Adoptive-parenting | this woman's work

Anxiety dreams and frustration

Feb 142010

I woke up last night at about 4:45am and let my fears run away with me for about an hour. I replayed every inch of the grad school interview and re-cast myself as Chris Farley awkward. Wasn’t really useful or anything but I can’t count on my brain to serve me well at 5am.

Now I am frustrated by a commenter over at Adoption Mosaic. But I think this person is a button pusher and I’m letting her push my buttons so I need to stop that. I just hate to think that she’s scaring any other adoptive parents away from letting their kids express their feeling by using scare tactics. It’s like when people start tearing down open adoption in general by talking about abusive situations in particular. Well, let me own my mistake in assuming that we’re all starting at the same place. Like I think it goes without saying that openness does not supersede safety but apparently it must be said so that people can’t use one extreme to shoot down openness in general. (sigh) Or I cannot assume that it goes without saying that we teach children to be kind to their friends so I don’t get someone arguing that if Madison is allowed to express her concern that she finds Pennie prettier than I am (because she was concerned, bless her heart, when we all know that Pennie is prettier than I am, which is not to say that I’m dogmeat just that Pennie is awfully pretty) she will go around telling her friends they’re ugly.

BUT I also know that some people are using these arguments not because they have real concern but because they will defend to the death their right not to agree with me. Actually that’s not quite right. They’re aren’t just disagreeing with me; they’re trying to prove that I am completely wrong.

This is where I need to think about it. (And this is not just about Bee; I’ve been thinking on this a lot lately.) Am I as cocksure and as unwilling to make way for a difference of opinion? Well, I’ll tell you — I am positive I am right about how I handle things with Madison re., her loyalty issues. I am willing to stake my child’s emotional health on that. Am I just as willing to say that another parent is wrong? Well, not quite.

See, when I write for a general audience, I am writing for a general audience. I do recognize that my generalities are sometimes way too sweeping. I need to work on that (it’s a process). I do absolutely think it’s a mistake to take any one parenting choice out of context of an entire relationship, which is why I can defend spanking parents. My mom was a spanking parent. You know I think my mom rocks. I do not think spanking rocks. But spanking was one choice in a myriad of parenting choices and it was not the sum of my relationship with my mother. This is why I can say with absolute confidence and in one breath that my mom was (is) a wonderful parent and that I don’t approve of spanking.

Likewise there are a lot of great adoptive parents who make single choices that I find frustrating or mishandled. I can say with confidence that I think it is a mistake to hush our children if they express concern about loving their birth parents more than they love us. But I think loving parents can make that choice (to hush their children) and can even make it in a loving manner. I don’t think that this one decision defines the entire relationship. I think there are many reasons we might hush our children like maybe they bring it up when we have a headache and can’t take a heavy discussion. Or maybe they bring it up when we’re fighting with them and we’re too mad to handle it well. So I’m willing to condemn the decision to stifle our children without condemning the entirety of that parents’ parenting. It’s just one piece of that parenting relationship and it may not be illustrative of anything BUT that one piece.

However I do think brushing things off or hushing them up can be a symptom of a greater unwillingness to honor our children’s adoption stories. And otherwise wonderful parents can do that, too. Which is why I write about this stuff, really. Because I have been so fortunate in finding people who have modeled different ways to do adoption, I want to give back by also modeling a different way to do adoption. I want to write about the parts that I think I do right (along with the parts I struggle with) because I have this great kid who is confident and loving and fun as all get out and she is thriving in an open adoption that is not always easy. I want to show how when my daughter asks, “Do you care if I think Pennie is prettier than you?” That I can say, “That’s fine” and our world doesn’t cave in. In fact, our relationship gets stronger.

Basically, we adoptive parents don’t need to be afraid of our children’s love for their first parents. I think that’s a really encouraging idea and I would have liked hearing it when I was waiting to adopt and worried about how it would all play out.

Ahh well. Probably none of this would have got to me so much if I hadn’t been playing Chris Farley on my own personal mind-TV this morning. Dangit.

The sun isn't up yet

Adoption 16 Responses »

Jan 142010

I accidentally woke up at 4ish this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep so I gave in and got up. It does not bode well for the day (she types ominously). I don’t know if there’s enough coffee in the world to save me.

Yesterday Madison was asking questions about her bio dad and we dove into topics I’ve been dreading. Luckily my dread was propelling me to think hard about how to address them so I wasn’t totally unprepared. As a matter of fact, just last week I talked to Brett about it and his advice was avoid avoid avoid but he also said that his advice is always avoidance so probably I shouldn’t take that to heart. So I asked him what he thought my advice would be if I was advising someone else. I said, “Pretend you’re me. What do you think I would tell someone?” Because I felt too close to it all to really make a good decision. And he sighed and said, “Well, you would probably say to be honest and upfront and you would probably be right.” (Brett trusts my advice to other people but he’s not always happy about following it himself because it is rarely the easy way out.)

