this woman's work » Adoption

Second best mom ever

Dawn — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:40:56 +0000

Scene: Thursday on the couch while we as a family cuddled under the giant polarfleece blankets my mom made us and waited for Pam and Jim to have their baby.

Noah: I love you, mama.

Madison: I love you, too, mama.

Me: Thanks guys.

Noah: You are the BEST mother in the whole entire world!

Madison: Yeah, you are the BEST … wait, except for Pennie. YOU know. You are the best ADOPTIVE mother in the whole entire world! But Pennie, yeah, best birth mama.

Me (laughing): Thanks.

Madison: It’s just, you know, hard with the adoption and all. You know, with Pennie like the best mama because I love you but I love Pennie more. You know, because of the birth mama and everything.

Me: Sure.

Madison: But I love you, too.

Me: I know you do. I never doubt that you love me. I love you, too.

Later Madison told me that with adoption, the reason you love your birth mama BEST is that you love her FIRST.

Madison: See, if you adopt another kid, it will know its birth mama FIRST and love her and then it has to MEET you before it can love you.

Me: So it’s about loving your birth mama the LONGEST so you love her BEST because it’s the LONGEST.

Madison: Right. Because you’re in her uterus and everything.

Me: Well, that makes perfect sense to me.

Madison: Good.

And it does, too.

(I told Madison I was writing this on my blog and she said that was fine. Just so you know.)

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | 14 comments so far | Come on by and comment!

I woke up s-i-c-k

Dawn — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:13:42 +0000

I had all of these great blog posts to do but I woke up at 2am last night from having fever dreams with my throat on fire. I feel a little better this morning (ibuprofen is a miracle drug) but I’m not going to do anything useful today. NOTHING. The kids said I don’t have to and promised to fetch and carry.

I was thinking about the responses to my last two posts and about the terrific (I mean that both as a measure and as kudos) diversity in openness in adoptions and was thinking again about how I wish I had time to do more with OpenAdoptionSupport.com. I want to invite other people to be a part of it. If you have any ideas for the site — if you want to contribute content or create a group or WHATEVER — please let me know. My goal has always been that it be sort of community-owned and operated and through several incarnations it’s had more participation and then less again. I’ve always wanted it to be a one-stop resource for anyone seeking more information/support around openness (all kinds) and I don’t mind how it’s morphed into a frequently asked questions repository (the community wisdom category). But I’d love it if anyone else wanted to blog there specifically about news stories re., openness. Like if there’s a show on television or a story in the news or WHATEVER. And someone who might want to write about research as it comes up. And someone who might want to use it as a way to interview whatever experts in the field that they would love to interview.

I mean, anything really that you think is missing and would be a help to someone. I can add your name to the “About Us” page (I’ll make a contributor’s section) and I’d be happy to write references, etc. if you’re trying to build out clips. Obviously I have no money to pay you but making money on this site is NOT a goal. I pay for the hosting every year and before when it’s come due when I’ve been broke I’ve gotten some help for that but I’ll shut it down before I’d sell it out. You know what I mean?

Ok, maybe I’m feverish again. Argh. I feel so lousy.

Anyway, I can show you how to do stuff — any single person can create a group. I need to check for bugs since I updated to the latest BuddyPress but haven’t had the chance to so let me know if you’re over there and find any. I’m also hoping to build out some functionality for the site and make some “how to” videos but I have no deadline for that ‘cuz I work over there in my free-time, which is a precious commodity around here.

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | 10 comments so far | Come on by and comment!

Is an attitude of openness enough?

Dawn — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:10:28 +0000

Chanie, who has somehow managed NOT to have a blog in this over-blogged world, asked:

i wonder about this in general, unrelated to the specificity of adoption – when you say ‘openness is an attitude’ – that’s all fine and good, but in general, we have certain values that we want to pass on to our kids – but is attitude enough if it isn’t backed up with concrete actions?
sometimes, that is out of circumstance, or laziness (seeking out opportunities v. sticking with what is ‘easier’) or just because that’s the way life is – we can’t/don’t necessarily actively provide real life examples of all we want for our kids without it feeling forced or artificial.

Well, I was speaking to the specificity of adoption so I’m going to keep doing that but I also think this could be generalized to other relationships. (And here I will give a shout out to fellow adoptive mama Deesha Philyaw’s site CoParenting101.org, which has the fabulous tagline, “Divorce ends marriage … but families endure” since I think her work is a good example of this.)

