More color talk
Miz Madison and I were chatting the other day while we waited for Brett to pull the van around. We were talking about having a tea party with Pennie and why Madison gets worried about not having me around for these things. Truth be told, I was getting a little exasperated and I was saying, “Madison, you know I will always come back and Pennie will always bring you back. I am your mother. I will always be your mother and you will always be my daughter and Pennie knows that.” And Madison said, “Because I’m not brown!”
I always feel flattened when we have these conversations because it’s so hard to peer into her little mind and know what to say to make it better. I don’t know if I can make it better. Is it possible to reassure her enough that she will feel safe to trust us and trust Pennie to always get her back to her home?
I know this is one of the arguments against open adoption — the confusion part. But I don’t think openness makes it worse; I think it brings an ingrained adoptee fear to the forefront. The transracial part just makes it that much more obvious. Madison is asking, “Where do I belong?” and I know this is something most every adoptee has to ask.
I worry that when I say, “Pennie knows that you are my daughter because she chose me to be your mommy” that I’m giving her the idea that maybe Pennie can UN-choose it. So I said, “Madison, you are our daughter. That is the rules. That is the law. That is the truth. We all know this.”
I tell her that parents and children don’t have to match and I point out the families we know who don’t match. But she doesn’t really care about this — who are other people to her? — she is only thinking about her own survival and need to be safe. She’s four. Who can blame her?
I think, too, that this is at the forefront of her mind right now because she is having a mad love affair with Pennie these days. She is crazy about Pennie and LOVES the visits and talks about her a lot. Is she afraid that if she loves her too much that we will change our minds and trade her out? I probably need to address that specifically with her. (Maybe over lunch today.)
I worry how this hits Pennie, too, who has to hear Madison go into a minor panic when we’re making plans for them to get together. I know it’s one thing to intellectually understand the attachment needs of a preschooler and another not to let them break your heart.
(Note: a picture of Madison’s big feet and Ginger’s wee little feet yesterday at the park when they were leaping off the picnic table)
Is it possible that Madison is actually worried that she will accidentally come to want to trade you out?
Though this is not a rational fear, to be sure, dd seems to have moments where she fears her own feelings toward all things Ethiopian far more than she fears mine.
Abebech, I do think this is part of it. I meant to blog this before (and I should have blogged it with this one) but the other day she said to me, “Next time I’m having an ALL BROWN family!”
I know this is not the point of this post, but I get exasperated by my seven year old daughter’s fears. She’s afraid of elevators, closing the stall or door on public bathrooms, toilets flushing, going to birthday parties without a parent, sleeping with no one in the room, going into any part of the house with no people, bugs, and so on. I know that it doesn’t help her fears when I’m impatient, but it’s such a pain. We try to develop work-arounds, like we do a sports type play by play when she goes into another part of the house: “She’s rounding the stairs! She’s almost there! She made it! She’s the champion!”
Anyway, I know the issues are different, but I can identify with the need to reassure a child that she really is safe.
I think the only thing that will help is being consistent on the message, and time. We need to tell our kids everything else about a 1000 times before they “get” it … adoption won’t be any different.
Madison will have to question this over and over again, but in the end, she will know that you and Pennie are both her mothers and that you are the mother she lives with and stays with and that the adults in this crazy world won’t mess it up and trade her in. You’re doing good. You just need to repeat it a few more (about 998) times.
Oh my gosh, Cheryl, that was so Noah. (In some ways it’s still Noah.) Actually it was me, too.
I remember a friend of mine talking about her fearful daughter at about that age (seven). One day the mom was in the kitchen doing whatever and her daughter suddenly burst into tears in the living room. My friend rushed in and found her daughter crying on the couch. When she saw her mother she said, “Oh Mommy! What if I fell off the couch?” Get that? She DIDN’T fall off the couch. She wasn’t even doing anything that might MAKE her fall off the couch but there you go. Tears. That was Noah. Argh.
Wow. This post caused me to lose my breath. So much stuff for Madison to process at such a young age. And even before you mentioned it, I was thinking of Pennie. How will she feel knowing her decision, not Madisions, has caused Madison all this confusion? As a mother who lives daily with the challenge my decision (informed or not) caused my daughter, I feel for Pennie.
Suz, Pennie checks in on my blog now and then and if she checks in on this one and reads your comments, I hope she finds comfort knowing that you understand where she is.