I’m not going to share any details of the conversation or even her reaction except that clearly reality was knocking up against her fantasies and I could see how … jarring it was for her. (Which, as an aside, makes me sure talking about this now was so important because her fantasies were not serving her well.)

I never tell Madison how she ought to feel about anything in her adoption but this time I did emphasize that she gets to decide how meaningful this information would be for her. I think this is a heavy idea for a 5-year old (really, for anyone) but I wanted to start what will be an ongoing discussion. I mean, I’ve had that talk with Noah but nothing on this level because nothing that’s happened to him is on the level of being adopted. So when I say to Noah, “You can choose not to be flipped out about your Hebrew test tomorrow. You can choose to feel a different way about it.” It’s big and it’s empowering but it’s on a fairly reasonable scale for a seventh grader. For Madison, saying, “You can choose what this person means to you and what this information about him means to you” is just HUGE and I’m sure she will be grappling with this off and on for her whole life, really. Although she’s smarter than I am so maybe she’ll nail it younger.

Also I really had to stomp on my knee jerk reaction to say, “But you have Daddy! So who needs this guy?” I was surprised at how much I wanted to do that, how much I wanted to assert that Brett fixes all and thank god for the internet and the adoptee blogs because I bit my tongue (hard and repeatedly) to not say that and just really listen to her feelings about her bio dad.

It’s hard to find the balance between not dismissing her reaction entirely (like acting as if she can simply toss her head and forget about it) but also giving her control over her reaction. With the kinds of things Noah worries about, it’s easy to tear it down to manageable pieces so that he can quickly get his head around it (more or less). But the lesson for Madison is something that I am still learning — namely that we have some choice in how events impact us. I just hope that her head start means she won’t be thirty-something and sitting in her counselor’s office saying, “Wait — I can choose not to be victimized by these circumstances that are out of my control?” (I was 33 and talking about resolving my infertility and flipping that switch is what let me stop being infertile even though I still couldn’t have a baby.)

The one thing I’ll tell you because it’s kind of funny is that Madison was surprised that her bio dad doesn’t have a ponytail. I don’t know why she thought he might have a ponytail because I can’t think of any man she knows who has one or anyone on television or a movie she’s seen. I mean, sure, she’s seen guys with ponytails but not in her day-to-day life so who could predict that would be part of her imaginary picture of him?

(Noah was surprised to see that her bio dad isn’t black even though he’s known this but I guess he wasn’t listening. That was funny to me, too, but not as funny as the ponytail.)

How to make your child anxious

Adoption 11 Responses »

Jan 072010

I’m writing this carefully to respect privacy.

Ok, so yesterday Pennie and Tommy and Roscoe came over. (Aside: Roscoe is the cutest little ball of cheerful butter! And chatty! And dance-y! His parents dote on him and he revels in it!) Madison was, as usual, all smoochy-smoochy-smooch with Pennie but I noticed her, mid-smooch, shooting me a look like, “This ok?” And I gave her a big smile and thumbs up. Then today while I was doing her hair I brought it up because I don’t want her feeling like she needs to get my permission to hug Pennie — it’s got nothing to do with me, right? And because I know adoptees have loyalty issues regardless of how neutral we adoptive parents are, I think neutrality is way too close to negativity so I like to be overtly celebratory about Madison loving Pennie. I hope to nip those loyalty issues in the bud. I hope to chop ‘em off at the knees. I hope to give those loyalty issues the old heave-ho, dust my hands off and head back into the house without ‘em.

So, I’m doing her hair and I asked Madison why she was checking up on me about cuddling Pennie and she said, “You know that lady about the flowers and she didn’t talk for a week?”

Ok, here’s where I need to be careful. Recently I was privvy to a reunion story where a very lovely adult child connected with a very lovely first mom and said child brought adoptive mom along, too. Said child also brought flowers to gift to first mom. Adoptive mom later had a hissy because she didn’t get flowers and didn’t speak to the very lovely adult child for a week. Reunion suffered in part due to this.

When I became privvy to this story, it made me mad and I told Brett about it and you know what they say about little pitchers and big ears. Well, my little pitcher has some big old ears on her.

My first thought was that I really need to buy a bigger house or learn how to talk a whole lot quieter because man, these kids hear everything. Then my next thought was, well, may as well tackle it head on because if she didn’t hear a story like that from me, she’d surely hear it from someone else and it sounds like these lessons bear repeating.