I guess I’d say an attitude that isn’t backed up with concrete action is a pretty empty attitude. I’d say, perhaps, it is a false attitude. It’s kinda like saying, “I am an environmental activist” and not bothering to recycle. At the same time, I don’t think you can always tell what someone’s attitude is with just a quick glance at their actions and that’s really what I wanted to get at in the last post.

I know some adoptive families who go through the motions — cards, phone calls and even visits — without having the attitude. These are people who keep adoption segregated in their kids’ lives by making the visits private (sometimes even from the kids’ themselves! I know of one family who didn’t tell their child who that woman was who was visiting him all that time!) or by creating crazy hoops for the first family to jump through or cussing & fussing the whole way through anytime there was any contact. On paper, that looks like true openness but it isn’t. To me, that seems like threatened openness. I don’t think those relationships are sustainable or healthy. But they fit the criteria of an open adoption.

On the other hand, those families I cited before, the ones who cannot (for whatever reason) have cards, phone calls and even visits but who have an attitude of openness, they are working that open adoption philosophy, which is about finding ways to give our kids’ connection and honoring their histories. There are A LOT of people in this category and sometimes I think it’s easy to sort of drown out their stories because they just don’t have that photo opportunity flash of adoptions like ours.

So I do think true openness is an attitude but that attitude has to be real and not just lip service.

(Note I did not focus on what makes a successful open adoption for first families or adoptees because I’m not qualified to speak to either. I focused purely on adoptive parents and I hope that when we are “successful” that we are also doing what we can to support success in the rest of our adoption family. That is to say, we cannot create “success” for our kids or their first families but we can impede it.)

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | 11 comments so far | Come on by and comment!

Open Adoption Roundtable: Success

Dawn — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:53:44 +0000

If there’s one thing we all might agree on, it’s that we’d like our open adoptions to be successful. But what does “success” mean to you, when speaking about open adoption? Do you think it may mean something else to the others in your triad?

–Roundtable #14

I don’t really like the term “successful” when it applies to relationships because it seems kind of — it seems kind of like a salesman talking, you know? I think that relationships are fluid and they are sometimes better and sometimes worse and they change as we grow. But heck, let’s run with it.

I think success means different things for different families. I don’t think it’s a requisite number of visits or phone calls or cards or pictures. I don’t think an open adoption with family BBQs is necessarily more successful than one where there is little to no contact. I think that a “successful” open adoption depends so much on the circumstances of that adoption and that comparisons aren’t very helpful.

I know great moms and dads who have what I would consider open adoptions even though they don’t have open adoptions. I look at Granola Susan and her family — their daughter was adopted internationally. They don’t have an open adoption in the traditional sense but they are open to their daughter’s origins in the same way that I am open to Madison’s; their reality is just different. Likewise with Malinda and Margie. Or I look at parents who have adopted their children either through foster care or in circumstances that are similar to foster care and whose children cannot have contact with their first families for safety reasons but who still honor their kids’ connections in a myriad of ways and I see those adoptions as successful open adoptions.

You see, what I would call “successful” are adoptive parents who make their parenting decisions from a place of respect and love for their children’s realities. They don’t try to pretend that adoption is just like giving birth. They don’t try to pretend like their children don’t have histories. They don’t try to pretend that their children don’t care (or make the excuse that it doesn’t matter because their kids never bring it up anyway). They struggle to make good decisions even when they are hard decisions (whether that means to schedule a visit or suspend contact). They don’t look for the easy way out or the short cuts. They don’t try to compete with their kids’ first families and they don’t try to control their kids’ feelings.

I learn a lot from adoptive parents who are not in adoptions that look like ours because in many, many ways, openness is an attitude, you know?

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | 11 comments so far | Come on by and comment!

Do our kids owe us kindness?

Dawn — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:35:30 +0000

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: It depends.

Bee and I have agreed to disagree. I am confused by the specifics of her disagreement so I’ll just quote her comment here:

As I mentioned in everything I posted it is about helping children understand and express feelings and act with consideration toward others. A child who can understand we don’t tell friends at homeschool group they aren’t as pretty as other friends, can fully understand doing so to a parent is also insulting. The question is not just about a parent’s ability to rise above hurt feelings as that is clearly established here. It is about whether or not this sort of behavior helps children ultimately learn to trust and feel safe in themselves and in their relationships. I do not believe insulting loved ones is behavior that helps meet these goals and in fact can actually promote insecurity as the child continues to look for the limit and doesn’t find it.

