Since last fall, I have been dragging poor L to various specialists and working with her school to try to figure out exactly what is going on with her. Some days, I am convinced we are 100% on the right track. Other days, I think all the specialists are idiots and we are wasting a ton of time and money trying to fix a kid who isn’t really broken anyway.
What we have discovered so far is L is atypical. She has a smattering of small issues that are making her life more difficult than it needs to be. To complicate things a little more, these small problems are not necessarily related to each other at all. Each problem itself isn’t too big a deal, but if you look at the small effects of each and add those together, it might add up to be a significant problem. On the other hand, it might not.
The unrelatedness of her issues creates their own challenges. She doesn’t have many of the problems you would expect given with on the areas where she has challenges (e.g. she has vestibular issues, but doesn’t seem to have issues with proprioception). Because her issues are so scattered and unrelated, they are easy to dismiss or overlook entirely. We have been working to tease things apart to get to the bottom of what is really going on.
When we sit through these meetings with professionals who claim they have the answers, it becomes harder and harder to remember that it is L we are talking about. Instead, we talk about Sensory Issues, Vestibular-Ocular Reflex, Baseline Arousal Level, Motor Planning, Visual Processing, Midline Issues, Auditory Processing and Possible Future Anxiety or Attention Disorders like THEY are the person.
It makes it hard to see L when I look at her. Instead of seeing a girl who is thriving despite a few bumps in her developmental road, all I start to see are the bumps.
Those labels are not L.
My L, she is an amazing girl. She got a raw deal at the start of her life. She has survived a broken heart, but she keeps moving forward. She has a smile that lights up the room. She has a husky little voice and a funny chuckle when she laughs. L is as strong as a little monkey. She loves to eat snacks, but never more than a couple of bites of any one thing. She is easy-going, except for the rare occasions when she’s not. When she decides to dig in, we may as well give up and let her have her way because my girl can be very stubborn. She is a gentle little soul, but she is a survivor. She is tougher than most people will ever know.
There is no label that will encompass all the things that make L so perfectly herself. She is not damaged goods. She isn’t a jumbled bag of problems for us to solve.
I will try to remind myself that we aren’t trying to “fix” L. We are only trying to make life a little easier for her. I will let these specialists try to iron out the wrinkles, but I won’t lose sight of L in the process.
Late friday afternoon, I was struck by temporary insanity. I received and email with a new listing from Realtor.com and it looked like it could be The House. I immediately called the realtor and asked for a showing asap. As soon as Mr. A came home from work, I showed him and he was also very interested.
The only hitch? It was listed for about $50k more than we want to spend before Mr.A goes back to private practice (and hopefully makes a little more money).
But it looked PERFECT. The pictures looked amazing. Seriously. In the past year, there haven’t been any houses that peaked my interest like this one.
I started a campaign to convince Mr. A would could afford it anyway. He sat down and ran some mortgage numbers and it looked like we could just barely swing the mortgage IF we used some of my China trip money AND some of our emergency fund for the down payment AND we could find another $15k.
I am not one to let $15k come between me and my dream house. I got on the phone and started working on my mom, convincing her she should loan us the money (1/2 of which we could pay back with the tax credit next spring, the other half after Mr. A gets his new job). She sounded like she could be convinced.
I forced Mr. A to get up at 8:00 AM on Saturday to go get a new mortgage pre-approval because this house cost more than we thought we would spend. When I found out he couldn’t access his paycheck stubs in his work computer until monday, I yelled at him. Several times. Because hadn’t I already told him we needed to keep everything ready JUST IN CASE the perfect house appeared?!? ( We live in a very tight real estate market. And few houses in our price range come up. When they do, they sell very fast unless they are crap-holes.)
Commence a weekend full of ridiculous obsessing about my future life in this very pretty, modern house. (Also, I drove to a friend’s yard TWICE to spy into the house’s back yard). Mr. A spent the time obsessing about the money situation. We couldn’t get in until Sunday, which allowed for more obsessing than should be allowed.
