FCC = Faking China for our Children February 18, 2009

My post-Chinese New Year/Spring Festival reflection this year is that while I may not be flunking Culture 101 with Elsie, at best, I’m maintaining a C-.

Areas where I am doing well:

1. Finding other families like ours for Elsie to relate to. OK, I have hit a pretty solid homerun here. Between our travel group, people I met online who have become friends IRL, and others I have encountered along the way, nearly all of Elsie’s non-school friends are internationally adopted children. But this was easy, and it isn’t really central to culture now, is it? 
2. Reading a great deal on race, culture and identity.  And we have solid diversity in our toys, books and videos.
3. Talking about China and the area where she is from with Elsie.

That’s it. A pretty short list of areas that get a B or above.  I gave myself too much of a free pass when Elsie was so little, but it has kept me from developing good habits in this area. 

OK, here are the areas where I am doing very, very poorly.

1. Building relationships or at least frequently interacting with Chinese-American/Asian-American families. With our current circle of friends (see above), Elsie must think all Asian children have white parents. The only in-road we’ve made here is with our former neighbors, who have become friends (they are from the Philippines, they have two children, the youngest is a 5-year-old girl Elsie adores). The mom is a stay-at-home “super mom” type that I struggle to relate to, but she is very kind, so I am trying. 
2. Making a solid plan for incorporating Elsie’s language into her education. According to USNWR, we live in one of the best 100 school districts in the country, and it was a driver in our house purchase 8+ years ago. That’s the good news.  The bad news (to me) is that the elementary school in our neighborhood is French immersion. Sigh.  My husband leans toward having Elsie attend that school so she can have a more typical community school experience (bus stop is nearby, her school friends would live nearby, she would be in school with some of the same kids through high school, etc.). I lean toward the relatively close Chinese immersion school where Elsie can get the exposure to Chinese language and culture that we can only offer second hand at home. (FYI, Elsie is from a Cantonese speaking province, so Mandarin will not be a language she has heard before, but it would obviously benefit her in our return trips to China as a family, as well as any travel to the area she would undertake on her own, not to mention provide another bridge to her heritage.) Since Max and I lean in different directions on this, we keep putting off our decision, which we can only do for roughly another year when Elsie turns four and we need to get her on the list for the Chinese school.
3. Truly incorporating aspects of Chinese culture into our daily lives. Spring Festival made this crystal clear. My lame excuse is that we were all terribly sick at different points of CNY this year. But even if we had been well, I did not have much of a plan. As I read other AP blogs about making noodles and jiaozi, cleaning the house to prepare, attending festivals, and of course distributing hongbao, my heart sank. It’s not as if I turned around in surprise one day to see that Elsie is Chinese. And it shames me that I have fallen into lazy patterns I swore I would resist. This particular issue came to a head for me at our local FCC chapter’s CNY celebration. I have never had a good experience at their events, and yet, I registered for it thinking it was better than nothing. It wasn’t. First, it was held from 1-5 p.m. on the last day of CNY. So, horribly inconvenient for kids who still nap (like mine), and not exactly a rousing kick off to Spring Festival. Second, it was just awful, save for the CAAM dance troupe performances. Now, we did get there late, so perhaps we missed something profound, but looking at the agenda, I think not. Table after table of vendors hawking nasty cliche’ Chinese trinkets (didn’t keep me from buying a cute umbrella and chopstick cheaters), a carnival consisting of dumb games and cheesy prizes, and a dragon dance that started 20 minutes early (so no one was in the right place) with two gawky white teenagers under the dragon who were done long before the music stopped (the kid under the head finally took it off and yelled, “ok, enough with the music, we’re done!”).  And for this, I paid a little over $40. Never again.
4. This last one pains me to write because I have vowed to remedy it for a year, but I still haven’t finished Elsie’s lifebook. I have it about 2/3 finished, and I just can’t seem to commit to finishing it. I know part of it is a fear of getting it wrong, but not doing it at all is certainly no solution.

So, enough hand wringing.  What am I going to DO about all of this?  One immediate (within the next 30-60 days) thing I am going to do is join CAAM and start attending their events rather than FCC events. Maybe even enroll Elsie in their dance classes. Second, I am going to make a calendar of activities we are going to do around Chinese cultural events (other cultures too), some of which will be focused on our immediate family, and some of which will involve outside/sponsored events. Third, Max and I are going to attend a very premature tour of said Chinese school (and talk to a few parents I know who send their kids there) to make a more informed decision. And finally, I will finish the lifebook.  Really.  I will.  Hold me to it, ok?

So, now that I’ve nattered on as usual, what about the rest of you? Where are you doing well in terms of cultural connections for your kids?  Where could you do better?  What resources are out there to provide real help/support?

And is everyone’s FCC chapter as lame as mine?

An unexpected message November 7, 2008

I know I have written here before about my own adoption story and the contact I have had with my birthmother. My story is pretty standard, and yet I get constant reminders of how different it is from Elsie’s. Case in point, yesterday, I received an email from Louise, my birthmother.

