeling last summer like I was just hanging on by my teeth and toenails. And he has learned a few more things he can do to entertain himself, so I had a little more breathing room. So the norm this summer was relatively calm, but the outlying incidents! Well, let's just say that this summer featured both the lowest low points and the highest high points of our relationship thus far. And I am ready to get off the roller coaster and enjoy a little monotony!
I won't invade Daniel's privacy by sharing the low points, but I have wondered about the timing. It seems like the trigger is usually if I do something that makes him feel rejected. I don't know if our relationship has become important to him to the point that the stakes are higher than they were before, or if he has now made enough of an adjustment to his new life that he is ready to deal with deeper-level challenges. Or maybe the summer was just too stressful, what with unstructured time to fill and my demands on him to study with me for an hour a day. But whatever is going on, a trip to "that place" is hard on everyone involved. Hard, because when Daniel is in that mode he can't be reasoned with, can't be touched, but often won't let me disengage. Hard, because he only ever goes there when I'm alone with both kids, so I also have to worry about keeping Esther out of the interaction without scaring her or making her feel responsible. (She has a very unhelpful tendency to inflame the situation by adding her two cents about what Daniel should or shouldn't be doing.) Most of all, hard because I know "that place" owes its existence to hurts that I don't want my child to live with, and that I can't fix. Thankfully, he doesn't go to "that place" often and doesn't stay there very long (although it feels very long indeed). We (me and our social worker, me and Tim, and me and Daniel) have talked about counseling, and all feel that it will be a very good thing for him once his English is enough to communicate. He is very articulate and insightful, and willing to do the hard work of healing. But that still leaves us at a loss as to what to do right now. We've considered medication for anxiety (and are still considering it), but whether it was catharsis from the last incident, the start of school, or just a natural cycle, Daniel seems to be in a better place right now.
Meanwhile, we are still rejoicing in this summer's high points. We got to travel for three weeks to the west coast and see both of our extended families. Both kids did great on the trip, and Daniel told me afterwards, "Now I know who everyone in my family is." We planted tomato and pepper seeds, watched them grow into plants, and enjoyed the fruits of our labor. One day after not having been in the garden for a few days, Daniel went out and saw ripe tomatoes on our plants for the first time. I got the biggest kick out of him jumping up and down and yelling, "Mommy, come quickly! Come look!" :-) Daniel was able to use his English well enough to talk to friends on the phone, and he made great strides in learning to read. He is starting to believe that he could be good at learning. Daniel added his birthday money to money that he has been saving in the bank for months, and bought himself an iPod touch. And occasionally I will find him and Esther curled up on the couch together looking at something on the iPod. :-) We figured out a way for everyone to enjoy the Olympics together: Tim and I and Esther sat in the living room and watched the sports, while Daniel (who is not much for TV) sat on the couch and had me rub his feet.
One special highlight for me has been Daniel's growing relationship with God. We had a conversation mid-summer where Daniel explored all the different reasons he had for not wanting to follow God. He came out with a lot of ideas, but basically it boiled down to him not wanting anyone to tell him what to do. I left the conversation feeling a little down, although I firmly believe that thinking through all your alternatives is a necessary part of the process of owning one's own faith. But then, the funniest thing happened. Daniel started to become more enthusiastic about all things God-related. And one day, a few days after the most memorable of our "low points," we were having testimonies in church. Daniel asked why people were standing up and talking, and I explained that they were telling us how God had been good to them. Daniel said, "I want to say something too!" So I helped him get the pastor's attention (having no idea what he had in mind to say!), and Daniel told the whole congregation (in English): "When I tired, angry, Jesus help me. Jesus tell me peace in heart. Everybody peace." Not only was it a very appropriately communicated testimony, but I think it was good for our congregation to hear someone testifying about God working on their character, not just healing an illness or removing a difficult external circumstance. On another Sunday recently, Daniel decided to sit by the pastor in the very front pew. He knew and especially loves one of the songs that morning (I think it was You Are My All In All), so he was singing his heart out. Later in the service our pastor got a little choked up about a story he was telling, and Daniel grabbed a tissue out of the box in the front pew and darted up to give it to him. Later the pastor pulled me aside to tell me how much Daniel ministers to him. And it's true, Daniel has been a blessing to a lot of people.