At this point, I should mention that the house was priced $10K more than any other comp in that neighborhood (or any neighborhood reasonably nearby) in the last two years. Our town has a lot of older run-down homes, so I expected it was priced as a house that was move-in ready, well-maintained and in good condition.
When we finally got in there? Tragic disappointment.
While not exactly deal-breakers, the house needed work inside. It was kind of dark despite all the big windows (and the listing photos that made it look sunny and bright!). It needed updated bathrooms (one was particularly dire with a hideous 1980s cabinet, grey bathtub and yellow tile. Blech.). There was a weird built-in air conditioner and heater from 1957 in the family room, the removal of which would have required wrecking the lovely built-in bookshelves that were one of the things I loved the most about house. The hardwood needed refinished and had spots of water damage that would have needed replacement.
The real deal-breaker, though was discovered when we went outside. There were SERIOUS structural issues in several places, that might have led to replacing the roof or ripping of areas around it. They weren’t part of the main house (the columns holding up the carport and other columns holding up a seriously rotted trellis), but the features they added were integral to the design. The inspector of whoever ends up buying that house is going to have a field day. Adding to the concern is the development’s architectural review committee which would have to approve any changes or repairs outside.
To be sure, it was thousands and thousands of dollars of repairs that could not wait (due to the risk of the structural integrity and even the risk of one of the columns falling right on someone’s head if the wind blew the wrong way). Thousands of dollars we don’t have right now. And quite honestly, thousands of dollars that are not worth adding to the already-inflated price.
While I know it is more than a little pathetic, I was so disappointed, I almost cried. I felt like I had been scammed by the price and the pictures. (Which is obviously my own fault, but still, I am disappointed.) I have been grouching around in a cloud of house-bitterness for two days now. I know I should not have gotten so obsessed with a house until I had actually SEEN it, but it is what it is.
At this point, I am wondering if I should just stop looking until next year when Mr. A gets a new job. I know I should, but I probably won’t. I am also wondering if this is a sign that we need to look for a tear-down so we can rebuild a house that is exactly what we want. A project like that sounds like an awful lot of work, but maybe it would be worth it in the end? I don’t know. For now, I will just sulk and admit that I was being crazy. *sigh*
I am glad I am wrapping up the last of the original questions (though I might do a clean up post with a few of the follow up additions), because I finally have other things I want to write about. But for today, lets finish with the hardest questions I received.
Z asks
We want a 3rd child and are waffling between adopting and trying for a biological 3rd. We are immigrants from a developing nation and would adopt from there. I really worry about my love/attachment with the adopted child and secondly i grew up in a blended family and my mom treated my step-siblings with slightly (not a lot) more leniency and I always felt the unfairness of it. As an adult I understand why she did it and I know in our case it’s not the same situation but i worry about being partial to either the adopted child or the bio children. Plus i also worry about never getting the hang of the feeling about everyone being ours as opposed to an us vs. them. I think these are the very tip of my fears and I wonder if there is something that you can recommend that we read or do before making a decision?
This is really hard for me to answer (which is why I stalled for over a week). Before I go on, let me say I am absolutely 100% sure that adopting L was the right choice for me, L, and our family as a whole.
That being said, let me play devil’s advocate for a minute.
So say you don’t feel the same about your bio kid and your adopted kid. What then? If you adopt a child, you are committing to a lifetime of being this child’s parent, no matter how you feel. You need to commit to treating your children equally, no matter what your underlying emotions might be. Forever and ever and ever. Are you ready to make that commitment?
As someone with both a bio kid and an adopted kid, I can attest that the bonding process was different for me. (I touch upon those feeling a little in this post from our adoption trip.) With M, I felt like her baby sitter for a long time. I felt affectionate and protective of her, but it was probably about 6 months before I felt that warm and fuzzy feeling many new moms claim to have when their child is born. (Admittedly, this is probably due to the unplanned nature of my pregnancy, my ambivalence about it and the lack of support I had those first months I spent alone with the baby.) Even with all the affectionate feedback from adorable little M, it took a while for me to feel it.