Louise is not an emotional person, and most of our communications have been matter-of-fact.  This was the first time she really shared details about my birth. At the risk of over-sharing, here is an excerpt, in all of its stream-of-consciousness/lack of capitalization glory. I added paragraph breaks — this was all one big block of text in her message.  Anyway, here goes:

i don’t remember either what i told you about what was going on in the days and months surrounding your birth.  some parts of it are, i put myself on what i suppose was called welfare at the time so that i could be in the girl’s home and have a roof and a place to give birth.  i was older than the other girls, i remember one girl was just 13.

i was given the chance to go to a persons home and be a helper in whatever way they needed.  i went to a couples home in a nice area, she had hepatitis and wasn’t very strong and she wasn’t much older than me.  i ironed for her and straightened up and took her for transfusions.  she was shy with me and i stayed to myself.  i saw in the paper maybe a year later that she died. 

i went back to the home as i neared my due date.  it was a dorm room situation, very large and communal bathrooms, kinda fun, the girls were nice.  we hung out in the basement and played cards and listened to records, bobby vee was big and his hit then was, take good care of my baby, i will never forget that and think of those days every time i hear it, also little anthony and the imperials, tears on my pillow. 

we could go for walks in the afternoon, there was a drugstore close by and my girlfriend pauline would come and bring me apples but i was told on, no outsiders allowed near, so that ended that.  i didnt have any communication with my family and hadn’t for some time but i think my mother knew somewhat what was going on, we never talked about it, it was never brought up.  right after you were born i called her and said it was all over and my parents came to see me, it was uncomfortable and they were always like strangers to me, and brought me a box of candy and i still break up when i think about it.

they went to the nursery window to see you and my mother said that you looked like other babies in the family.  there was never any talk of keeping you, it just wasnt done that i know of, we were just hidden away until after the birth and were just suppose to get on with our lives. probably the next day someone was sent to pick you up from the home, we were given the option of dressing you and i did and that was pretty traumatic, i took you downstairs and handed you over, i can almost smell the wood in that hallway and see the woman that came to get you.  my sister was sent to get me, i went home and nothing  was ever said, i dont remember even my sisters talking to me about it, ever. 

i talked with my mother when i went to see her in florida, the year that you and i connected.  i showed her your pictures and she had one put on the front of the fridge with the other family pictures, that moved me. she told me how she felt for me in those days and her heartache for me. 

so do you know anything of elsie’s backround?  how she came to be up for adoption, what happened to her parents or other relatives?  there were alot of events that led up to my estrangement with my parents, things i havent talked about much, if you are interested i will tell you, you let me know.    thinking of you, love louise

This out-of-the-blue communication really moved me. Not to sound melodramatic, but picturing a pregnant Louise listening to “Take good care of my baby” on the radio as she prepares to give up her child just breaks my heart.

I don’t want to comment on whether it was the right decision for Louise to give me up, and I wrote about it a little in my previous post linked above.  What is whirring about in my head is how lovely it was to receive this message and get a glimpse into my past and my birthmother’s life. And when Louise asked about what we know about Ellie’s family in her message, I become more withdrawn.

I truly believe she will never have these glimpses in her birthparents’ lives. And maybe she will not miss that. For a long time, I didn’t miss it. But getting a message like the one above is a gift. A gift I wish I could give my own daughter.

Pet Peeve August 20, 2008

I’ve returned to my teaching job.  Every time I see someone I haven’t seen for a while, it seems like I hear the following:

“Hi, Coco!  How is the baby?!”

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m being a scrooge here.  But how about asking how I am doing?  I haven’t seen you for three months.  The baby–a toddler, really–is doing what toddlers do.   I never really know how to respond except to say “she’s fine,” which is sort of boring.  Am I supposed to offer photos, latest accomplishments?

I don’t know.  Maybe I just like being a grownup, not a mom, to my colleagues at work.  But this one bugs me.

Passing Judgment August 13, 2008

At times, when I read adult adoptee blogs, I think that today’s APs get a bad rap.  We go through some relatively intense educational sessions through our agencies. There are more and more great books about raising trans-racially adopted children.  And goodness knows there are wonderful online resources.

We’ll do better than the generation before us, right?

Perhaps not. I had a hugely judgmental moment when I dropped Elsie off at daycare this morning. The owner of the daycare had made a point of telling me about a new family starting today – their daughter is a 16-month-old adopted from China. In the email the owner sent to me, she remarked, “I think you and (the girl’s mom) would really enjoy knowing each other.  You both have been on our waiting list for a long time and you both seem to have the same priorities in your lives.”

I brushed aside the initial annoyance I always feel when someone assumes that I will automatically become fast friends with another mom with a daughter from China (silly of me, I know). And I chatted with the mom as she introduced me to her daughter. I asked how long they’d been home (3 months), the province where her daughter was from (Guangdong, like Elsie), and the city/SWI where she had lived.

I got a blank look at that last question.

“Hmmm,” she thought out loud. “I think they said it was roughly 4 hours from Guangzhou.  Give me a minute and I’ll think of it.”  When she couldn’t come up with the name, she shook her head, smiled at me and laughed, “Sorry, I just can’t recall.”

Is it hugely judgemental of me to be appalled that she has no idea the city and/or SWI where her daughter spent the first 13months of her life?  It did add to my annoyance over the owner’s previous comment about “having the same priorities” as this woman.  Um, not so much.

And there you have it — my judgmental moment that reinforces why so many APs get a bad rap…

Other Adoptions: Lulu’s Story July 15, 2008

The alternate and much longer title for this post is “Why I thought being adopted would make me a better adoptive parent, and how wrong I probably was…”  I debated about whether this post was even relevant to the blog, but Coco convinced me to hit publish, so here I go!