Adopting (or being adopted) is, I think, a lot like culture shock. The "classic" progression of adjustment includes the honeymoon phase (everything is new and wonderful!), the disillusionment phase (everything is weird and dumb and bad and uncomfortable and you just want to get back to the place that feels right to you), and the realism phase (like any other place/person, this one has its good and bad points; you know how to handle the bad and you can enjoy the good without reservations). But real life rarely follows a classic progression, so the first year with a new child can be suspenseful. ("They" say that an adoption honeymoon typically lasts several months, though some kids cut right to the disillusionment phase and others, especially older ones, can honeymoon for a year.) I don't know about other adoptive families, but I periodically found myself wondering: Is this just a honeymoon? Are things going to get worse, and if so, how soon and how bad and for how long? Does XYZ incident mean that the honeymoon is about to end? At the same time, I have been going back and forth between countries for most of my life, and while I have had culture shock on a couple of occasions, I've also had plenty of transitions that went smoothly, with bits of extra stress (and extra excitement) spread out over a long period of time rather than all bunched together. And to me, it looked like Daniel was transitioning much like that: noticing things that bugged him, that he missed, or that he was no longer competent at, and processing them as they came up rather than stuffing them all in until the wheels fell off the bus.
---------------
So, as we got several months into our second year, I was feeling pretty sure that we weren't going to have a wheels-falling-off-the-bus experience. We had worked through a lot of challenging behaviors and were steadily having "Wow, we could never have done that last year!" moments. But I was wondering if the second year wasn't going to be harder emotionally than the first, finding us periodically falling into a morass of old hurts and having to work our way out. In the event, those fearful expectations didn't materialize. (Not that I fear dealing with old hurts, it's work that needs to be done sometime...but the way they were surfacing this summer was a little scary, for us and I think for Daniel as well.) Instead, we are having a year of realizing how far we've come together. And we are so very grateful we didn't miss out on this journey!
Monday, November 19, 2012
threads of adoption
Most days, being an interracial family formed by adoption doesn't play much into our lives. Parenting, after all, is parenting, no matter who is involved or how you get into it. [Yes, kids with difficult histories can come with extra parenting challenges, but I attribute that to their experience rather than to the plain fact of being adopted.] But it does seem like the last week or so has held more than the usual adoption- and race-related business.
Last weekend, Tim and Esther were playing. She suggested that she be the mommy and he be the daddy and her doll be the baby. He agreed. She announced it was time to go to the store. He asked if they should take the baby and Esther said, "No! We don't have her yet. We have to adopt her!" So they went "shopping" sans baby, and Esther picked out lots of things, commenting on how cute they would look on the baby or how much the baby would like them. (We think the plot of the story owed a lot to a favorite book, Over the Moon by Karen Katz, although we also talk from time to time about our excitement in getting ready for baby Esther.)
Another time over snack, I was talking about how I had gradually come to like a food after trying it multiple times. Esther asked, "And when you first met me you didn't like me, but now you do?" I assured her that we liked her from the very beginning, but then, recollecting that not all loving relationships start out that well and that I don't know what our future may hold with other foster or adopted children, I went on to tell her a story about a college friend who I did not like at all at first, but came to appreciate after we were thrown together on a common project.
A conversation with Daniel started over math, of all things. I was trying to explain the concept of percent. As an example, I said that in our family we have four people, and 50% of us are Chinese. The other 50% are...and here I got stuck, as it's not accurate in our case to contrast American (which is not an ethnicity) with Chinese. My kids proudly identify as Chinese, but I don't want them to feel that that makes them any less fully American. So I hunted up my dictionary and figured out how to say that 50% of us are European (ethnically but not culturally...man, these things are hard to talk about coherently!). Daniel of course asked why, so I explained that my ancestors (or "grandpa's grandpa's grandpa) came from Europe. He wanted to know how I knew, which led into a great long discussion of the relatives who compiled our family genealogy and of the process of hunting down court records of marriages and births in order to trace one's family history back. So then Daniel wanted to know if he could find his own birth family information by looking at court records. I had to tell him that without a specific name to search for, that would be well nigh impossible. I then thought of hospital records, and how there were probably not too many baby boys born with albinism during the same time period as Daniel. He asked how we would know which hospital. I said that we wouldn't; we would have to ask every hospital in the city (which is a lot), and some might let us see their records, but others would refuse and ask why we cared about knowing, anyway. He agreed that that was likely how it would be, adding, "Some people are just that way: annoying to death!" (And then there is the possibility that he wasn't born in a hospital, or was born in a different city, or the hospital is now defunct, or the records were destroyed, or....) So if Daniel ever wants to search for his birth parents, it will be daunting. I don't know if he will choose to or not, but I'm pleased that he feels comfortable discussing the possibility with me. We try to let both our children know that if there comes a point in their life where having more of a connection with their birth parents is important to them, they can search or do whatever they need to without being disloyal or hurting our feelings.