With L, I also felt immediately protective and affectionate, but L was a wounded little bird. She clung to me like I was a life raft. I couldn’t be out of her sight, she would sit on me to claim me, she wouldn’t accept any care from anyone other than me, but there was not much affection there from her. With a few exceptions of when I escaped for an hour or so, I was providing 100% of her care 100% of the time. Oh lordy, was it exhausting. And in case you are wondering it was MUCH more exhausting than baby jail with a newborn who is born to you and comes fully equipped to accept care and affection.
It took about two years before L began to show signs of affection for me (rather than terror at the idea of me leaving). Two long years before she began to relax. Two years before she could put aside all those trauma responses and begin to love and be loved in a more “normal” way. It is only now when she comes to me so readily for hugs and loves to snuggle in my bed in the morning that I fully understand how much her fear and trauma was holding her back. It has been a slow and gradual process. Sometimes it is still one step forward and two steps back.
In some ways, L’s very survival depended on me being able to meet her needs 100% of the time. I know that if she hadn’t been able to learn to trust that I would be there for her NO MATTER WHAT, she wouldn’t be the trusting, loving, affectionate, happy girl she is today.
During those early years with L, she needed me more than M. Many many times, M’s needs got put on hold so I could be what L needed me to be. We are fortunate that we have a great support system of family and friends who filled in the gaps for M, but there were definitely many times I wished I was the one. During that time, I remember a friend asking me if I felt close to M and I felt sad to answer “No” because it was the honest truth. I didn’t have the time or the energy to snuggle and play with M like I had before. I felt like I had lost her a little. At the same time, I didn’t feel I had any choice because L’s needs were so overwhelming.
Now that we are over 3 years in, things are very different than they were. L has made huge strides in learning how to love us and be loved. I have more time to myself (for my sanity!) and for M too. We are (I think) a happy, healthy, well-adjusted family. And while I can honestly say that parts of our first years together were brutal, I believe we are only average among adoptive families adopting non-newborns. We aren’t a worst-case scenario.
But what if we were the worst case scenario? What if L always required that level of care (or much much more!) from me? I think when you consider adoption, you have to think about the worst of the worst what ifs. Could you provide the additional care your adopted child needed even if it meant you had to neglect your biological children? Could you do that without resenting the adopted child?
I know of one family with two bio kids who decided their adopted daughter was “mean” to their younger bio son and wasn’t quickly attaching so the mother began to resent her. The couldn’t give their new daughter the love and attention she needed so they disrupted her adoption after a VERY short period of time. Undoubtedly, this caused untold damage to the psyche of a child who had already experienced tragic loss and trauma. It would have been better if they had thought hard about their own ability to “fake it until you make it” and how they could be fair to the adopted child in any number of different scenarios.
If you are seriously considering adoption, I would start by reading through all these great articles on the Pact Adoption Alliance website. You can find them here.
There are a lot of books you should read before you decide to adopt. I can give you a list of books to get you started that were critical in understanding what was going on with L. (I don’t have time to find links for them bc I need to go pick L up from school, but if you need more info email me.)
- Inside Transracial Adoption (I know you would adopt from your home country, but you would be bringing a child from that culture to America or wherever you are too.)
Those should give you a great foundation for understanding adoption and the ways it might impact your family.
I will say one more thing, which is probably rather unpopular among adoptive parents. If you do your research and decide NOT to adopt, don’t feel guilty. It is better to know your own heart and your limitations, than it is to bring a child into an adoptive home where he or she might not be fully embraced. If you choose to adopt, do it because you have faith that your heart and mind can accept an adopted child the same as your biological children. It is OK to choose to have a biological child if that is where your heart leads you. In my option, adoption is not the solution to the problem of orphaned and needy children in the world. There are many, many ways to help children in need.
Violet asks:
You talked before about the possibility of you and Mr A looking for a church you could both agree on. Is this on the back burner for now or do you think you’ll look into it? I’m wondering how important (if at all) you think it is for you and Mr A to have similar thoughts on this.