I was adopted at four months, having spent some time in foster care with a “tight right hip.” I’m sure it would be handled differently today, but anyway, that was the deal. I was the second daughter adopted by my parents, and my older sister was about 2-1/2 when I joined the family.

Both my sister and I always knew we were adopted, although I don’t remember specifically being told. It was just always there. This sounds obvious, but it wasn’t always the case in the 1960s with same-race domestic adoptions. I never felt particularly stigmatized about being adopted; in fact, I generally thought it was pretty “cool.” I was a little dramatic as a child, and anything that drew mostly positive attention to me was a plus in my book. And almost exclusively, the attention I got was positive.

Now I could write a book about my experience with adoption, but luckily for you, I’m not going to do that (although you know my posts border on book-length, right?). I thought I would post a few comments about my own experience and how it relates to my current experience as an adoptive parent.

1. I now understand that I really cannot compare my situation to Elsie’s. Yes, I understand what it is to wonder about birth parents, struggle with family tree projects at school, and deal with questions about my “real” parents. But as a white child adopted into a white family, I got to choose when I told people I was adopted. I looked like a child my parents might have had biologically. I didn’t have to deal with race issues, or loss of birth culture.
2. My own experience with adoption was such a combination of positive and neutral (i.e. a non-event) that I was initially lulled into thinking that my experience was the norm. It certainly didn’t take many visits to adult adoptee blogs to get over that notion, but I still have to really remind myself that this is not necessarily the ideal way to form a family, no matter how many shiny, happy a-parent blogs will try to tell you otherwise. Adoption starts with loss, separation, a broken bond, and often much worse. And to say that it was the way God wanted you to become a family starts to sound pretty twisted when your child’s journey in this world started with being abandoned.
3. Becoming a parent has given me a new appreciation for the losses involved in adoption. Until I started parenting my amazing daughter, I had no concept of what a tragedy it is for a parent and child to be separated. I’m not saying every parent is fit to raise their biological child, and I definitely find that most children who are adopted join wonderful families. But what if I had given birth to Elsie, and then been forced to give her up? How do you live with that? Especially in the case of poverty, family pressures, or political situations that keep you from parenting your child to adulthood (as opposed to the fairly conscious choice not to parent a child that my own biological mother says she made). Really, how does a parent live with that, and how do the children live with the fact that external realities kept them from living their lives with their biological families?
4. Specifically becoming an adoptive parent has shown me two things that I’m really struggling with. The first is that I think I have been just shy of a complete shit to my own biological mother (father too I guess, what the hell, since I’ve made no effort to contact him despite having all the info to do so). About nine years ago, I received a letter out of the blue that medical information had been added to my social services adoption files. When I accessed the info, there was also a note in the file that my biological mother would be open to contact if I was interested. There it was, no effort required. At 35 years old, I had never made much effort to search for her — Louise, my biological mother, that is. So I got her contact info and wrote her a very noble and high-minded sounding letter, thanking her for making the choice she did so many years before. That I had a great family, and had a wonderful life with plenty of opportunity. Just what she wanted, right? In retrospect, it seems more like a backhanded slam now. Thank you for not parenting me — I really was better off without you, right?! Nice, Lulu, very nice. And we exchanged a few letters, met once in person, and I kept it all very standoffish. Now Louise wasn’t exactly a wellspring of emotion either, but still, the woman is my MOTHER, right? She gave BIRTH to me, right? I could have been so much kinder and more open to a relationship, but I wasn’t. And I cannot decide if I need to go back and fix that.
5. Which brings me to the other thing I’m struggling with. The main reason I was very standoffish to my bio mom was due to the attitudes my adoptive mom raised me with. Now I know in 1965 there wasn’t any education around adoption or raising adopted kids, so I don’t really blame my mother for this — I honestly think she thought it was better for me in the long run to not look back. But my mom always raised me with the idea that she was the “real” mom. She sat by my bed when I was sick, taught me to drive when I was a snotty teenager, sent me to college, etc. Heck, I still see some of this today in a-parent blogs — as if parenting is a contest and they win the “real parent” title. But in some warped way for my mom, it did become a contest. When I expressed interest as a teen and young adult in my bio parents, she took it personally and made it mostly about her (i.e. rejection). When my sister found her biological mother, my mom seemed quite relieved that their contact was limited and did not last (she was even a tad, oh I don’t know, smug that my sister’s bio mother was in trailer in Arizona living off disability). And once I had contact with my bio mom, my own mother became very possessive and negative about Louise. Somehow, Louise was going to steal me away from my “real” mother.

NOTE: Before anyone blasts my mother, this did happen very shortly after my father passed away, and right around the time I was getting married. She and I had completely leaned on each other after my father’s death, and she was feeling very lonely and vulnerable. This has given her a huge amount of slack in my book.

Slack notwithstanding, both in my youth and as an adult, my mother made it clear that I had beenfortunate to be adopted, that my life was so much better than it would have been with Louise. I won’t go quite so far as to say she thinks I am lucky, really, but I know she feels that Elsie is far better off in her life here with us than she would have been in China. Any contact I have had with Louise and my bio family she has taken like a flesh wound to her heart. Even if I had wanted a relationship with Louise, I knew it would break my mother’s heart, and I couldn’t do that. What a horrible position to put your child in.

