this woman’s work

Read the call over at Open Adoption Support!

Suz commented:

Do you think its a fear or a statement of fact?

The child has already experienced being “taken”. Its real. They were intended for one place and taken to another. Had one mommy and given to another. That fact lives in their system. That experience is imprinted. If its a fear, its a fear based on their experiential knowledge that it already did happen. I would guess children who have never been taken and given dont have quite the same fear.

My point is that I am not so sure it is just the adoptive parents instilling that but it is an accurate expression of what the child has already experienced.

And if I am STILL not making sense, let me say that I do see how adoptive parents instill that/reinforce it (often to their own benefit) but we should not overlook the childs very real experience of being taken.

Honestly, I don’t know.

I think it’s significant that both Supergirl and Madison are four. Madison was about 3.5 when she started expressing some of these concerns and I remember that Noah at around this age also started worrying about real life in a way he hadn’t before. I think four is a very typical age to start being afraid of the Great Big World and what it all means.

I don’t have my Ames & Ilg 4-year old book handy but I do know that at around this age both of my kids started thinking about DEATH. And fire. And earthquakes. And that’s when they started being afraid of water where previously they were happy little fish at the pool. And both went back to some stranger anxiety/separation anxiety. This is also the age that both became hell bent on being big and NOT being babies and pouring their own juice, not holding hands, not to mention having their own friends.

I do know that Madison has had an extra burden in trying to figure out what it means to have two moms who live in different places and one is called “mommy” and one is called “Pennie.” Plus she kinda ricocheted from typical 2-year old “is that a baby in your tummy?” fascination to “adoption?!? What?!?”. Which is to say that my experience has been that Madison hits these things at developmentally appropriate ages and then she’s got an added burden in figuring out her adoption on top of these typical things. But to me, the fact that these go hand-in-hand with non-adoption related challenges proves that these adoption-related challenges are developmentally NORMAL and not something to freak out about.

Like I wrote before, Noah used to be afraid that we’d accidentally leave him at grandma’s at this age. I think this was a reflection of loving grandma so much and also being at the age when he naturally and healthfully was pulling away from me, which was scary for him. He liked pulling away fine — if he could control it. He was very, very scared that his pulling away meant that I was pulling away, too. The more he wanted to go to Grandma’s the more nervous he’d be the night before about going.

My take is that Madison was having similar struggles. Her fears manifested at the same time that she started well and truly letting herself love Pennie as HER person — her birth mommy. And, like Noah, the more she wanted to spend time with Pennie and the more fun she had with her, the more clingy she was with me after.

It is definitely possible (and maybe even probable) that this is colored by being handed over once — could it happen again? But in that case, too, I think the answer is in the grown-ups being strong enough to withstand those fears, to say over and over again, “We all know that you live HERE and you will stay here and this is what we’ve all decided.”

The most important thing I want to be clear about is that regardless, this seems NORMAL and even HEALTHY to express these fears. This is one of those times where I think, “Hey, normal doesn’t mean easy or simple.”

If it is an expression of primal fear of being taken, how much MORE important to address that fear by reminding her that her parents (both sets) will not visit that upon her again. And that’s the key here — if you’ve got first family around, I think it’s hugely important to ask them to be a part of this. It’s one thing to have your parents say, “I will not let you be taken” and another to hear from the person you’re afraid might take you, “I will not take you.”

I know that Madison has needed to hear both of us say that she lives HERE with us. Sometimes now she’ll say to Pennie, “THAT’s my mommy” and Pennie says, “I know who your mommy is” and honestly I think Madison is letting herself lean into Pennie a little more and she needs to know that Pennie will remember our reality so that Madison can be free to pretend.

(I do believe that this fear is also a reflection of Madison yearning to be Pennie’s daughter and being afraid that wanting will make it true. And I also think that this is one reason adoptive parents use this developmentally appropriate reaction as a reason to pull back in contact. It’s no coincidence that Madison got scared at the exact same time that she fell madly, truly, deeply in love with her birth mama.)

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.

The incident I’ve been blogging about happened months ago and the fall-out happened weeks ago. So why blog it now? Well, because Madison brought it up and frankly it’s been on my mind (like crazy) since it happened.

She misses the wife in question and she misses the kids. She wanted to know why she didn’t see them anymore. I told her because we didn’t want to be around [husband] and that [wife] & [husband] were a package deal. (I think she knows that [wife] is angry with me, too, because lord knows we’ve talked about it often enough around here — poor Brett helping me process the thing to death.) I said, “Do you remember why I’m upset with [husband]?” And she said, “Yes, because he said…”

Me: Do your remember what he said?