Meanwhile Esther has been telling me lots of stories lately about things that "really happened" when she was a baby in her orphanage. For example, she had her own bottle and another baby chewed it up and it had to be thrown away. All the stories have to do with something the valued being destroyed and taken away from her. I don't think she is really remembering these things (for example, she held up a teething toy that she had as a baby with us and insisted that she had one just like it in the orphanage until another baby chewed it up), but they represent very real losses nonetheless. This past weekend she was saying some hurtful things to Daniel, so I took her into her room to have a private talk. I had intended to talk about how she was treating her brother, but instead we ended up talking about loss. She told me another orphanage story, this time that she had had a blankie that she loved, but a bad guy came and took it away and tore it up, and she cried. She told me that she still misses that blankie. (Given how fast and thoroughly she attached to the green blankie that we brought to her in China, I have often wondered if she was attached to something before we met her. If she was, it didn't come with her.) I asked her if she might be missing the blankie because she was thinking about her birth family and was missing them. She looked at me strangely and said no, then told me again how much she missed the blankie. I stated that babies don't get to take anything with them when they go to a new family. She started crying hard, grabbed me tight, and said, "YES!" Then she added, "When babies have to go to a new family that they don't know, they feel so scared." My poor baby! So she cried about that for a while, and then was ready to move on with life (including the delayed talk about how to treat one's brother). My understanding is that a lot of kids start to understand and grieve the losses of adoption at about age five, so we seem to be right on target.
Then there was the evening that Daniel was hanging out with me in the kitchen and, a propos of nothing, asked, "Mommy, can I go back to China? I mean, I know I can go back to visit, but I still won't be an orphan, right?" I assured him that we will still be family even when he is in China. "Can you send me back to the orphanage?" "We don't want to send you back to the orphanage!...but no, even if we wanted to we couldn't. One a child is adopted in China, their family is responsible for them for the rest of their lives. Occasionally if a child is really not getting on well with their family, their new family might find a different family for them. But it is still that family's responsibility to make sure the child is taken care of." Apparently, that answer was satisfactory, and we moved on to other things.
And finally, Esther's school's open house last week gave me the chance to address an issue that has been nagging at me for a while: the Boy on the Bus. Esther doesn't know his name. But one day near the beginning of school they were sitting near each other on the bus and he informed her that she is Mexican. [As a side note, I wonder how many other people locally have thought that? I have more than once had a stranger tell me that she looks like Dora the Explorer, which she does with her big eyes and her haircut. But it hadn't occurred to me before now that they might actually have thought she is Hispanic.] Esther corrected the boy that she is Chinese, and he (according to her retelling) said, "Chinese?!?" in that over-the-top dramatic way that kindergarteners have. Esther seemed mildly upset, but not to the point where we needed to call the bus driver. Over the next few days I checked in with her to see if anything more had happened, and she said she wasn't sitting near him anymore. But then one day she told me that he had said to her, "Chinese, Japanese, look at these!" And another day she told me, as if it were a good joke, that when they line up for the bus she and her bus buddy say "Chinese" to the boy and he shrieks and runs on the bus and they laugh at him. She seemed to find it entertaining, but I was not thrilled with the ongoing drama. I can't really blame the kid for not knowing the difference between Mexican, Chinese and Japanese; he's only in kindergarten and we live in a very non-diverse community. But it's not fair to Esther to have to spend her life explaining herself to people. So before the open house I spent an hour or two hunting up the names of children's books and websites that might help children learn how to talk about their differences in positive ways rather than teasing and being dramatic about them. I told Esther before we left that I was going to give her teacher and this other child's teacher (Esther was able to tell me what class he was in) some ideas about how to help kids talk respectfully about having different skin and hair. I had a nice chat with Esther's teacher, part of which Esther was present for and part of which she wasn't. Then as we were getting ready to leave Esther reminded me in no uncertain terms that I was going to speak with the other teacher, and took my hand and towed me over to that classroom. The other teacher was very receptive as well. I have no idea if anything has come of my talking with the teachers, but Esther's reaction to my doing so showed me that the situation really did bother her, even though she was treating it as a joke. And I'm glad that I sent the message--to her if to no-one else--that she has the right to be treated respectfully and it's okay to stand up for herself if someone is hurting her feelings in ignorance. I'll also be thinking carefully about what books I pick out when I go read to her class (which I do once a week).
So, lots going on internally in the last nine days or so. Phew!
Last weekend, Tim and Esther were playing. She suggested that she be the mommy and he be the daddy and her doll be the baby. He agreed. She announced it was time to go to the store. He asked if they should take the baby and Esther said, "No! We don't have her yet. We have to adopt her!" So they went "shopping" sans baby, and Esther picked out lots of things, commenting on how cute they would look on the baby or how much the baby would like them. (We think the plot of the story owed a lot to a favorite book, Over the Moon by Karen Katz, although we also talk from time to time about our excitement in getting ready for baby Esther.)