That’s a huge lesson for me, although I like to think I would not have followed my mother’s path regardless. I hurt so much for Elsie’s mother sometimes, and I really do think of her as her mother, her birth mother, her bio mother, her first mother, and painfully, sometimes even her real mother (and no, in my mind, this doesn’t make me any less her mother). I would support any contact Elsie and her birth mother might be able to have, even though I know the chances are remote. And yes, it would possibly hurt me like hell. But you know what? It cannot be about me. And my mother made it mostly about her. I promise Elsie that I won’t do that.

Based on what I hear and read about the China IA program, even if Elsie did find information about her birth parents, it might not be as simple as a mother or couple feeling forced to abandon their child due to the one-child policy. There might be something more nefarious behind the story. But based on what little we know, that doesn’t seem to be the case. And when I look down at my sleeping daughter’s face, I cannot help but wonder about this journey of adoption. What a twisted road it can take.

Honestly, I’m still not sure where it is going to take me and Louise…

Other Adoptions July 7, 2008

Okay, I’ll go.

A while back, Lulu, Fifi, and I discovered that each of us has in our families of origin an adoption experience.  Lulu is an adoptee; Fifi’s sister was adopted.  My family also had an adoption story–though we never called it that, really–before we adopted Mavis.  I thought it might be interesting to reflect on how those relationships influenced our daughters’ adoptions.

My brother, Beauregard (ooh, I have fun making up these names!), was brought into my family when he was 7 years old.  It was the summer before I left for college.  I am ten years older than he is.  For comparison, I’m three years older than my sister and thirteen years older than my youngest brother.

Beauregard was part of our extended family, but I had never met him before the day he moved in with us.  The death of his previous guardian necessitated his move in with us. Technically, Beauregard was never adopted, for a host of complicated legal reasons I won’t go into now.  But his move in was permanent, and we knew it would be, and we have considered one another siblings all this time.  In all the ways of the heart, he was adopted into our family for good.

I have never not considered Beauregard my brother.  We’ve never really argued, partly because we have such an age difference and little history over which to squabble.  For a long time, I just thought of him as my little brother.  And the same for him.  In almost every way, it’s clear that the patience my mother showed him, the understanding of his grief, the immediacy with which she understood him as her own son, paid off for him.  Beauregard is happily engaged to a beautiful and wealthy fiancee (though I got official word only through Facebook–grr), with whom he travels the world, and he is very successful in his chosen field.  I think he’s happy.

But I’ll be honest: the relationship I have with him is not the same as it is with my other siblings.  For one thing, I never lived in the same house with him for more than a few months: that’s probably the biggest barrier.  And his intelligence and talents (which are many) are of a different kind than those of my biological siblings and me.   He’s also a much more outgoing, naive but bighearted, less sarcastic, more gullible and yet more giving person, in some ways, than my other siblings or I.

But the biggest reason is that in recent years, Beauregard has separated himself more and more from our family.  He is charming as hell with the rest of the world but aloof and distant at times with us.  Even as we exhort him to join us, he sulks in the corner on Christmas morning–that is, if he’s there at all.  And if he is, it will be late, with a gift chosen at a convenience store for my mom and seldom anything for anyone else.  My cousins sometimes mention some big thing Beauregard is doing, and I startle because he had never shared that with me. When he does ask for my or my sister’s help on something, he never thanks us, and he doesn’t contact us unless he does need something.  My mother had to implore him, a few weeks after Mavis’ referral, to send me an email of congratulations. The world finds him to be utterly charming, but our family, lately, finds him to be increasingly selfish and unthinking.  (And, of course, when I perceive him like this, I’m less likely to reach out to him, which of course is a vicious cycle.  So I’m not blameless either.  But my sister and I try.)

Does it sound familiar?  Of course.  Beauregard clearly has attachment issues.  He has sprung from girlfriend to girlfriend, afraid to go without; now he’s engaged young.  His many charms–lapped up by teachers and community leaders–end, though, when he walks through our doors.  And I don’t blame him, really.  At seven he lost his previous guardian, whom he had loved, as well as the extended family in the state where he had lived until he moved in with us.  Still, that family had been tough on him–picked on him, just because–and he had lost his birth family, too, of course.  A few years after he moved in with my family, my parents divorced, and he effectively lost his adoptive father as well.   Not to mention the few times I heard my mother, in anger and hurt, utter some of the truly meanest words I’ve ever heard her speak: to him.  She was very good to him–very good–except for a few terrible times when she, well, simply wasn’t.   And I wouldn’t be surprised if those words are the ones that landed hardest on his heart.

I always think of Beauregard when I read books about attachment.  It’s clear that Beauregard’s attachment was never fully secure.  Probably my mother could have done better; I know she didn’t stay up reading books about adopting the hurt child.  If she had, though, would she have been frightened by what she read in them?  Would the picture of Beauregard, in the abstract–distant, often rude, often two-faced, even–have seemed like the picture of failed parenting?  Would it have seemed worth it?  I think adoptive parents worry this way a lot.  The other day a friend of mine, a bio parent only (but a kind person, really, one of the kindest I know), bristled at the notion of adopting an older child–”it’s so hard,” she said.  “I know a family who are raising their adopted child’s children now.”  The family had adopted the child at an older age.  She said this like it was an obvious reason to say no, I couldn’t do that.  I wouldn’t.

