1. 2. 3.
Sep 20, 2007 Writing, work work work
1. Got news that an article was killed today. (sigh) Kill-fees are a nice thing even if killed articles aren’t.
2. I have two meetings tomorrow, a deadline and paperwork to fill out across town. I’m already tired just thinking about it.
3. Between you and me, sometimes a regular paycheck and paid-for insurance sets my mind a-dreaming and my heart a-thumping. This freelancing thing, it can be the best thing ever and the absolute worst. (Did I mention the killed article?)
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I woke up today and started yelling
Sep 20, 2007 Adoption
Not to anyone I’m related to, mind you — it was a phone call. Now I’m feeling just a tad guilty about it. But if people will make me crazy than crazy they will get from me!
I just dropped Madison off at preschool (tears in the potty and in the hallway on our way in).
That leads me to today’s adoption-related entry! If I were better about blog entry titles I’d call it something like The Cultural Construct of the Primal Wound and then I’d apply for a grant.
The infamous day immortalized in this oft-linked entry primal wound at our house is the only time I’ve expressly put words to Madison’s adoption grief. I haven’t since then. Why? Because that day the leap was warranted but most days it isn’t. Heather said it best in her comment:
That’s why Pavao’s idea of the normative crisis was so helpful for me. Because it made sense to me that my son will go through all the normal developmental stages but will have some extra emotional work to do at each stage due to his adoption experience. … So when faced with situations like this we don’t have to ask whether it’s “normal†or “adoptionâ€â€“because for our kids they’re kind of the same thing. The adoption is woven into the normal.
(Pavao is an adult adoptee and a therapist who works with adoptive/first families and who wrote the excellent book, The Family of Adoption.)
I’ve said here before that I don’t parent “adopted Madison” — I parent Madison who is adopted. And so while I see some adoption issues in her out-sized (for her) response to preschool, I haven’t told her that I see adoption in that issue because I don’t think it would serve her. What she needs from me is the same thing my (bio) son needs when he feels scared or insecure; she needs to know that I believe she can do it. But I write about the rest of it here because (I say again) this is a blog that has ended up being about adoption, this is a place where I write about my feelings about adoption. There is way more adoption here than there is in our real life where adoption is just one facet of our lives. (I don’t write as much about other stuff because I find it less interesting so right now a bigger everyday deal is that our house seems to be falling apart around our ears but I don’t get much out of blogging it.)
Ok, so back to my Primal Wound Cultural Construct, blah blah blah.
I think babies are built to be resilient and so I think that back when we all lived in tribes and were mostly concerned with getting food that there wasn’t really a primal wound. (I’m not basing this idea on any research, mind you, I’m just making it up as I go along.) Back then we lived with kin and we all kinda smelled alike and sounded alike and certainly women died an awful lot in childbirth so I’m sure that babies bounced from lost mother to new mother pretty easily. And likely from what I’ve read, in many tribes there were many mothers and so part of many tribal cultures is/was motherhood on a grand scale that probably did a pretty good job of serving babies, orphaned or not. But then life in post-industrial cultures is complicated. And with complications comes a different kind of stress. And as we get more complicated we get to have the luxury of thinking about things higher up on the Maslow scale of needs; we’ve begun to experience stresses that probably didn’t even exist before. And one of those things, I think, is adoption loss.
Because now adoption often means making kinship with strangers and so babies primed to bond with the person who carried them have an extra leap learning to bond with people who often aren’t anything like the people who carried them. So that’s stressful. And then we ask more of our babies than our ancestors did — we sign at them, and wave colorful toys at them, and they go out into the world and meet all sorts of people who come and go and come again or disappear. Life makes a little less sense because music can come from boxes and spheres instead of identifiable drums and shakers. Babies are put into plastic upholstered carriers and whisked off to places that smell and sound totally different than the place they were just ten minutes before. Not only did adoption get harder and demand more of babies but life got harder.