Another time over snack, I was talking about how I had gradually come to like a food after trying it multiple times. Esther asked, "And when you first met me you didn't like me, but now you do?" I assured her that we liked her from the very beginning, but then, recollecting that not all loving relationships start out that well and that I don't know what our future may hold with other foster or adopted children, I went on to tell her a story about a college friend who I did not like at all at first, but came to appreciate after we were thrown together on a common project.
A conversation with Daniel started over math, of all things. I was trying to explain the concept of percent. As an example, I said that in our family we have four people, and 50% of us are Chinese. The other 50% are...and here I got stuck, as it's not accurate in our case to contrast American (which is not an ethnicity) with Chinese. My kids proudly identify as Chinese, but I don't want them to feel that that makes them any less fully American. So I hunted up my dictionary and figured out how to say that 50% of us are European (ethnically but not culturally...man, these things are hard to talk about coherently!). Daniel of course asked why, so I explained that my ancestors (or "grandpa's grandpa's grandpa) came from Europe. He wanted to know how I knew, which led into a great long discussion of the relatives who compiled our family genealogy and of the process of hunting down court records of marriages and births in order to trace one's family history back. So then Daniel wanted to know if he could find his own birth family information by looking at court records. I had to tell him that without a specific name to search for, that would be well nigh impossible. I then thought of hospital records, and how there were probably not too many baby boys born with albinism during the same time period as Daniel. He asked how we would know which hospital. I said that we wouldn't; we would have to ask every hospital in the city (which is a lot), and some might let us see their records, but others would refuse and ask why we cared about knowing, anyway. He agreed that that was likely how it would be, adding, "Some people are just that way: annoying to death!" (And then there is the possibility that he wasn't born in a hospital, or was born in a different city, or the hospital is now defunct, or the records were destroyed, or....) So if Daniel ever wants to search for his birth parents, it will be daunting. I don't know if he will choose to or not, but I'm pleased that he feels comfortable discussing the possibility with me. We try to let both our children know that if there comes a point in their life where having more of a connection with their birth parents is important to them, they can search or do whatever they need to without being disloyal or hurting our feelings.
Meanwhile Esther has been telling me lots of stories lately about things that "really happened" when she was a baby in her orphanage. For example, she had her own bottle and another baby chewed it up and it had to be thrown away. All the stories have to do with something the valued being destroyed and taken away from her. I don't think she is really remembering these things (for example, she held up a teething toy that she had as a baby with us and insisted that she had one just like it in the orphanage until another baby chewed it up), but they represent very real losses nonetheless. This past weekend she was saying some hurtful things to Daniel, so I took her into her room to have a private talk. I had intended to talk about how she was treating her brother, but instead we ended up talking about loss. She told me another orphanage story, this time that she had had a blankie that she loved, but a bad guy came and took it away and tore it up, and she cried. She told me that she still misses that blankie. (Given how fast and thoroughly she attached to the green blankie that we brought to her in China, I have often wondered if she was attached to something before we met her. If she was, it didn't come with her.) I asked her if she might be missing the blankie because she was thinking about her birth family and was missing them. She looked at me strangely and said no, then told me again how much she missed the blankie. I stated that babies don't get to take anything with them when they go to a new family. She started crying hard, grabbed me tight, and said, "YES!" Then she added, "When babies have to go to a new family that they don't know, they feel so scared." My poor baby! So she cried about that for a while, and then was ready to move on with life (including the delayed talk about how to treat one's brother). My understanding is that a lot of kids start to understand and grieve the losses of adoption at about age five, so we seem to be right on target.
Then there was the evening that Daniel was hanging out with me in the kitchen and, a propos of nothing, asked, "Mommy, can I go back to China? I mean, I know I can go back to visit, but I still won't be an orphan, right?" I assured him that we will still be family even when he is in China. "Can you send me back to the orphanage?" "We don't want to send you back to the orphanage!...but no, even if we wanted to we couldn't. One a child is adopted in China, their family is responsible for them for the rest of their lives. Occasionally if a child is really not getting on well with their family, their new family might find a different family for them. But it is still that family's responsibility to make sure the child is taken care of." Apparently, that answer was satisfactory, and we moved on to other things.