But I was thinking to myself, you know, yes.  I bet it was very hard for this family.  It breaks my mom’s heart, too, sometimes, when Beauregard is in town and doesn’t even stop by to see her.  But you know, if you think parenting is about navigating a narrow strait that has only one or two acceptable outcomes, maybe the road isn’t for you.  I bet the grandparents of those children love them up one side and down the other.  I know my mother loves Beauregard, has a special tenderness for him that she doesn’t have for her biological children.  She doesn’t regret it.

What I admire most about my mother now is that she doesn’t blame herself for Beauregard’s withdrawal from us.  Sure, I think she sees now that there were some ways she could have done better.  But when he acts like a jerk now, as an adult, for the most part, she does a good job of not taking it to heart. She can see that he is smart and successful and competent in lots of ways.  That’s one success, and she knows she’s a huge part of that.  (I always think about those clearly competent, articulate, sophisticated, powerful, professional, funny, engaged, and so-called “angry” adult adoptees whose blogs so panic adoptive parents, and I think: if having a flawless relationship with one’s parents is the only measure of success in life, then how many of us are successful, anyway?  Those adoptees look like successful citizens to me.  We should listen to them, closely, but we don’t need to think of them as horror stories.) My mom can also see that if he can be smart and successful and competent in those ways, it’s within his power to decide to reach out to the family that has, really, kept its arms extended to him.  She says now it’s his choice.  He’s an adult, a successful adult, and he can choose when he wants to. He knows she is there.  If it isn’t now, maybe it will be later.   She’s patient.  She’s his mother.  She knows that as truly as she knows anything.

I admire that about my mother.  I think, when Mavis first yells “you’re not my real mother” at me, it will hurt, yes.  But it won’t hurt the way it would for someone who fears that adoption really doesn’t make it so.  I’m 100% sure I’m her mother.  I’m also 100% sure that I always will be (and no, I don’t mean I’m her only mother), and it’s not conditional on how she treats me, in that argument or in any. Of course I’m going to work as hard as I can to secure her attachment so that these issues are as minimally intrusive as possible when she’s an adult. I’ll always be there, patient, doing my best but knowing that ultimately it’s her own course that she charts as she grows.  Her story isn’t mine, and only she gets to decide what it means.

When to worry, and when to let it go. June 1, 2008

Before I became a mother, I knew that parenting was full of worrying.

OK, I knew this in theory. I really didn’t understand the breadth and depth of the constant worrying. Did our parents worry this much? I’m pretty sure our grandparents didn’t. Are we just a generation of worriers, or do we simply have more to worry about as parents these days?

When it comes to Elsie, I have standard mom-fears. She’s pretty shy, especially around new kids and extremely so around new adults. This doesn’t worry me too much, and I can generally keep it in perspective. She’s getting a bit more whiney, and developing an occasional whiney/low voice that sounds like a baby Kathleen Turner. But I can get past that. And today, she cried and wailed for the first 10-15 minutes she was awake (For no apparent reason — this has never happened before. UPDATED: yippee, it was plain and simple constipation, a rarity!). No real mom fear there, and I know it happens all the time.

No, my current fears center on Elsie’s new fears. Lately, she seems to have a lot of them, and oddly, most of them are in our own house. In public, Elsie is pretty inquisitive and likes to explore her surroundings. She will walk around, climb, and poke her nose in anywhere she pleases. At home, she took this same approach, right up until about a week and a half ago. Now, there seem to be fears everywhere, and they tend to drive back to the same source.

Several months ago (really, more than six months ago, easily), we acquired an exercise/fitness ball. It was used a few times, but mostly, it has been parked in a remote corner of our dining room. For a while, Elsie and Max would play with it, rolling it back and forth, or she would sit on his lap and they would bounce on it. There was one, minor unfortunate incident where Max bounced it to her a little too high, and it hit her in the head and knocked her down. But she recovered quickly, and played with it many times afterwards.

For the past couple of months, no one has gone near the ball. And a couple of weeks ago, Elsie decided she was terrified of it. No doubts about her fears — “I scared of ball,” she says. And not just scared — afraid to go near it. She wants us to carry her everywhere in the house, especially in the living room/dining room area.

Well, we are slow, but not idiots, so we did move the ball to a corner of the basement. And made a big production out of moving it. Max does intend to use it again, so we didn’t completely get rid of it (whether he will or not is another matter, but hey, we’ve all been there). He even put our unused baby gate in front of it, and told Ellie that it was in jail, in a cage, and couldn’t hurt her.

So now? She won’t walk down the stairs into the basement, which she’s done many, many times. She will only go down there if we carry her. And she loves to go downstairs since that’s her prime video watching area. When I tried to play hardball (no pun intended) and told her that the only way she could go downstairs to watch Barney was to hold my hand and go down the stairs herself, she lost it. Sobbed and sobbed. “I scared of ball!” I felt horrible.

In general over the past couple of weeks, she wants to be carried in the house (even now that the ball is downstairs), or to simply sit on the couch with her books and her comfort items. Outside, we have no problems.

I suspect she had a bad dream about the ball, but is it more than that? After all, she had a little meltdown a few days ago over fuzz on the couch — “I scared of fuzz!” C’mon. Really? Fuzz?

Neither Max nor I have fearful personalities, and we’ve certainly encouraged her to be adventurous in general. I hate to sound like a broken record, but it is so difficult when to determine if something is just a normal stage, and when it might be an adoption-related issue.

Since I started writing this post a few days ago, things have improved. We’ve had a delightful weekend, and the ball has hardly been mentioned. Max has given up on it, and he let Elsie help him push all the air out of it, and we’ve stored it in a box in the back room of the basement. We haven’t seen if she will actually walk downstairs again, but she is roaming the upstairs again.