I filled her in on some of the details of the story (I told her who the players in the story were because I knew that would make a difference to her — she knows one of the main people albeit from a distance) and then I told her that that story made me angry.

I said, “That adoptive mom made that situation about her and it had nothing to do with her! It was none of her business!”

And I reiterated that there is not jealousy between Pennie and me because we both love Madison, we both know Madison loves each of us and we are happy that Madison has another mother who loves her. I said, “I would not feel bad AT ALL if you gave Pennie flowers and not me because if you give Pennie flowers, it’s about you and Pennie! It’s not a contest!”

Madison said, “Yeah! I give you drawings some times.”

And I said, “Exactly! Every gift giving time doesn’t have to be about ME because I have my own gift giving times!”

And Madison said, “And she is my birth mama! She did borned me.”

And I said, “Right and of course you want to make a fuss over her when she comes over because it’s exciting and fun!”

Then Noah wanted to know why a grown person would fight over a child this way and I (having created an imaginary battle between myself and my poor beleaguered mother-in-law when he was a baby) said, “Two reasons. One is insecurity like I was insecure around Gram Pam and another reason is that some people don’t get enough love when they’re kids so they think there’s not enough love for everybody.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” said Noah.

“There is enough love,” said Madison.

Word to the mothers. Literally.

Living with regrets

Adoption 44 Responses »

Dec 222009

It’s not usually that I’m on the other side of so many people who I usually agree with but here I am, totally on the other side.

The comments to that last post are really interesting and a good reminder to me that everyone has different limits. It’s a lesson I need an awful lot so I appreciate it.

Speaking of our own adoption, I am privvy to a lot of Pennie’s pain and I don’t think that’s hurt my relationship with either Pennie or Madison. I won’t get into specifics but this bit from Mia?

Let’s say she tells me she has collected all her favorite Disney movies for him, and she feels sad every time she watches them without him. Then I will feel sad every time I watch a movie with him, because I know his mom is still sad that she isn’t. Who is that helping? Surely the first mom doesn’t intend to have that effect, but knowing that specific pain of hers, I can’t just *not* feel it. If she hands it to me, I’ll have to carry it.

That’s pretty much exactly the kind of thing Pennie has shared with me and I do carry it but … I don’t feel like that’s been a bad thing in our situation. I could see how it might be for someone else.

One thing though, I don’t know how any person could look back on placing a child and not have some regrets. We all revisit big decisions and wonder “what if” and lord knows that placing a child in an adoption is pretty much one of the biggest decisions any person can make. I’m sure there are men and women who blithely go through life never ever looking back but I’d say that most people stop sometimes and wonder. What they DO with that wonder depends on so many things like the circumstances surrounding the adoption, the situation immediately after, the adoptive parents, etc. etc.

Here’s something else that Mia said that I wanted to address:

Or maybe she tells me she placed him during a period of financial terror that turned out to be temporary, and now that her work life is stable, she is sad that she created a permanent loss because of what turned out to be a temporary problem. Well, how in good conscience could I keep him–and explain that to him later in life? He’s not a prize with a deadline for entries–he is her son!Am I going to take advantage of her months of fear, and just say “ah, too bad you took too long to figure that out, hard cheese for you”?

Well, you know that’s the rub. I think this is going to be a wildly unpopular post but I’m going to dive in. Know that I’m speaking of my own experience.

All we’ve got to do is troll the internet a bit and it’s clear that some of the best open adoptions are due to truly fabulous first parents who are stable, intelligent, thoughtful and responsible. You know, the kind of people who make good parents. Some of the very best open adoptions like ours are maybe adoptions that never had to happen. I know that ours is the classic permanent solution to a temporary problem (or rather a temporary situation). None of us really knew that at the time. We took Pennie at her word. We believed she was empowered in her decision. She believed she was, too.

As we’ve grown into the adoption Brett and I have most definitely confronted the reality that if we had to do it all over again, we would have done it differently and yes, it chills me to my bones when I sit with that. The first time I really let myself realize it the world pinwheeled around me for a minute and I had to hold on to the kitchen counter for a minute to get my balance back. (Epiphanies often come to me when I’m loading the dishwasher.) And yes, it’s something that Pennie and I have discussed in round about and in direct ways. Let’s just say that posts like this from Jenna hit me in more ways than one.

But Madison is here now in her family. And while she’s not a prize, she is a person and the irony is that likely due to losing her first mom she is rather more terrified than the average non-adopted kid about losing us (Brett and me). So giving her back wouldn’t solve anyone’s problems or undo the adoption but would re-traumatize a child who is so far blossoming where she was planted albeit with some additional challenge. As Pennie has said (relating a conversation where someone asked her if she ever thought about trying to get Madison back), “I would never do that to her.”