And finally, Esther's school's open house last week gave me the chance to address an issue that has been nagging at me for a while: the Boy on the Bus. Esther doesn't know his name. But one day near the beginning of school they were sitting near each other on the bus and he informed her that she is Mexican. [As a side note, I wonder how many other people locally have thought that? I have more than once had a stranger tell me that she looks like Dora the Explorer, which she does with her big eyes and her haircut. But it hadn't occurred to me before now that they might actually have thought she is Hispanic.] Esther corrected the boy that she is Chinese, and he (according to her retelling) said, "Chinese?!?" in that over-the-top dramatic way that kindergarteners have. Esther seemed mildly upset, but not to the point where we needed to call the bus driver. Over the next few days I checked in with her to see if anything more had happened, and she said she wasn't sitting near him anymore. But then one day she told me that he had said to her, "Chinese, Japanese, look at these!" And another day she told me, as if it were a good joke, that when they line up for the bus she and her bus buddy say "Chinese" to the boy and he shrieks and runs on the bus and they laugh at him. She seemed to find it entertaining, but I was not thrilled with the ongoing drama. I can't really blame the kid for not knowing the difference between Mexican, Chinese and Japanese; he's only in kindergarten and we live in a very non-diverse community. But it's not fair to Esther to have to spend her life explaining herself to people. So before the open house I spent an hour or two hunting up the names of children's books and websites that might help children learn how to talk about their differences in positive ways rather than teasing and being dramatic about them. I told Esther before we left that I was going to give her teacher and this other child's teacher (Esther was able to tell me what class he was in) some ideas about how to help kids talk respectfully about having different skin and hair. I had a nice chat with Esther's teacher, part of which Esther was present for and part of which she wasn't. Then as we were getting ready to leave Esther reminded me in no uncertain terms that I was going to speak with the other teacher, and took my hand and towed me over to that classroom. The other teacher was very receptive as well. I have no idea if anything has come of my talking with the teachers, but Esther's reaction to my doing so showed me that the situation really did bother her, even though she was treating it as a joke. And I'm glad that I sent the message--to her if to no-one else--that she has the right to be treated respectfully and it's okay to stand up for herself if someone is hurting her feelings in ignorance. I'll also be thinking carefully about what books I pick out when I go read to her class (which I do once a week).
So, lots going on internally in the last nine days or so. Phew!
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
His Majesty
Sometimes I tell Daniel he's a drama king. (And then he always asks me what that means. Do you know how hard it is to explain that concept in your second language??) He just cracks me up sometimes with his range of facial expressions and his ability to exaggerate. ("Mommy, I'm STARVING! I haven't eaten in HOURS! WHEN are you going to finish dinner? I'm about to die of hunger!")
Now, he has a new claim to royalty:
In case you can't read his sash, it says Homecoming King! Yes, his eighth grade class (of about 200 students!) decided that, white hair, broken English, vision aids, quirky behavior, and all, Daniel was the classmate they most wanted to represent their school spirit. We are very proud of him! We think he is pleased, too. In good old-fashioned Chinese humility he hasn't said much about it, but he hung his crown up on the wall near his bed and he went off to school the day after homecoming wearing his rosette and his little sparkly pin that says "Court" on it.
It was quite a contrast from the afternoon of the homecoming event, when he insisted that he didn't want to go, and he definitely wasn't going to change his clothes. (At the time, he was wearing a traffic-cone-orange T-shirt...I'm sure that would have made quite a splash on the field!) I'm not sure why he goes through the motions of sabotaging himself before big events. Nerves, maybe? Anyway, when the time came to go he changed into his dress pants and button-down shirt without protest. He even submitted to a belt. We teased him that he ought to wear a tie, which brought out all his drama king talents. He didn't know that Tim doesn't actually own a tie that matches that striped shirt, so he was in no real danger.
Once we got to the football game, Daniel took off with his friends. I got a picture of him at one point completely surrounded by fashionably-dressed girls, apparently all fussing over him (most of his friends are female--and most of the friends he talks about at home were also part of the homecoming court). Unfortunately it was already dusk, so while the photo will help me remember the moment, it wouldn't convey much to any of my Dear Readers if I posted it!
When halftime came, the cheerleaders made a triumphal arch down the middle of the field, and the members of homecoming court passed through it with all due pomp and circumstance while their names and their parents' names were announced to the crowd.
After everyone had come through and taken their places in front of the arch, the Homecoming Queen and King were announced (in that order). Students had voted for the king and queen out of the three boys and three girls previously chosen as eighth grade class representatives. It happened that Daniel's escort was chosen as queen. She stepped forward graciously to accept her tiara, while her mother (at least, I assume it was her mother!) squealed like a teenager, jumped up and down, and ran over to hug her friend. Then Daniel was announced as king. I'm not sure he quite knew what was going on at that point, but he grinned real big and raised his hand to let the master of ceremonies know where he was. Then he figured out what he was supposed to do, and went over by the queen to be sashed and crowned.