Now I get to worry about the letter my daycare provider dropped off yesterday. I let her know last week that we’re thinking of moving Elsie into a new daycare in the fall. It is a center, but not a traditional one. It’s very small, run by fabulous, childhood-development degreed women who have all been there for many years, the ratios are small, and the waiting list is enormous (as is the playground). We’ve been waiting for a slot since before we brought Elsie home 15 months ago. We finally have our spot in the fall.

The letter (and the fact that she sent a letter rather than sitting down and talking to me feels very junior high) talks about how she doesn’t think this is a good time for Elsie to make a transition since she is so nicely settled into her current situation. She talks about adopted children and their challenges with permanence. It felt very scolding in a backhanded way. We were incredibly gradual in our transition to Elsie’s current in-home daycare. In fact, our daycare provider thought we were being a little overprotective. And now she’s reminding me of how hard we “all worked together” on the transition?!

Anyway, it played into some of my fears, but I’m still standing my ground (and we really have already decided to make the change, we’re just telling our daycare provider in two stages). There are two one-year-olds in Elsie’s current daycare – they are not playmates, and are unlikely to be playmates for quite a while. There is an older girl who will start 1/2 day kindergarten in the fall and her older sister who, other than summers, is only there two afternoons a week.

Elsie’s main playmate at daycare is Alex, a 3-year-old box (Elsie is 28 months old). Alex is very bright, loves words, letters, and numbers and has helped Elsie’s development in that area a great deal. He is friendly and adventurous, and his determination to bring Elsie out of her shell is generally welcome. Here’s the challenge. He is also incredibly outgoing, to the point where he overshadows Elsie almost completely. He is clearly in charge, and he sucks up a lot of the energy at daycare. He is also quite whiney, and frankly, a little out of hand and aggressive at times. Honestly, my husband calls him the little brute (not in front of Elsie), and while it can sometimes be true, some of it is typical boy behavior.

Our daycare provider does a pretty good job managing Alex’s aggressive behaviors, but while Elsie is doing incredibly well with language comprehension, speech and letters/numbers, as I mentioned above, she is not doing as well socially. She doesn’t really know how to play with other kids her age, or even close to her age, and she is very fearful of other kids. She hangs back until someone tells her what to do. Yes, she is shy, but I simply don’t think she will have a chance to express herself or stand up for herself as long as she is hanging out with Alex all day. Our daycare provider said in the letter that Elsie has plenty of time to play with kids her own age (that was one of the reasons behind the move that I expressed to her), but in her current environment, the only thing even close to a kid her own age is Alex.

I’m not sure how to handle this with her daycare provider. I don’t feel comfortable telling her that we’re making a change for a variety of reasons, but a primary motivator is to distance her from Alex. I know there will always be aggressive kids in a class, and especially outgoing kids that require a lot of attention from caregivers. But in her current situation, that kid is her only peer.

I know it has been forever since I’ve posted, but I really would like to hear from people about this. How important are the other kids at daycare in forming your child’s early social behaviors? How important is it for other kids at daycare to be your child’s age, or at least close to it?

And perhaps most importantly, how do you manage another transition for a child that likely struggles with permanence issues? We have an opportunity to start Elsie early in the new setting in August, but it would mean Mon/Wed at the new location, and Tues/Thurs at her current in-home daycare (she’s home with us on Fridays). Would doing that half-and-half routine make it easier or harder to make the transition? We will definitely manage her transition slowly again, bring her in the first time with us for short time, having her first days there by herself be just a few hours, etc.

My, what a long/rambling post. For anyone who hung with me, any advice?!

Motherhood, Economics, Adoption, Choice April 11, 2008

Even though I don’t fully agree with everything in it (though most of it, yes, yes, yes), I really like this post. I have been stewing for some time about the idea of motherhood as an economic rather than biological privilege, though I give credit for putting it that way to Harlow’s Monkey.

A few different things have had me thinking about this idea lately. One is that it is almost tax time here in the US. Jasper and I, this year, are not paying any taxes at all because we have large tax credits that offset the costs of our adoption. Next year we will still be reaping the benefits of these tax credits. When I think about why our state and federal governments both want to repay us for these costs, I can’t really figure it out. My daughter was not an American citizen until I adopted her; our governments had no obligation to her. The only reason, then, that I can make sense of as to why the government would have an interest in her being adopted is that there is some implication that parenthood is a right of American citizens.

But of course it can’t fairly be called a right, because not everyone can do it. I am thinking of one of Mavis’ childcare providers, a funny, loving woman who is single, black, overweight, and from what I can tell not exactly wealthy (a guess based on what we pay). She approached me one day last semester to ask about adopting from China. And it was hard to admit that, as we spoke, I basically knew there would be multiple strikes against her trying to adopt. Her weight would disqualify her from China; her income level might also have. Her single status would make it much more difficult; her race might not interfere, so long as she had a decent homestudy agency, but who knows. If she is not heterosexual, there would be another huge barrier. But in every way that matters, she would be a great mother. I leave my own daughter with her three days a week as evidence.

And maybe America provides her other options for adoption. Probably she could adopt some child, somehow. But I am sure that it would be harder for her than it would be for me (even if we share the weight challenge!). At least I am sure that she has fewer options than I do. We who adopt have privileges in America. We who can afford IVF have privileges in America. We who become pregnant and can choose to keep our children have privileges in America. We who can avoid pregnancy by affording safe abortions or reliable contraception have privileges in America.