Now I’m no Waldorf-follower and I like my hectic, modern life so I’m not saying that these things are bad for babies or that we all ought to go back to living in tribes and foraging for food. No way. But I do think that the bar has been raised and while we (as a species) are up for it, life certainly asks more of us.
I think it’s pretty unlikely that kids were ever dropped off with strangers at three when we lived in tribes. So even preschool (an institution that I, homeschooler that I am, adore) is by that definition “unnatural” and can be pretty stressful. We know that in crisis we have to revisit the events that shape us. Like Integritysinger said in her comment on LJ, “[J]ust as I rework through the loss of my father with every new stage in my adult life (he died when I was 12), my kids will work through their adoptions, one stage at a time.” I think starting preschool is a crisis but a good crisis and one worth working through. (Your mileage may vary — some homeschoolers are pretty anti-preschool but I do love a good early childhood education program!)
I operate under the working belief that adoption creates a developmental challenge but I’m still figuring out how to help Madison integrate that. As I said, except for that one day, I haven’t made unsolicited explicit reference to this (her adoption) to her when she’s struggling because that’s the only time I saw a direct connect to her adoption story. That day it seemed appropriate because, well, my gut told me it was. And her instant relaxation convinced me at the time and her changed relationship with Jessica continues to convince me that it was the right thing to do. (Her relationship with Jessica became much more casually intimate and playful after that day.) But I haven’t seen it come up so clearly for her since. That day was purely about her adoption and it’s the only time that I said to her, “This is about your adoption.”
When she brings up not wanting brown skin like Jessica and wanting pink skin like me, I can say, “Yup, adoption” because she’s saying it. And so I can address that worry that adoption is somehow not as strong a tie as Noah’s growing in my uterus seems to be. So usually Madison is able to tell me when to bring it up by bringing it up herself.
But Madison is no longer than nearly-baby that she was and as the Real World (and preschool) enter her life more and more, her concerns have become more solid and immediate. Now her adoption concerns seem to be focused entirely on matching, which makes sense because this is the age when kids think in categories. She’s less interested in uteruses than she was this time last year and far more interested making sure Daddy doesn’t sit on the hotel bed she was sharing with me because “it’s the girls’ bed!” She is seeking more ways to be like me and the ways in which she is not like me bother her and this brings her to her adoption, which she can say herself sometimes bothers her.
From what I’ve seen in my meager 3.5 years of adoptive parenting, adoption is an issue that comes and goes. Rarely does it need specific action focused entirely on adoption and more it needs regular old parenting seen through a lens of understanding adoption. Honestly, I don’t parent her much different than I did Noah — their personalities demand much more difference than her adoption does. But it does color her experiences and so it does color our responses.
Now it seems like whenever I type an entry like this some adoptive parent comes and accuses me of foisting adoption on my daughter and as proof of this they’ll tell me that their own adopted child has never ever brought up the issue. To which I say: Sounds like we have different experiences. Sometimes the person will say something like, “Are you saying I’m missing something with my kids?” in a very defensive way and to that I say, “I’m not saying anything about your kids at all.” See this is my blog about my life and my parenting and it has nothing to do with you or what I think you ought to do because most of the people who get defensive don’t know me and I don’t know them and we can have opinions for days but when it comes right down to it, we’ve really got no idea what other people need to be doing with their lives. In short — if my entries about seeing adoption loss in my daughter make you feel defensive, please do not visit that defensiveness on me. It just frustrates me. Now, in the immortal words of Garrison Keillor, “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”
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Tags: homeschool, Madison, Music, Noah, preschool
From one imperfect mother to another
Sep 19, 2007 Adoption
Those comments have got me thinking — how much does understanding the cause of our children’s behaviors matter when we have to deal with those behaviors?
Sometimes I really appreciate the take from moms who have been there and done that.
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Response to comment
Sep 19, 2007 Adoption, Parenting
Right — it might not be adoption related but it might be. ‘Cuz the adoption books and the adoption experts say that transitions can be harder for adopted kids than for bio kids. That’s one of the hard part about parenting through adoption — what’s that child’s “normal” and what’s the result of their adoption experiences? Because if it’s adoption related it might take some slightly different handling since it can feel more core-shaking for an adopted child than for a child going through a normal developmental stage.