(I didn't get as good pictures as I would have liked, partly because I wasn't aggressive enough and partly because the camera's settings weren't right for the lighting conditions, and when I went to adjust them I discovered that the menu had been changed into Chinese! Hmm, I wonder how that might have happened?? So Daniel has asked the teacher in charge of photography to load some of the official pictures onto his (Daniel's) USB, and I think we will get them eventually.)
After the football game had resumed, Daniel received many congratulations and took pictures with all of his friends, which he found already uploaded to his Instagram account when we got home. At one point he had thought he would want to leave right after the ceremony, but in the event he was too busy socializing, and we were very happy we had made Esther take a nap in the afternoon! She did enjoy watching the football game, climbing on the bleachers, and especially watching the cheerleaders.
The day after the homecoming game Daniel attended the homecoming dance at school. I went, too, as chaperone. It was a fascinating sociological experience. :-) Some kids danced, while many just "hung out" with friends (and large clusters of girls followed the time-honored tradition of all going to the bathroom together). Some kids wore jeans, while I saw a few suits and dresses that would not have been out of place at a prom. A couple of kids appeared to have come as dates, but that was the exception (and I know the school doesn't encourage it). There were a few songs that all the kids seemed to know specific moves to. I mentioned it to the vice-principal, and she said they actually teach those dances in gym ahead of time so that every kid can have the option of dancing and not feeling stupid when those songs come on. I thought that was a great idea!
I had expected Daniel to spend the evening hanging out with his BFF (the girl in the sparkly shirt in the top picture below) and her entourage, but he made the rounds of the gym, interacting with anyone he knew. He and another boy made up some wild and crazy dance moves together; he sang along with one of the songs in company with the school custodian (who is awesome, all the kids love him!), and he even slow-danced for a few minutes with a girl that I didn't recognize. (Don't worry, grandmas, middle school slow dances are pretty tame. The girl puts her hands on the boy's shoulders, the boy puts his hands on the girl's waist, and they hold each other at arms length while rocking back and forth to the music. On a couple of occasions I saw several slow-dancing couples line themselves up so that the girls could talk sideways to each other while dancing. And I probably saw more girls slow-dancing with other girls than with boys. (In that case, both girls put their hands on each other's shoulders.) Apparently, at this age, it's still all about the friends!)
I was impressed how well Daniel has learned the unspoken rules of social interaction. Last year I wanted to chaperone Daniel's dance (the one he ended up missing out on when he got strep throat) because we were worried about how he might behave. This year, I just wanted to see what it was like and to be a resource for Daniel if he needed anything. He did ask me a couple of times what time it was and when we were going home (he doesn't tend to like crowded, echo-y places), but he stuck it out to the end and then planted himself in the hall as a self-appointed farewell committee. Funny boy!
A lot of people have said (very complimentary) things to us about Daniel being Homecoming King. Honestly, I have been a little surprised how much meaning some people attached to it. Yes, it's an honor. We're very proud of how well he's adjusted (and how hard he's worked!), and his election is a testament to that. But a kid with a less exuberant personality could have worked equally hard and adjusted equally well, and not gotten picked for homecoming court, yet we would have been equally proud. So while we have gotten lots of admiring comments about Daniel recently, my most favorite one hands down was by another parent chaperone at the dance, who told me that Daniel is "a good kid" and that her three children, at least two of whom are in a younger grade than he is, think very highly of him. If he has won the respect of kids who have nothing to offer him socially, then that suggests not just popularity but character. And that is something that we can be very proud of!
Now, he has a new claim to royalty:
In case you can't read his sash, it says Homecoming King! Yes, his eighth grade class (of about 200 students!) decided that, white hair, broken English, vision aids, quirky behavior, and all, Daniel was the classmate they most wanted to represent their school spirit. We are very proud of him! We think he is pleased, too. In good old-fashioned Chinese humility he hasn't said much about it, but he hung his crown up on the wall near his bed and he went off to school the day after homecoming wearing his rosette and his little sparkly pin that says "Court" on it.
It was quite a contrast from the afternoon of the homecoming event, when he insisted that he didn't want to go, and he definitely wasn't going to change his clothes. (At the time, he was wearing a traffic-cone-orange T-shirt...I'm sure that would have made quite a splash on the field!) I'm not sure why he goes through the motions of sabotaging himself before big events. Nerves, maybe? Anyway, when the time came to go he changed into his dress pants and button-down shirt without protest. He even submitted to a belt. We teased him that he ought to wear a tie, which brought out all his drama king talents. He didn't know that Tim doesn't actually own a tie that matches that striped shirt, so he was in no real danger.