Openness in adoption doesn’t add or subtract confusion. It brings to light the complicated nature of adoption and allows there to be dialogue about it. These conversations aren’t easy, and like Jessica said, will need to be repeated a zillion times to sink in. Dawn, as usual, I see you being so clear and consistent with Madison and really reaching in to where she is in the moment and addressing what she needs right then. That’s an amazing gift for Madison, to be seen and heard in those moments (even when you are exasperated) and reassure her in words she can understand. I liked how you said that’s the rules, that’s the law. Rules and laws are big, serious things to kids and I think framing it in that way might help it sink in that you really mean it.
Dawn, this is the first time I have left a comment. The anguish you feel is so evident and so normal. I don’t have any personal experience with adoption but I do with worry. I would like to point out how wonderful it is that Madison is able to talk about how and what she feels. That is such a blessing! Many people grow up not being able to talk to their parents about anything.
I know for myself when I am faced with anything that scares me or worries me talking is just what I need and lots of it. My mom says talking takes the power out of fear. We need to talk and be listened to and to hear ourselves talk. There are so many things that happen in life that we don’t have the answers to, for ourselves and our children. However, as long as they know we are always here and always willing to listen.
Sometimes the listening is so hard, whoever would have imagined how hard it could be to listen? When our kids share their pain, sometimes it is pain that we cannot wipe away. Sometimes we just have to listen and all the while hurt. I think too listening and letting them have their dignity. I think even little kids know when an issue is something they alone have to deal with. I think they know more than we in general as a society give kids credit for.
So, I stay and I listen and I ache and then when I am alone I sometimes cry. On the whole the journey has made us all stronger. Having good friends as you do is so essential. I am so blessed to have wonderful people who then listen to me. They may never know how much their listening helps.
It’s also an argument against transracial adoption and it sure would flare up my insecurities and worries about what we were doing when “K” would hit these spot (she still does but the thought process is more sophisticated now that she is older) and I had to see/help her struggle through them. One of the reasons we are also having such a hard time considering adding more children to our family knowing that they might be going through what she did but that this time we are purposely putting them there.
I would also point out other families that didn’t match (within our own group even) but K still wanted all of us to match.
I’m thinking a couple things. Though I haven’t followed the earlier things you havewritten about Maddison, it sounds like some of her fears (if you can call them taht) are race based. This is a racist country, and she’s picked up on a couple things” differences and inequity, though she probably doesn’t articulate it.
I’m thinking, too, that this is some “natural” fear that kids have about a lot of things. Being the weird kid I was, I went through bouts of paranoia about (and I’m not making this up:
age 2: Christmas trees
age 3: any stranger including neighbors I knew
age 4: learning to dance–especially ballet
age 5 1/2: Stalin’s death and what it meant to the US-Soviet relations (I warned you!)
age 10-14: the end of the world
At around the age of 8 or so, I developed a real fear that my birthmother would come back and take me away. Of course, I was in a closed adoption, since there weren’t any other kinds. I pictured her lurking around in a black cape waiting to steal me.
Marley, it is frankly hard to imagine you afraid of anything!!!! Adoptee perspective always means a lot to me ’round these here parts — thanks!
I’m also afraid of liberals and progressives. Every time I have to hang out with them I freak out. I’ve been on the board of the Columbus Free Press for years )(and written for the paper since the early 1980s). I feel like I’m on another planet at the board meetings. I just sit there like a lump They do NOT want to hear what I’m thinking. It’s enough to make me pull out a zip gun.
Angela, this is interesting. I’m German, and used to work in pediatrics there, and would occasionally see very blonde mothers with their dark brown kids (African fathers).
Germany has only a very small black population, but there was a surprising number of mixed race kids where I worked. They were their mother’s bio kids, but they looked nothing like them, and by default grew up in whites-only neighborhoods. I often wondered how that affected them.
I think that bit about her love affair with Pennie is right-on. She may be afraid of her own love for Pennie or even fantasizing about NOT coming home and that scares her.
It’s interesting how Nat will correct me when we are looking at pictures. “That’s Mama Rose” I’ll say and she’ll say, “no Mama Shannon, that’s ROSE.” She won’t let the stranger be “mama.” I am hoping we get more open with Rose soon so this stuff can get worked out in real time instead of therapy when she’s 21 and “in reunion.”
The feedback on childhood fears here is really helpful! It caused me to remember that I was really scared as a kid, not allowed to process those feelings, and then had to have therapy in my twenties when I became almost paralyzed by fear. If I listen to my daughter now, maybe she can avoid that part.
[...] has taken to heart our previous conversation about staying with Pennie. Maybe passing the hospital put it at the forefront of her mind because [...]