This Reminds Me

Archive for the ‘Adoption’ Category

When we adopted Julia, we completed an agency survey and later a Russian questionnaire of our preferences for a child. Ours were pretty simple.  Girl, aged 4 – 8 with no serious physical, emotional or mental conditions.

We know our family.  With three older girls, we felt another girl had the best chance of attaching.  Aged 4 – 8 we felt was young enough to mold, distanced enough from Hannah and old enough for us to shepherd her into adulthood.  No serious medical, emotional or physical conditions – with both of us working outside the home, we weren’t seeking more of a challenge than we’d already have simply by adopting.  Ours was a faith journey, and while we were trusting God to sort it all out, we weren’t going to be foolish.  We weren’t going to say “any child” and be matched with a three-legged, 15-year-old pyromaniac.  We didn’t specify race because – based on the demographics of St. Pete – we figured our girl would look like some flavor of us.  Not a clone.  But close enough not to attract rude stares.  I grew up with a limbless brother and know how siblings are affected by one-offs.  I wasn’t going to willfully subject my kids to that sly scrutiny – period.

The adoption forums, blogs, etc. are stuffed with families’ preferences, many of which express a desire for a child “as young as possible.”   Most couples want babies.  I understand that.  We didn’t.  But I understand why most do.  Attachment is certainly easier.  Most families – especially if they’d done much research – also want kids that look like them.  More points of commonality = easier to attach, for both parents and children.  If other children are in the family – easier for them, too.  Also easier if the child is added to the family in birth order, if there’s only one adopted at a time (unless bio siblings), etc.

That’s not to say that transracial, out-of-birth-order, multiply-adopted children can’t attach.   Not at all.  We all know families for whom these adoptions have worked.  But every stray card you’re dealt decreases your chances of attachment.  Harsh – but true.

I’m not criticizing how families choose to adopt.  I wouldn’t presume to.  I just know that for us – we wanted to increase our chances for success every way we could.

The adoption blogs and boards are ablaze now with news from Italy.  Its government has decided to outlaw race as a criteria for adoption.  So Italian PAPs (Prospective Adoptive Parents) can no longer specify a child’s desired race.

This sounds so brave, so wonderful, so egalitarian.  Who could argue with a decree so noble?

I notice – perhaps unfairly – that those who support this type of Big Brother edict have never adopted, or are past the age where it matters.

I notice – perhaps unfairly – that those who have never adopted are quick to tell those of us who have what they think they would do if they did adopt.  “Well, I’d never look at race.  A child is just a child.”  “I’d take a whole houseful, not just one.”  “I’d never change a child’s name.”  And on and on.

I notice – perhaps unfairly – that those who are past the age where it matters cast a golden glow on their parenting experiences.  “When we got Sally, we never asked about race.”  No, you didn’t have to.  It was assumed.

When I’ve spoken to families adopting who already have children, their #1 concern is ensuring the kids they have aren’t hurt by the experience.   Adoption begins with loss, and it’s always a gamble.  How many risks are you going to layer on the children you already have?

If Italy is going to declare race off limits to adoptive families, how about the child’s age?  Teens aren’t “as young as possible” though, are they?  How about physical or mental challenges?  Surely everyone has the resources to handle those?  Gender – my gosh, surely that shouldn’t matter?   The child’s friends – can’t leave them behind, now can we?

Where does government dictating to PAPs end?

I think Italians will likely choose alternative paths.  The less wealthy won’t adopt if they can’t have the most basic control over the first and most fundamental, God-given unit of society:  The Family.  The more wealthy will go black market, or live elsewhere long enough to adopt.  Or they’ll adopt only from countries – like Russia – that are likely to offer children similar in appearance to them, bypassing Italian children languishing in foster care.

Adoption is – contrary to much politically-correct babble – not just “about the child.”  It’s about the whole family – its desires, its goals, its limitations.

That may not be fair.

But it’s true.

And I notice it.

This is my youngest child with her three older sisters.

She was asleep when she became an American citizen – as the wheels of this homeward-bound plane touched down in Dallas.   We had already paid about $1,500 in immigration fees, plus completed a mountain of paperwork including highly-scrutinized documents attesting to our ability to support her and provide her health care.  We did not stuff her in a suitcase to sneak her through Customs, or attempt to brand her a “co-citizen” and therefore claim no rules – or fees – applied.