Madison: You say it.

And you know, I didn’t want to say it. I wanted her to say, “I have no recollection and would rather skip over here and play with my dollhouse and smile all the live long day!” I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to say it because she couldn’t remember and wanted a reminder or if she couldn’t bring herself to say it. And I was hoping it was the former and that I could find a way to wriggle out of it. Like, “Oh! She doesn’t even remember! I’ll change the subject!”

This is where the goodness of blogs come in. I thought about Susan Ito and John Raible and Jae Ran Kim and Sang-Shil Kim and all the other transracially adopted adults who have shared their stories. If I changed the subject, she would take on the shame and there’s no way that I want my daughter taking on any shame from this. I knew I had to be the one to say it so I did, I repeated what he said and my daughter screwed up her face, shoved her forehead into my arm and started to chew on my shirt.

“He doesn’t like me because of my brown skin,” she said. “Does he not like [his child]? What about [his child]?” Then later, “YOU like brown-skinned babies!”

For the next 24-hours she’d bring it up randomly. She’d talk about how mean [husband] is because of what he said. Mommy, remember what he said? And why did he say it? Why was he mean? Then we’d list all of the grown-ups we knew who are nice and NOT mean. Because, I told her, most people are nice but some people are mean. It’s how the world is. We are lucky to have so many nice people around us and the mean people? Well, once we find out they’re mean, that’s the end of that!

I understand why parents don’t want to address this stuff because I don’t want to address this stuff. I want to pretend that she’s over it, totally forgot it, has moved on with her life and that it’s not even a blip on her radar. But I agree with you all that our reaction is the only thing I can control and that she needs us to say it out loud and react in no uncertain terms. She needs to know that we have a zero-tolerance rule about this and that there are no do-overs for racism and that we are always unequivocally on her side.

One of the first people I talked to about it was Pennie. For one thing, she knows these people and even if it hadn’t involved Madison I likely would have told her ‘cuz, you know, we talk about my friends and her friends and our dealings with them. But I also told her because she’s Madison’s first mom and because she’s an African American woman and so I doubly value her input. Being naive, what surprised me was how not surprised she was. Sad, disappointed, angry — yes but surprised? No.

My white world (myself included) had this “but she’s so young! why does she have to deal with this now?” sad reaction but my of-color world had this “ahh the inevitable has happened” resignation and sadness reaction. So when Madison asked me to say it, I channeled the mothers of color who I know (online and off) and knew they wouldn’t try to get out of it. They wouldn’t squirm and try to pretend it didn’t happen or try to distract her, they’d say it and face up to the truth, which is that it was said, my daughter heard it and yes, she still thinks about it.

(What prompted this was having a fall-out with a park friend — someone she barely knew — who said something 4-year old mean, which made her remember every mean thing anyone ever said to her finally landing on this one and focusing on it like crazy. This is the first time she’s brought up her concerns about the other kids in the family.)

(One more thing — the reason I password-protected the other post and not these latest ones is because the password-protected post got into other family members reactions and I wanted to keep that un-googled.)

Tonight, she told me that she wished–in the part of the [Jane Brown] playshop where they made wishes about their birth families–that we knew more about J. and S., her birth parents. She cried a bit, told me we don’t even have a picture, we don’t know anything about them. “You know a little bit, but I don’t know anything,” she said. I told her that I would never, never, never have secrets about her first family, and that everything I know, she will know. I also said, “Sounds like you’re feeling sad.” So we talked about her sadness for a while, and I told her that I’m sad, too, that she doesn’t know much about her first family. We ended up talking about the possibility of her having siblings in her first family, and she went to sleep planning to dream about living with her brothers and sisters and birth parents. She told me I could come in the dream, but that I couldn’t live with them.

from Crunchy Granola

Because I know there are a lot of other adoptive parents who wonder, “Is it normal for my kid to think about this stuff?” Or “should I bring up their adoption if they don’t?”

It’s easy to think that if our kids don’t talk about their adoptions it’s because they are totally cool, absolutely fine with it and perfectly normal, healthy adoptees. I think we need to stretch our concept of normal and healthy. It’s normal to think about the way things might have been; it’s healthy to grieve our losses. A child can be cool, absolutely fine with his or her adoption and still sometimes need/want to talk about it or feel sad about it.