First of all, I see that she and I don’t agree on what’s insulting because I don’t think it’s insulting for Madison or Noah to express that they love one parent more than they love me within the context of a discussion about feelings of loyalty. I do think it’s insulting when it gets screamed at me during a fight, which is why I interrupted that the one time it happened. Around here, if you want to go in your room (where one can assume some modicum of privacy) and complain about me out loud and loudly, that’s within the rules of the household. If you want to scream it at me in the kitchen, that’s out of bounds. But in a heavy discussion? It’s cool with me. And honestly? I don’t get too hepped up about the screaming either even though our walls are so thin that I can hear them complaining when their doors are shut. I mean, it’s a parenting/guidance opportunity but it doesn’t really throw me into a tizzy.

But I do think there’s something about a parent’s ability to rise above hurt feelings here (assuming that a parent finds it hurtful — I don’t). We’ve had these discussions about the word “fat.” The kids and I have had many discussions about the power of language including the power of the word “fat.” Fat itself is a descriptor and it’s one you could apply to me without anyone protesting. I have made it a point to let the kids know that I am comfortable with my fatness (even when I’m not — fake it ’til you make it!) and with that descriptor BUT that other people are NOT comfortable with that descriptor and it’s not one to throw around. Likewise we’ve talked about how we can choose to feel when descriptors that are hurtful are applied to us — about context, about the challenge of not owning other people’s worlds, about holding people responsible for their language and about not holding OURSELVES responsible for other people’s language. But if I got hung up on hurt feelings (because as cheerfully accepting as I am about fat as a descriptor, it’s not like I don’t have my bitter, bitter days) I would lose that opportunity to handle this discussion in a helpful way. Seeing as how my children really need a good role model in body acceptance, I’m gonna do my best to be that role model.

Again, my feelings are NOT hurt when my kids tell me they love one parent more than they love me, which is why I brought up the “fat” issue as a better illustrator. Part of helping kids feel safe, to my mind, is being strong enough and confident enough to NOT get your feelings hurt. I am strong enough for all of their feelings — even the ugly ones. That, to me, is a central message I want to send to both my kids. And to my mind, there is no other way for a child to “learn to trust and feel safe in themselves in their relationships.”

Bee and I are both homeschoolers and I liken the disagreement we’re having to ones that happen between the different homeschooling ilk (in fact, it reminded me of that A LOT). You know, curriculum vs. unschooling. Standardized tests vs. portfolio reviews. And speaking of homeschooling, Bee also said:

I have known several families who embrace a total honesty approach. Their public and private policy is the same. I understand philosophically where their idea comes from. I was trying to sort out where your position fits. It is interesting to me that you have two different policies for public and private. As you explained the private policy is not an adoption specific one as it equally applied to your son.

I know those families, too. After all, we’re unschoolers and those families often end up being unschoolers. (Well, they are often non-coercive parents who tend to be unschoolers but it’s a chicken/egg kind of thing.) But I am not one of those families. I think all of our homes have public/private rules that are different and our kids are good at understanding them; I don’t see this as any different than other public/private rules we have. At least at my house, the kids have a whole variety of different context-dependent rules such as the way things are at religious school (formal and structured) versus the way things are at a homeschool class (less formal, still structured) versus the way things are at homeschool potluck (unmitigated chaos but please don’t bug the parents) versus the way things are at grandma’s (open-ended activities but clean up after yourself), etc. etc. Kids are smart; they get this stuff.

In short:

1. Bee and I don’t agree on what’s insulting.

2. Our relationships with our kids are built on different values around sharing. (At least I think this is true — while we both believe that children need limits to feel safe, we apparently disagree on what those limits ought to be. I think her take is potentially damaging. She thinks mine is. Good thing we’re not the boss of each other.)

3. We have different feelings about language and what the appropriate limits are around language.

If a parent feels like they can address issues of loyalty in a different way that is more in keeping with their family values around communication, great! As long as they’re addressing them and helping their kids understand that it’s not a contest where the only loser will be the kid who feels like s/he has to choose. THAT was my point to the piece. THIS discussion is one appropriate to my personal blog but not so much (to my mind) Adoption Mosaic, which is about adoption specific stuff. (I was also very pleased to hear that one agency is going to reprint this in their newsletter. I hope those readers can hear the central idea about loyalty and not get hung up on the details.)

So do kids owe us kindness? Sure. And we define kindness differently just like we define all sorts of family values (spirituality, loyalty, honesty) differently.

this woman's work, 2010. | Permalink | 15 comments so far | Come on by and comment!