Went to sleep Russian and awoke American

We patiently navigated DFW Immigration to have that all-important IR-4 stamp affixed to her Russian passport.

Her Certificate of Citizenship arrived in the mail a few weeks later.  I’d never seen one before.  Wish I could show you this large, impressive document, but copying it is against the law.  Fingering her Certificate of Citizenship both weakens and inspires me, much like I felt as a senior in high school when I gaped at the real Constitution and Declaration of Independence.  I’d won an essay contest with a prize being a trip to Washington, D.C.   I don’t cry easily.  But I cried in the National Archives as I peered down through the thick walls of protective glass at the two most important documents in our nation’s history.

With her certificate in hand, Keith waited in interminable lines to secure  Julia’s Social Security card.  Her future earnings will be taxed.

Once we had the Social Security card, we braved the Post Office to secure the final “say” in all items authentication – her American passport.   We had to send off the original Certificate of Citizenship to do so.  I sweat bullets the 14 weeks before her passport arrived, fearing some harm would come to that certificate.  None did.  It’s in our safety deposit box now – with other important papers – to be given to her later.  We also invested $350 to have her Russian birth certificate recorded in Texas – a “Recognition of Foreign Decree” – so she can get birth certificates from the state when she needs them.  Julia is anything but an “undocumented immigrant.”

Today my youngest child has all the rights and privileges her American-born sisters enjoy, save one.  She can’t be President.

She also has all the responsibilities of her American-born sisters.  She’ll pay taxes.  She’ll vote.  She’ll obey the laws.  When she starts driving, she’ll have a license.  And proof of insurance.

Because she is an American.

And today especially – I thank God for that.

We’ve just celebrated our fourth Sisters Day – the fourth anniversary of Julia coming home in May, 2006.  We know most adoptive families celebrate “Gotcha Day,” but we like “Sisters Day” better.  “Sisters Day” focuses on the four, not just the one.

Who was this timid child with the deer-in-the-headlights look in 2006?!

Because we are shameless heathens, we skipped church and started the morning with Dad’s waffles, and a sterling silver surprise for each sister.

A “Sisters” necklace for each, set at her place.  Rachel, Lois and Hannah were talking last night about how their places at the table haven’t changed since we’ve been in San Antonio.  I think there’s a certain comfort in that.  When someone plops down in someone else’s seat – chaos!

Weeks ago, the girls voted to eat lunch at Chili’s and see “Oceans” to celebrate Sisters Day – a neat choice, since Julia told us upon first meeting her that she loved dolphins.

Rachel – horrified at the baby turtles that are also known as “lunch” in “Oceans”

I was racking my brain for something else “aquatic” we could do (and afford!) when a great deal just fell into my lap at the last minute – heavily discounted tickets to Sea World good for one day only – the Sunday we were celebrating Sisters Day!  Talk about timing!

A quick family picture at Sea World while we were still fresh.  Humidity was high – our un-sweatiness didn’t last long.

Flipper, courtesy of Rachel’s iPhone

Shamu, also courtesy of Rachel’s iPhone.  Why, oh why are her i-pictures so much better than mine?

Hannah, Julia and I rode “The Journey to Atlantis. “  It was fuuuuuun all the way doooooooown.

All of us wanted to see Shamu in action.  Hannah and Julia coerced Keith (with my waterproof Olympus) into sitting in the Splash Zone.  Lois, Rachel and I had sense enough to sit higher up, away from what toddler Lois used to called “whale spit.”

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Sisters Day is supposed to be about the girls – what they want to do, how they want to celebrate our family.  It pleases me when there’s a bit’o'serious mixed in with the plenty’o'silly.

Rachel’s napkin doodle with Julia’s crayons – good thing I noticed it before wiping my Shiner Bock Burger lips

We all enjoyed Sisters Day.  I hope the girls continue to mark this special occasion after Keith and I are gone.  I want them to take care of each other when we can’t.

After all – sisters are pretty good to have.

Last night, Hannah and I returned a pair of shorts to Sam’s.  They didn’t fit.  No big deal.

Last week, an American mother returned her seven-year-old adopted son to Russian after seven months in her home.   She felt her life was endangered by his behavior, including his threats to burn down their home.  She had her mother put him on a non-stop flight to Moscow, where Russian officials promptly hustled him off to a hospital for a physical examination.