Once we got to the football game, Daniel took off with his friends. I got a picture of him at one point completely surrounded by fashionably-dressed girls, apparently all fussing over him (most of his friends are female--and most of the friends he talks about at home were also part of the homecoming court). Unfortunately it was already dusk, so while the photo will help me remember the moment, it wouldn't convey much to any of my Dear Readers if I posted it!
When halftime came, the cheerleaders made a triumphal arch down the middle of the field, and the members of homecoming court passed through it with all due pomp and circumstance while their names and their parents' names were announced to the crowd.
After everyone had come through and taken their places in front of the arch, the Homecoming Queen and King were announced (in that order). Students had voted for the king and queen out of the three boys and three girls previously chosen as eighth grade class representatives. It happened that Daniel's escort was chosen as queen. She stepped forward graciously to accept her tiara, while her mother (at least, I assume it was her mother!) squealed like a teenager, jumped up and down, and ran over to hug her friend. Then Daniel was announced as king. I'm not sure he quite knew what was going on at that point, but he grinned real big and raised his hand to let the master of ceremonies know where he was. Then he figured out what he was supposed to do, and went over by the queen to be sashed and crowned.
(I didn't get as good pictures as I would have liked, partly because I wasn't aggressive enough and partly because the camera's settings weren't right for the lighting conditions, and when I went to adjust them I discovered that the menu had been changed into Chinese! Hmm, I wonder how that might have happened?? So Daniel has asked the teacher in charge of photography to load some of the official pictures onto his (Daniel's) USB, and I think we will get them eventually.)
After the football game had resumed, Daniel received many congratulations and took pictures with all of his friends, which he found already uploaded to his Instagram account when we got home. At one point he had thought he would want to leave right after the ceremony, but in the event he was too busy socializing, and we were very happy we had made Esther take a nap in the afternoon! She did enjoy watching the football game, climbing on the bleachers, and especially watching the cheerleaders.
The day after the homecoming game Daniel attended the homecoming dance at school. I went, too, as chaperone. It was a fascinating sociological experience. :-) Some kids danced, while many just "hung out" with friends (and large clusters of girls followed the time-honored tradition of all going to the bathroom together). Some kids wore jeans, while I saw a few suits and dresses that would not have been out of place at a prom. A couple of kids appeared to have come as dates, but that was the exception (and I know the school doesn't encourage it). There were a few songs that all the kids seemed to know specific moves to. I mentioned it to the vice-principal, and she said they actually teach those dances in gym ahead of time so that every kid can have the option of dancing and not feeling stupid when those songs come on. I thought that was a great idea!
I had expected Daniel to spend the evening hanging out with his BFF (the girl in the sparkly shirt in the top picture below) and her entourage, but he made the rounds of the gym, interacting with anyone he knew. He and another boy made up some wild and crazy dance moves together; he sang along with one of the songs in company with the school custodian (who is awesome, all the kids love him!), and he even slow-danced for a few minutes with a girl that I didn't recognize. (Don't worry, grandmas, middle school slow dances are pretty tame. The girl puts her hands on the boy's shoulders, the boy puts his hands on the girl's waist, and they hold each other at arms length while rocking back and forth to the music. On a couple of occasions I saw several slow-dancing couples line themselves up so that the girls could talk sideways to each other while dancing. And I probably saw more girls slow-dancing with other girls than with boys. (In that case, both girls put their hands on each other's shoulders.) Apparently, at this age, it's still all about the friends!)
I was impressed how well Daniel has learned the unspoken rules of social interaction. Last year I wanted to chaperone Daniel's dance (the one he ended up missing out on when he got strep throat) because we were worried about how he might behave. This year, I just wanted to see what it was like and to be a resource for Daniel if he needed anything. He did ask me a couple of times what time it was and when we were going home (he doesn't tend to like crowded, echo-y places), but he stuck it out to the end and then planted himself in the hall as a self-appointed farewell committee. Funny boy!
A lot of people have said (very complimentary) things to us about Daniel being Homecoming King. Honestly, I have been a little surprised how much meaning some people attached to it. Yes, it's an honor. We're very proud of how well he's adjusted (and how hard he's worked!), and his election is a testament to that. But a kid with a less exuberant personality could have worked equally hard and adjusted equally well, and not gotten picked for homecoming court, yet we would have been equally proud. So while we have gotten lots of admiring comments about Daniel recently, my most favorite one hands down was by another parent chaperone at the dance, who told me that Daniel is "a good kid" and that her three children, at least two of whom are in a younger grade than he is, think very highly of him. If he has won the respect of kids who have nothing to offer him socially, then that suggests not just popularity but character. And that is something that we can be very proud of!