Pennie, being Pennie, doesn’t dwell on regret. Like Jenna, she picks herself up and soldiers on. I know she doesn’t share every hurt with me but she does share and sometimes she shares more than she realizes. She is terrific at looking on the bright side and when she is most decidedly about the bright side with me, I can sometimes tell it’s because she’s determinedly working her way out of someplace sad.

For a fairly long time Brett and I could convince ourselves that Madison’s adoption was ultimately a good thing for everybody but recently I said to him, “What if we all made a terrible, terrible mistake?” And Brett said, “I don’t know if I could live with that.” And I said, “We will have to live with that.”

Here’s the thing — it has happened. Madison is here. Her life is definitely far different than it would be had she stayed with Pennie but it’s not necessarily better. We all of us — Brett and me included — did the best we knew how at the time and we have no idea how it would have turned out if we had made different choices. I’d like to tell myself that the successes Pennie has built, the good life she is creating, is possible because she placed Madison but the truth is I don’t really know. I don’t let my mind go there often because it serves none of us — least of all Madison — to dwell on what ifs but it’s natural that sometimes we go there. How could we not?

What the three of us work to do now is build the best life for Madison in her here and now. We work hard to create our inclusive family and we put our daughter (and her brothers) first. We put aside our petty differences. We make allowances. We remember that we both love her more than anything and we trust that love to see us through. It’s the best we can do because we can’t go back and hit “do over.”

Anyway. I always think this is rumbling underneath most of my open adoption entries and I’ve addressed it obliquely before but never directly.

There’s more to say but I think I’ve said enough.

"I hate you"

Adoption 17 Responses »

Dec 072009

Madison was hating me like crazy yesterday. She had three full fits and in every single one she hated me.

“I hate you! I hate mama!” she railed. “I’m going to live with Pennie!”

By the end of the day, I was sick of hearing it.

“Madison!” I hollered back. “I am tired of hearing how much you hate me! Enough already!”

“But you said I could hate you!”

“I know but how many times have you said it today?”

She thought for a minute then said sheepishly, “Thousands.”

It’s true that just the other day I told her she could hate me. I was thinking on something Malinda wrote about permanence and ambivalence and about our kids needing to know that their realities are firmer than their fantasies. It can seem confusing that Madison both yearns to live with Pennie and is also afraid of leaving us and that reassuring her that she will not leave us lets her be free in her yearning. So the other day when Madison seemed especially clinging and (I realized not coincidentally) especially missing Pennie I told her that she would always live with us because that’s what the grown-ups (Pennie, Brett and I) decided and that she would live with us until she was a grownup herself and decided to leave.

“And maybe even forever if I don’t want to leave?” she said, cuddling into me and I said of course.

I told her, “Even when you are really really really angry with me, even if you hate me, even if you say, ‘I hate you! I’m going to live with Pennie!’ Even then, you still live here.”

Then we decided Madison could try that out and the way she did will show you her worries about this. She said, “I hate you! I’m leaving!” then very small (hiding her head in my arms) “I’m going to live with Pennie!” And I said, “Nope, you live here.” And she laughed and hugged me hard.

I guess she really wanted to test me in the real world yesterday since she hated on me pretty much all day and (for the most part) pretty cheerfully. Except towards the end when she was sent to her room to pick up and then she was well and truly done with me.

As she screamed on the other side of the wall I sat in Noah’s room listening to him detail his decorating plans. (He’s planning a whole room do-over inspired by Madison’s.)

“You know, I used to imagine you weren’t my real mom,” he told me. “I used to imagine that my real mom was a fairy godmother who was nice.”

I know how it is. I used to imagine that I had an electric grandmother.

This morning I asked Madison if she imagined that if she lived with Pennie that she’d never have to clean her room and would never get in trouble. She said yes, that’s pretty much how she pictured it. I told her that parents are parents and that if Pennie was parenting her she’d still have things to do. It’s this hard balance of wanting to help her have her fantasies (she has a lot about her birth dad) but also help her understand that they are fantasies — especially about her birth dad.

It would be very easy for her to fixate on her adoption as the source of all of her worries and it’s hard finding the balance between acknowledging the very real, very big issues that are due to her adoption and also asking her to recognize the issues that aren’t due to her adoption. I worry about being dismissive but I also don’t want her to assume that any time she’s frustrated or unhappy that it’s all because she’s adopted. Because I can tell you right now that if she was living with Pennie, she’d still have to pick up her room.