Julia’s first plane ride was part of a 27-hour coming home marathon.

The mother was wrong on sooooo many levels, not the least of which is that now Russian officials are – once again – looking at suspending all adoptions.    We were caught in a similar mess in 2004 – 2006, which is why our adoption  took 21 long months.  My heart breaks for the families in process who have a referral, or who are waiting on court dates to book that oh-so-important second trip.

The Russian adoption community is in a furor.  With blogs, forums, Facebook and other forms of social networking – even with relatively few of us – it’s easy to make contact with other families.  And they are steamed.

3,702 Russian adoptions in 2006, when Julia came home

I understand the furor.  In no way, shape or form do I condone what the mother did.  In fearing for her own life, she destroyed her son’s chance at a better one, and may have crushed the hopes of thousands of PAPs (prospective adoptive parents) as well as the abandoned children they sought to embrace.

I also understand what is too-seldom a topic of discussion:  Not all adoptions are going to be successful.  Successful means an attached child and in the case of an older child – attached parents.  To me, adopting older (past infant/toddler) children is like a marriage.  You have to go into it thinking “forever.”  They have to choose you as well as your choosing them.  And you don’t really get to date those kids before you’re married.  And like a marriage – there’s a honeymoon period.  And later – there’s just the marriage.  And what do you do when it’s not working?  Counseling?  Medication?  Structured behavioral modification? Go ask Mom for advice?  Spend more time away from home?  Or is it divorce – on, in adoption, disruption?

I don’t know what this mother or her son did and didn’t do.  The seven-year-old boy had been home only seven months.  That’s not long enough for attachment.    Was he really so badly damaged that it was not safe for her to parent him?  Maybe.  Or did she just quit trying too quickly?

But there’s another major player here – the agency.  I didn’t love our adoption agency – Buckner – every moment of our process.  In fact, Keith and my good friend Sharon can tell you about an afternoon in a Chicago conference room that I absolutely gnawed on them,  slammed down the phone and spent the evening crying.    But as I have told every PAP who has asked:  Buckner does a better job of preparing adoptive families than any other agency of which I’ve ever heard.  We had to read books, and prepare book reports.  We had to attend a two-day session in Dallas in which they basically tried to talk us out of it, telling us every horror story imaginable.   We had to pass a home study,  and after Julia was home, our social worker visited monthly for the required six months, then annually for three years.   When we needed help from Buckner after we got home, we could pick up a phone and get it.

So where was this woman’s agency – which is one of the powerhouse agencies, BTW?    Did no one from her agency discern any red flags when they met this child in Russia?   Was the mom not counseled that attachment would take longer than seven months?  Was she not visited by a social worker monthly?  Her last visit should have occurred in March, before she put her son on a plane in April.   What happened there? Was she not matched with other adoptive families – with mentors?    Was she not pushed at forums?  Was she not given books and articles to read?

If she wasn’t prepared – if she wasn’t equipped to deal with this troubled child – then yes,  I understand why she did what she did.   And her son would have been troubled.  Those kids are thrust into school not speaking the language.  They’re eating food they don’t like with people they don’t know.  They miss their orphanage mates – their family.   They miss all things familiar.   And somewhere under it all – they miss their birth parents, and they’re angry at being abandoned.  And they take that anger out on you the parent,  just like every bio child who is unhappy does, too.

Love is not enough to overcome all those circumstances.  It never, ever is.   And that is why your agency prepares you.

I’ve spoken to or emailed with parents who have awoken to their adoptive children standing over them with knives.  Children who have set fires.   Children who constantly lie, and try to break up marriages.  Children who have abused younger siblings.  Children who have stolen from home, school, church, stores, you name it.  Horrible things that generally escalate over time when a child suffers from Reactive Detachment Disorder.  Not one of those families was a Buckner family.

This child may have needed professional therapy.  If he was really threatening violence, he may well have needed 24 x 7 monitoring.  His adoptive mother was single.   How would she accomplish that plus work to pay for that therapy?

I know the adoptive community wants to vilify the mother.   And she was wrong.  Without a doubt, she was wrong.  A child is not a pair of shorts to be returned so casually.

You don’t need much preparation to decide you want shorts.  Shorts don’t threaten to burn down your house.  You don’t keep shorts forever.  You’re not paying an agency to help you find those shorts, and ensure they fit your family.

And in adoption – that fit is a very, very big deal.