It has been a while since the church issue has come up around here. For awhile there, it seemed like it was popping up over and over and over. I honestly don’t feel like anything is missing in my life without church. (Actually, I actually rejoice in the fact that I don’t have to be anywhere on Sundays.)
My personal feeling was that I didn’t want the kids to go to church unless Mr. A or I were with them. Since I have no interest in church nor am I a Christian, that put the ball squarely in Mr. A’s court. When the big church bruhaha was happening with my mom, Mr. A claimed he was going to take the girls to church himself so they could learn HIS version of Christianity not hers.. It has been about 2.5 years and so far, he has taken the girls to church exactly ZERO times. Apparently he doesn’t care enough to do it either. I doubt he is ever going to do it.
I am not asking his opinion before I answer this question because I don’t want him to get any church-going ideas in his head again. I like having our weekends free. If the girls want to go to church when they are older, I think we would probably take them to a United Church of Christ, Methodist or Unitarian church. (My personal preference being for a pro-choice church).
I started to answer some of the school loan comments in the comments section, but it might make more sense to answer them as their own post because several comments had overlapping themes.
On Working while in College:
Both Mr. A and I worked while we were undergrads (we met working at the same restaurant), which is how we both managed to afford traveling (Mr. A on a trip to Europe and then to China for a year. I backpacked in Europe, lived in Cambodia for 3 months and visited Mr. A in China). I absolutely expect the girls to work while they are in college.
I actually want them to get jobs in Jr. High (papergirls?) and high school so we can start contributing to a Roth IRA in their names asap. (Seriously, click that link. Compounding interest is mindblowing!) They need to earn actual income for us to be able to do that, so they will be working. Work builds character. It will be good for them to appreciate the amount of effort that goes into making a living wage.
On parenting/my parents and money:
My parents wouldn’t talk to us about money either. I developed a deep-seated fear of debt from listening to their whispered adult conversations about money when I was very little. They were pretty hard up when I was very young because they both went to college after I was born (my dad on an athletic scholarship and my mom with loans). I think my mom finally graduated when I was about 8 years old. After that, our family’s financial circumstances improved quite a bit.
It turns out my parents managed their money very well and were very financially conservative(especially considering they were teen parents!) but the debt-phobia had already taken root in me. It wasn’t until two years ago when I accidentally saw their tax return that I figured out how much money my parents made each year. I am sure they would be horrified to find out that I know.
We are already working on teaching the girls to be financially responsible. M has to split her $7 allowance and put 25% aside for charity and 25% away for long-term savings. She also just opened her first savings account and likes to tell me each week how much she has saved already.
Retirement vs. Paying for the girl’s college:
I am incredibly uncomfortable having any kind of debt. I have just come to accept that in our circumstances it is a necessary evil. If we can help the girls avoid the burden of school loan debt, I would like to do that. Our debt has certainly impacted the job and career choices we have made (i.e. we always need to make enough to live and pay down our debt.) That being said, I expect that they will probably want to attend graduate or professional school and they will have to fund that themselves if they burn through the amount we agree to give them.
One thing that makes me fairly comfortable with the idea of paying for 4 years of college for each girl is the likelihood that Mr. A’s income is going to continue to rise in the next 10 years before they go to school. It isn’t 100% certain, but given his current career trajectory and employability, it is very probable. It is also quite likely his final 20 years of employment it will likely be much, much higher than his income now (Conservatively speaking, maybe more than four times his current salary?).
Even though we know we will probably have more money in the future, we maintain our current standard of living with the income we have right now with no consumer (credit card) debt. We save for retirement like this is the amount we will always earn and this is the amount we will need to live at our current lifestyle in retirement. One of the reasons we want to buy our final house now is to lock in our housing expenses forever (or at least until Mr. A retires and I demand we spend part of the year somewhere warm). When (or if!) our financial circumstances change, we will adjust accordingly. Whenever we have more income, we will save more for retirement and college and pay down debt faster.
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