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Processing
A couple nights ago at dinner, I reprimanded Esther for eating with her fingers (which she tends to do when she's tired). She asked why babies eat with their fingers and I explained that babies don't have the fine motor coordination to use utensils, so they have to use their fingers, but big girls are capable of using forks and spoons. That apparently got her thinking about what babies are and aren't able to do for themselves, because a few minutes later she was asking, "How come mommies and daddies and grandmas and grandpas and great-grandmas and great-grandpas and...birth mothers and fathers, can't take care of their babies?" (Just the kind of conversation I like to start two minutes before bedtime. Not.) I said something about some parents having situations in their life that don't let them take good care of a baby. Leaning forward, eyes wide and serious, Esther suggested, "What if a birth mother was deaf? She wouldn't be able to hear her baby cry! She wouldn't know when it needed to eat, and the baby would get so hungry! And she wouldn't know when it was tired, and it would just fall asleep crawling on the floor!" I agreed that babies need parents who know what they need so they can take care of them. Esther thought of more examples: "What if a tornado came? The mother wouldn't know about the tornado because she couldn't listen to the news, and the baby might get blown around!" [Here the conversation took a detour into the topic of tornado safety.] I will confess that I had to bite my tongue in a couple of places to keep from smiling as the story got wilder and more elaborate. But she was intensely earnest, and I couldn't do that to her. Eventually (I'm just reporting the gist of the conversation here), Esther wound up with, "If parents can't take care of their baby, they need to find a family that can, quick!" I agreed with her that if parents aren't able to meet a baby's needs or protect it, then it is a very responsible choice to let the baby have a family that can. I suggested a couple more likely circumstances that might prevent parents from taking care of a baby, and then the conversation turned to other topics and we headed for bed. (I decided this was not the time to educate Esther on the abilities of people with disabilities. I have no idea where the thought of birth parents being deaf came from!)
Much as I'm bemused by some of the details of the scenario Esther came up with, I'm relieved by the broad strokes. In her story, there is nothing wrong or bad about the baby. It's an ordinary baby, that has the same needs as any other baby and deserves to be cared for and protected. And there's nothing bad or mean about the parents. They are ordinary adults who care about the baby even though circumstances prevent them from caring for it. Is the real story more complicated? Probably, and Esther will no doubt process those complications as she gets older. But for now, this is a healthy foundation to build on.
Much as I'm bemused by some of the details of the scenario Esther came up with, I'm relieved by the broad strokes. In her story, there is nothing wrong or bad about the baby. It's an ordinary baby, that has the same needs as any other baby and deserves to be cared for and protected. And there's nothing bad or mean about the parents. They are ordinary adults who care about the baby even though circumstances prevent them from caring for it. Is the real story more complicated? Probably, and Esther will no doubt process those complications as she gets older. But for now, this is a healthy foundation to build on.
Friday, September 28, 2012
The shape of contentment
I promise I'll get back into blogging one of these days, hopefully soon! But right now I'm sneaking a quick moment with the computer (while Tim and Daniel hunt up galvanized nails for a science project) to write about...pretty much nothing.
Our evening activities were not newsworthy. We had a late supper. Esther busily went back and forth charging her new glow-in-the-dark monster teeth and dragging me into her dark room with her to try them out. Daniel deconstructed a battery to see what was inside, which led to him and Tim watching educational videos about batteries on the internet and, now, trying to make their own "battery" out of...a potato? spare change? I'm not sure which version they decided to try, but anyway they are bonding over science. And Esther, after exhausting the possibilities of her glowing teeth, lay on top of me and "read" a book while I chatted with a friend on the phone. Now she's peacefully asleep. So, no calls to the newspaper, but I am loving how we spent the evening being very much ourselves while enjoying each other. I do believe I love these times better than the lows and highs (yes, even better than the highs!) that feel like they've characterized our life lately. These non-newsworthy times quickly fade into hazy half-recollection, but they leave a flavor in our lives that I will remember. It's the flavor of contentment.
Our evening activities were not newsworthy. We had a late supper. Esther busily went back and forth charging her new glow-in-the-dark monster teeth and dragging me into her dark room with her to try them out. Daniel deconstructed a battery to see what was inside, which led to him and Tim watching educational videos about batteries on the internet and, now, trying to make their own "battery" out of...a potato? spare change? I'm not sure which version they decided to try, but anyway they are bonding over science. And Esther, after exhausting the possibilities of her glowing teeth, lay on top of me and "read" a book while I chatted with a friend on the phone. Now she's peacefully asleep. So, no calls to the newspaper, but I am loving how we spent the evening being very much ourselves while enjoying each other. I do believe I love these times better than the lows and highs (yes, even better than the highs!) that feel like they've characterized our life lately. These non-newsworthy times quickly fade into hazy half-recollection, but they leave a flavor in our lives that I will remember. It's the flavor of contentment.