Amy says below that she was also an out-going child who cried when she started preschool and that she isn’t adopted so maybe this isn’t about adoption. Maybe.
I think Madison’s feelings are typical of a 3.5-year old going to preschool for the first time but I think they’re magnified by her adoption. After all, she did have a mother who went away and didn’t come back.
One of the things I keep hearing from folks who work with adoptees is that new events/new developmental stages bring up those same feelings and the child needs to revisit his or her adoption-related crisis and work through it again. Working through those events makes a child stronger so I think it’s important to be — optimistic, I guess. Encouraging, definitely. Because every new challenge is an opportunity to heal a part of that self that’s suffering from loss. But I think we adoptive parents have to be willing to recognize that loss as we help our kids so that we can help them address it. I’m hoping that if I mention Miss Lisa looking like Jessica that it’ll give Madison the chance to identify any feelings about preschool that have to do with her adoption without saying, “Hey, is this because you’re adopted?” because I also don’t want her to think of herself as someone who’s damaged goods. I want to help her identify her feelings, follow them to the source and work through them.
To tell you the truth, I’m kinda puzzled by people who want to say, “Hey, maybe it isn’t adoption.” I know but maybe it is. In fact, knowing what I know about adoption loss, I’d say it’s unlikely that it isn’t.
Now there’s a difference between saying, “Oh my god, your adoption has just ruined you for life!” and saying, “You know, this could be part of the normative crisis of growing up adopted.” (This is a great article — the one I linked to — and I encourage you all to read it.)
I don’t think it’s necessary to always say to Madison, “I think this is about your adoption” as much as I think it’s necessary to help her identify her feelings, honor her feelings and work through them. (Of course that’s our job for all of our kids.) Understanding that adoption impacts her experience helps me be more sensitive to what’s going on for her. Given Madison’s exuberant love of new experiences I might be totally taken aback and maybe even apt to be a bit dismissive by her preschool reaction. I might have less patience. I might push a little harder. I don’t know because I haven’t had the experience of parenting an exuberant kid before. But since way back when at our adoption training they told us this stuff and since I’ve read all the books on their reading list I did feel prepared although, I’ll admit, a little surprised by the intensity of her reaction.
Cynthia said: Anyway, perhaps all separation has a thread of adoption related loss running through it for an adoptee, and perhaps that’s what you’re saying.
I think that is what I’m saying. (Your comment came in as I was typing this!)
When it comes to adoption stuff, we first have to recognize that there are very real long-term repercussions, or so the experts will tell us. I mean, not just the primal wound extremists but also pretty mainstream types. While not everything is about adoption (as in an if/then relationship with a logical course) but it can still be a result of experiencing adoption loss.
So yes, I think Madison is reacting more strongly because she has a history of loss but I am less sure of how much is identifiably about the adoption. (Thus why I’m going to ask her about Miss Lisa looking like Jessica — just to see if any of that is playing into her experience. I’m not convinced it is but it might be.) I do think she is more afraid of losing us (me specifically) than a child who was not adopted would be. (And I think this is a normal developmental stage that’s exaggerated, too, by our transracial adoption since she is so worried lately about not matching me. Two days ago she was upset because she doesn’t have blue eyes “like a girl” meaning like me.)
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Madison cries at preschool
Sep 19, 2007 Adoption, Parenting
I guess I didn’t expect it because Noah — my clingy, shy, introverted child — never cried at preschool. But she does or at least she has the last two times. She’s skipping on her way in, chattering all the way but as soon as we actually get inside she tenses up and then begins to sob. I’m about absolutely convinced that this is adoption-related. Honestly — I don’t think she’d do this if she didn’t have a history of adoption. But then … so what? I mean, would I handle a crying child differently if that child wasn’t adopted? No, I’d handle it the same way.
This goes back to my philosophy that adoption is an added challenge but that our children are resilient, especially when we take their challenges seriously.
