this woman’s work

Between you and me, I think it’s silly. No, more than silly — I think it’s ridiculous. Organized sports for preschoolers? Insane. 4-year olds don’t need to play soccer; they need to run around on the playground wild and free. But Brett loved soccer and so he wants his kids to love soccer and the first one didn’t so much so the second one, god love her, she’s signed up for soccer. (See, Pennie was athletic as a youth, even playing football — with the boys! — in middle school. And we all know that sitting still is an anathema to Madison!)

I told Brett that I wanted him to formally recognize my disapproval and then I’d let them go to it. I figure as long as she’s having fun, it’s all good. Although I feel guilty because about half the kids on her team (a team! they’re four! it’s nuts!) spend at least part of the time sobbing. The coach is swell and the other parents are nice, but see, they’re sobbing because organized sports for preschools are not developmentally appropriate. What is appropriate is to be four and to not know which way to run or how to aim for the goal and to cry because it’s confusing. So even though Madison is having a good time, I kinda feel like we’re helping to perpetuate the myth that our expectations are reasonable when really I think they’re not.

Anyway! I trust Brett to keep it fun for her. So there. And I am awfully awfully sad that I missed her very first game yesterday for my workshop (although the workshop was fun) even though I would have winced a lot, I’m sure.

(After making my formal declaration to Brett — not Madison — I told him I’d keep my mouth shut. And I will also now keep my mouth shut here.)

I do have to say though, she looks pretty dang cute in her uniform.

(This gallery is flash, which means you can’t swipe the pictures. Thus I’m sharing it w/out password protection.)

Yes, there she is — scuttling across the yard, flashlight in hand, creeping around the doorway ready to SNATCH THE BABY!

Arghhh.

WTF about the freaking MYTH THAT WILL NOT DIE and is contributing to people LOSING access to their children????

I’m so angry right now.

So Supergirl, the daughter of a blogging first mom, had what sounds like a fun visit with said first mother. And at the end of it (according to adoptive parents) Supergirl says, as they’re driving away, “I don’t want her to take me.”

As I said in the comments there, Madison has never said that but she has expressed some of that same fear. From that blog entry:

The part that’s particular is how she wants reassurance that she can think about Jessica as a mommy without worrying that it’ll rock her world and actually make it so her Thomas the Tank Engine pillow and favorite pink shoes suddenly end up at Jessica’s house and she’ll find herself living somewhere else. I think she wants to hear that her life is sturdy and permanent and can withstand her struggle to understand things.

So if Madison said, “I don’t want her to take me” I’d have said, “Pennie would never take you, honey, she knows that you live here with us.” I would talk and talk and talk to her about it. I’d talk to Pennie about it so she could say, “Yup, you live here with your mommy and daddy and Noah and Peanut. That’s where you live.” (And Pennie has reiterated to her that she knows just where Madison lives and just who her mommy is because Madison has challenged her on it making sure that everything is okie-dokie and safe.)

What I WOULD NOT do is stop visits because — hello, doesn’t that just tell the kid they ought to be scared? That birth mom ISN’T safe???? And do they think that this is going to assuage their daughter’s concerns? Because I remember talking to an adult adoptee who had a closed adoption who said, “I was always afraid my birth mom would come and snatch me.” It’s not like absence makes the heart grow less worried, people. Absence can just feed your fears.

I just think that aside from the whole closing of a working open adoption thing, here’s a chance to start processing adoption with your child and the parents get all knee-jerk about it and just freak the hell out. And that makes me NUTTY, just NUTTY. Are THEY afraid Supergirl is going to get kidnapped? Because if they’re not, what in the hell would make them solidify that fear for their daughter? I mean, when Noah was afraid of robbers outside the window I didn’t go, “OH MY GOD — you’re right! We better go stay in a hotel!!!!” No, I saw those fears as developmentally appropriate for a kid who’s growing up and being — as healthy, normal kids can be — scared of all that growth and separation. Likewise when Madison was afraid of riding her taller bike I didn’t say, “You know, you probably will fall. Get off it and go back to your trike. Seriously. It’s weirding you out too much!”

What I think Supergirl needs is to hear FROM HER FIRST MOM that she will be staying right where she is and all the grownups know it.

And you know, another thing Madison needed to hear from us (and maybe Supergirl needs to hear, too) is that she can love Pennie with abandon and we grown-ups will hold her steady. Brett and I won’t feel betrayed, Pennie won’t usurp our parental status — we all remember where Madison lives and the roles her different parents play in her life.

Since we were able to give Madison that reassurance, she is so much more comfortable with Pennie and in loving Pennie and in telling ME that she loves Pennie and in telling PENNIE that she loves Pennie. It has been a good and healthful thing to work through and to me, open adoption made all of that easier to work through. I’m so sorry for Supergirl and her losses. And I’m angry, too. Because I GET wanting to protect your kid but I don’t get closing a working open adoption. I just don’t get that. It just seems so so so so wrong.

Madison plays with things weirdly. She takes things apart and uses them upside down. She uses half of something and leaves the other half alone. She takes dry things into water and finds ways to use water things on dry land. She unstrings necklaces. She uses hats as baby carriers. She puts a puzzle together once then uses the pieces as money for another game.

This is a far cry from Noah. With Noah we used to have to hide the boxes his toys came in because he’d take one look at the kid playing on the front and tell us that this was the only way to play it. The boat had to hook up to the car because, see? That’s how the picture did it. But Madison is always willing to find a brand new way to make her play fun.

I love this creativity in her. At least now I do. I had to practice not correcting her or bugging her to let me show her the “right” way to do something. I worried about missing pieces and the way her toys get put away in a system that only makes sense to her. But see, I believe that toys are all about playing, right? So who am I to say how she should play? If she’d rather use her puzzle pieces as coins when she goes “shopping” then what do I care if she’s not putting them away in the box and instead sticking them in her cash register? Isn’t that where puzzle pieces ought to go if they’re being used as coins?

The only place I set limits is that books are books. We don’t draw in them or use them as building blocks or rip out the pages. Fortunately Madison has never had to be told this past her babyhood because she has as much respect for her books as I do. But everything else is fair game. This means that she makes some of her things — like a particular doll now sporting ballpoint pen decoration — prettier with stickers and markers. It means that her memory card game became crackers that she served to me for tea.

Letting go of my kids’ play has been a lesson I’ve had to learn more than once. From Noah’s first gun to our dismantled preschool games courtesy of Madison, I’ve had to remind myself that play is children’s work and that my kids deserve the same respect for their work that I want for my own.