Motherhood is the most emotionally invested thing I have ever done or will ever do, but its deep sentimental structures are structures; they do work. And they certainly do not overturn the stark economic contrasts that I’ve been increasingly struggling with in recent months. The bottom line is that I did not want to be pregnant (and/or would not have been able to get pregnant—it’s unclear in my case because we never tried) but wanted a child. Someone else’s labor (nevermind, even, someone else’s loss), someone whose story is obscured by law, by rhetoric, and by feeling.

Love obscures lots of things. Which is not, of course, to say that love is irrelevant. It’s deeply so. But it hides as it reveals.

Today I had a strange epiphany while walking in the hall between classes. I realized that my desire to adopt a child was an unusually rooted one. I have wanted to adopt a child—preferring always that to biological parenthood—since I was at least 14 years old. I began actively researching adoption from China in 2001 (mind you, not to decide whether to adopt but to decide which agency or how to go about it), which was a full six years before I adopted my daughter. I was 25 then and had just spent two years studying poetry writing, gazing at my own navel, mostly. But what if I had no children and had decided, now, at my present age, that I wanted to adopt? Would my politics, which have matured considerably since 2001, have allowed me to do it? Would I have been too disturbed by the transnational inequalities that adoption trades on? Could I have said no?

And at first I thought, no. I couldn’t do it now. It would be different. It’s much of the reason I can’t see myself adopting a second time in the same scenario I did with Mavis.

But then I thought about how I arrived at the politics, broadly speaking, that I’ve articulated for myself in the past several years, and I realized that it was, in large part, the process of adoption itself that helped me develop those politics. Sure, it was my graduate study of American culture, the Bush administration, living in a deeply segregated American city, an increasing fear about corporate culture. But the work I did to prepare myself to adopt my daughter—like the things on this excellent list—did more for me than anything else. I had to think in context about one female child’s life and how I would equip her. I had to see differently. I had to abandon some of my own invisibility (not that I’m saying I’m a Chinese American now—blech to that notion!). And in those ways, I really believe that I am smarter because I did—am doing—the hard work that interracial, transnational adoption requires.

I’m not writing this as a kind of excuse. I guess I write in part because of those future parents who gripe when parents who already have their children home voice concerns, as I have, about the ethics of international adoption (in my case, I have especially had my consciousness raised about corruption in adoption from China). Is it hypocritical of me to voice concerns about adoption after I already have my child home? Yes, in some important ways, it is. But also, the process itself gave me insights I simply didn’t have before. In some ways, I should have known—maybe could have known—better. In some ways, perhaps I let myself be blinded. But in other ways, adopting my daughter, one specific girl, allowed me to see the forest through one tree.

I never thought of adoption as my right, but I thought I was doing a good thing. Not a heroic or charitable thing, but a thing that made sense. Kids were without parents and I wanted to be a parent. I thought it—I still do think it, even as I critique it (there is still some part of me that feels hurt, even if it shouldn’t, when I realize that biological children are, for so many people, preferred)—an elegant solution, one more aligned with care for the planet and with loving my neighbor than insisting upon reproducing is. The problem is that this simple equation isn’t quite so elegant when one tries to factor in the lost mother.

Another part of me really struggles with assumptions we make about birth parents, though. My guess is that it’s right that a considerable percentage of birth parents would have preferred to keep their children, and my conviction is that anything that could have equipped those who wanted to raise their children to do so would have been a good thing. But my guess is also that many of them who couldn’t or didn’t want to also would have preferred that their children be placed in economically well-off homes, maybe even countries, even as I strongly agree that wealth does not make one more qualified to be a parent (my own single mother was by no means wealthy). How many of them would have privileged an intact culture over economic security? I’m not sure, but I get nervous about making that assumption. I think sometimes about the fact that in a globalized world, it’s easier for the people whose bellies are full and whose houses are warm to bemoan the changes industrialization brings to “authentic” local cultures whose people are maybe most concerned with filling their bellies and warming their houses. What if we knew our children’s birth mothers—those who decided they could not or would not parent–wanted the very arrangement our children have? Would that change our assumptions? Is it about what their individual choices would be, or are the concerns broader, bigger than any individual woman’s “choices”?  (By which I mean, please see comments below.  I don’t mean broader concerns as the child’s and birth family’s concerns.  I mean sort of international relations, power imbalances, cultural pressures, etc. etc. etc. that might constrain a person’s so-called choice and that it’s difficult to build policy around “choice” in that context).

I don’t have the answers to those questions, but they’re not just rhetorical. They point to my deep concerns and struggles with the word “choice” when it relates to women’s roles as mothers, biological or adoptive, working or not, rich or poor, American or not.

I don’t know how to end these musings in any meaningful way or with any tidy solution except to say this: Maybe it takes an adoption to really appreciate, to really confront, the complexity of adoption.

Fifi’s Confessions April 2, 2008

-Sadie eats about ten things, consistently, and I allow this to happen. Sure, I know what “they” say about exposing a child at least 15 times to a food before they accept it…but do I practice it? Um, no. Sometimes. But mostly no.

-I still sleep in her room about 90% of the time. Because I am lazy. And deep down, I think that we both still need this.