I do think Madison is ready for this particular challenge. I’ve known (and taught) other kids who weren’t ready to leave their parents and I think that’s a real thing and should be taken seriously and not just shrugged off as “typical for the age.” I mean, I don’t think every single parent should leave their crying 3-year old at preschool but I do think some of us should leave our crying 3-year olds at preschool. Of course the trick is figuring out if your kid is going to be best served by being left or not, right? And it’s harder to figure out when you’ve got teachers whose bias is one way or another (and a lot of teachers the bias is to just leave ‘em). You’ve got to know your kids and I know my kids.
So I left her yesterday and it was hard but not as hard as it would have been if I hadn’t felt leaving her was good. The thing is, I know that staying would give Madison the message that she’s right to feel so insecure so leaving felt ok. But I feel bad for her.
She has a good time at preschool and likes the kids (although between you and me it’s clear she feels superior to ‘em — that’s the big brother influence because she acts very worldly with her classmates) and she likes her teachers — she’d just like everything better if I’d stay.
My guess is that she’s worried about out-of-sight meaning out-of-mind. In the past when she gets left somewhere it’s always been with family (grandparents or my sister) and it’s usually been with Noah. When I think back to my own preschool days, I can remember having a gnawing feeling that my parents might forget that I was there and just move on with their lives. Now I never cried at preschool but I do remember having that feeling so I think maybe she has a feeling like that, too. So what I’ve been telling her is that I’m her mommy even when I’m not around and she’s my daughter even when I’m not around and that is forever and ever and that I always, always come back to get her because she’s my baby girl.
There’s this glaring part, though, which is that she is also someone else’s baby girl and that mommy went away and did not come back (in the same way) but that part of it runs pretty deep and I’m not sure how to address it without making things seem scarier. And then I wonder (and this is just a wonder but I wonder it) if her African American teacher reminds her in anyway of Jessica because they have the same build and they are the same height and her teacher wears her hair the way Jessica did and the way it is in a couple of the pictures we have up. Miss Lisa, her teacher, is a very calm, soft-speaking, maternal woman. And I can’t help it — I can’t help but wonder if that brings up specific feelings for Madison. That’s the trickier part of seeing adoption-related issues cropping up — there isn’t a great answer book where I can flip to the index and read about how to deal with it.
(I think I’m going to just ask her if she’s noticed that Miss Lisa looks like Jessica and then ask her what she thinks about that.)
Madison and I have also decided that we will find a picture of me and of Daddy and of Noah that she can bring with her and we’ve talked about having a very specific good-bye routine where I will come in, I will watch her put her picture up that says that Madison is in school and that we will check out the snack together. And then I will hug her and kiss her and then I will leave. And she might be sad and it’s ok to be sad — Miss Lisa and Miss Free are there to give her hugs — but that I will come back. I’ve told her it takes practice to get used to preschool but that I have faith in her and know that it will get easier and easier. And that I miss her while she’s gone, too, and that I stop sometimes and think about my Madison and feel a little sad but that I remind myself that I will see her soon when I come pick her up. (She was pleased and a little surprised to hear that I miss and think about her, too, but I think she also found it very comforting. That’s why I thought maybe she’s worried that I forget her when she’s not around.)
Anyway. I wanted to write this down — that Madison cries at preschool and that I think it’s adoption legacy.
(Also I’ve told Miss Lisa — out of Madison’s hearing — that our adoption training said that separating anxiety was a specific issue for adoptees since both the teachers were surprised by Madison’s reaction given her out-going personality. And then in front of Madison I told them about the routine Madison and I decided on and then Miss Lisa and I talked about how the teachers are there to give hugs and sympathy but we talked about this to each other very official-like instead of ganging up to convert Madison herself, you know? Because I always hated it when my mom would unite with the teachers to talk me into doing something I didn’t want to do but if she could get me on her side and then inform the teachers like it was my idea — even if it wasn’t — I was more likely to go along with it. Madison listened hard but looked doubtful.)
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Tags: Erica, introvert, introverted, Madison, my mom, Noah, preschool