-The majority of her wardrobe is either gifts, hand-me-downs, thrift shop or ebay finds, and stuff that I pick up on clearance the season prior. I cannot remember the last time that I bought something full-price. Mainly because I spent an embarassing amount when she first came home.

-I have totally told her that a certain irritating toy or DVD or CD is broken. And it isn’t. Yes, I LIE. Stone me.

-I have lost total control over the amount of pink/Disney/princess/toy cell phones/sparkly-stuff that has invaded my home. All things that I swore would never be in her rotation pre-Sadie.

-I gave up carrying the uber-cute Petunia Picklebottom bag soon after she came home, and now? I still lug a beaten up black back-pack that is full even after potty training. Why? I do not know.

-I make her a seperate meal, nearly all the time. Ken totally calls me the short order cook and smirks over conversations that we had when I said this would.never.fly.in.my.house….yeah.

 -I bribe. Enough said.

-I let her eat in the living room sometimes. While I blog. But only once in a while.

-I totally have some trainwreck blogs in my Favorites. Totally.

-There are days that I am relieved to come to work. I feel like crap about it, but there it is.

-I will still feed Sadie, often because she asks me to. Sometimes out of habit.

-I have kept her out of pre-school to have a “fun day”…and have let her get a “mini” pedi already.

-I have thrown away art work that was just like about ten other pieces that I saved.

-I haven’t completed her lifebook, and have failed to send my monthly email to her SWI more than a couple of times.

-I totally don’t know if I am using the best language or reinforcing her story for her…and have to admit to stumbling the first time she asked “why?” when we talked about being placed in the SWI after she was found.

-Speaking of language, she has heard me utter words that I am really not proud of. And? She repeats them. Giggling.

-I let her stay in her pj’s all day, most weekends. I don’t brush her hair on those days, either.

-I hover too much, and feel the looks from other parents.

-I get frustrated easily, and walk away sometimes to gather my emotions.

- I probably don’t dress her as warmly as I should, because I don’t like to be too warm.

-We still have gates up, but mostly to keep the dogs at bay. But still….yikes.

-I get bored sometimes playing the same games over and over and over.

-Same with reading the same books, sometimes twice or more in a row.

-I clean up after her too much, not reinforcing that she has to pick up her own toys.

-I like buying girly stuff. A lot.

-I also put the cutesy hair stuff in, even knowing that she will eventually pull it out. I tell myself it is because I am keeping her bangs at bay. And it sorta is the reason…sometimes.

-I feel proud when she sneers at someone exclaiming “She is SO BEAUTIFUL! What a little DOLL!” in public. And I don’t apologize for it. I like that she is already protesting being objectified.

-I dig that she is into me more than she is anyone else, most of the time.

-We quit speech therapy early. It was a gamble, and it turned out in our favor. I lost sleep over it, and still beat myself up about it.

-I quit fighting the grandmothers over crappy gifts, and now just cycle them out.

-I long to travel, but worry about traveling with my girl. Need to get over this.

-I can sing most of the Disney Princess “theme” songs. Gah.

Coco’s True Confessions March 31, 2008

Our house is not babyproofed. My child had eggrolls for dinner tonight. I think my daughter is cuter than the other kids in her class. My daughter knows how to use a laptop because I have modeled it more than often enough. I celebrate her bedtime every night. One time I caught her standing on a chair holding a glass vase over her head, pretending to drink from it. I like reading to her, but I get tired of reading the same things again and again. Because it is truly an endless battle, I do not wipe her nose every single time she needs it, waiting instead for critical masses to form. I don’t always follow her when she leaves the room. She brushes her teeth only once a day and sometimes less often. I have never carried a diaper bag. I have been getting laxer than I meant to on letting her have sweets, though I am probably still pretty good about this. I like it when she looks cute but worry when she looks too cute. The ten-second rule? Let’s just say ten seconds can be very slow in our house. Sometimes she hangs on me when I’m engaged in something, and I feel bad for not scooping her up and attending to her instead of whatever I’m doing. I feel like I should take her outside more often than I do. I am a little overexcited about her birthday party, and I like buying her toys more than I should (though she still has fewer than most kids her age). I don’t use special detergent to wash her clothes (sorry, APC!). She had tiny bits of peanut butter before she was 2. Sometimes, I can tune out. Once, when I was really stressed out because we had to fly to a funeral the next day, I yelled “Mavis, stop!” at her when she was whining for me, and I immediately felt terrible because I scared her. I tend to be lax on making her wear mittens and don’t generally dress her as warmly as I think preschool thinks I should. I occasionally exaggerate the inflexibility of my childcare providers to get out of certain nonessential work commitments, and I do not have any qualms about doing so. I’m relieved that she seems to be of normal intelligence. She has never been to the dentist nor to any adoption specialist. When I first saw her picture, I was relieved that she didn’t look really gnarly more than I was excited that she was beautiful. I don’t mind spending most of a day away from her once in a while. I let her toys hang out in multiple places in our house even though I sort of admire people who don’t let their kids do this. I am glad she likes my mom better than Jasper’s mom. I don’t buy her “educational” toys and am proud of the fact. I make her walk when she wants to be carried because it’s too much of a hassle to carry her with all the other crap I have with me or just because she’s heavy. She watches Sesame Street often when I get ready in the morning, though I really don’t want her to watch TV. Luckily, given all of the above, I generally do not feel much “mommy guilt.” Still, I typed this post a long time before I posted it!