Sky asked several questions but tonight I am only answering two:
If you adopted again, would you go for domestic or international adoption?
We adopted from China because we felt like our home would be the better fit for a Chinese kid if they were coming to the US anyway. Because Mr. A is Chinese/Taiwanese American, or family already incorporates a lot of Chinese cultural stuff. Mr. A studied Chinese and lived in China for a year, we eat and cook Chinese food, we have Asian relatives, we plan to travel regularly to Asia, Mr. A wants our kids to learn Chinese, he has a strong Asian identity etc. It just made sense for us.
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We didn’t adopt because we couldn’t have another kid. We assume we had no physical impediments to getting me knocked up at will (especially since M was unplanned and in spite of some half-assed attempts at using birth control). We adopted because I thought we would be the kind of parents who would be able to rise to the challenge of the extra needs of an adopted kid (which remains to be seen!). While we were prepared for the challenges of being adoptive parents, we weren’t interested in adding another culture to the mix. I mean, look at the struggles I already have managing Chinese tutoring!
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If we were going to have another kid just for the sake of adding a third, I would probably go the pregnant route because I feel so strung out over the situation with L’s family and I can’t imagine adding another birth family to the mix. Mr. A had a vasectomy, so this is not really an option, nor do we want a third kid anyway (I am tired…though I would like a puppy.)
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If we were going to adopt again (we are NOT), we would adopt from China or Taiwan. We would probably adopt through the special needs program, with a strong preference for a kid with a limb difference. (This is because I have a good friend whose son is missing a hand and I have seen what a non-issue it can be. My sister was also born with polysyndactyly of the toes so that doesn’t scare me either.)
Has Mr. A’s family pushed for a boy to carry on the family name? We have three girls and are getting some family pressure to go again for a boy (like that can be guaranteed!!).
Short answer: Yes.
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Slightly longer answer: Mr. A is the only son, so they would like a boy. Mr. A’s dad seems to favor his sister’s son too, but it isn’t that big a deal. Once we adopted L, Mr. A’s dad said “Now that she is adopted, you can have a real baby too. A boy.” But you know what? Mr. A’s parents are crazy (really crazy) and they don’t have that much influence over us. It isn’t that big a deal and on the rare occasions when it comes up, we ignore them. Knowing it is a cultural thing makes it a little easier. MIL’s brother (Mr. A’s uncle) brought little rice-flour penises as offerings when we visited his ancestor’s graves, so Mr. A’s parents are really not as over the top as they could be.
Before I answer another question, I need a volunteer to help me with this one.
I would like to know how the heck you found anyone on QQ. I can’t seem to figure it out. I also can’t seem to find anyone in my daughter’s town when I do an internet search. How the heck did you start?
Someone give me a town or city in China so I can show you how I would find someone on QQ. Probably this won’t work in a small village, but I could do a nearby bigger town. If it isn’t an obvious location, it would help to have the characters for the name. I am only going to do this for one location, so the first commenter is the one I will try. This will be published on the blog, so don’t offer a location if you are super concerned about privacy.
No promises I will be very successful. I am quite experienced in my daughter’s finding area, but I don’t know how well it will work elsewhere. Also, I am not actually going to track down random people’s QQ numbers and publish them here, I will just show you how to find people in general.
If no one volunteers, I will just pick a random location myself.
Excuse the effedupedness of this formatting. I have no idea what happened to it or how to fix it. I think it is readable now.
mccxxiii asks:
How do you connect your adopted child to your family lineage and make him feel like those are *his* people too? Your grandmother, your great grandmother, the house that your late Aunt Stella lived in 30 years ago, the town far away where your dad grew up but you all moved away … those are all things that your adopted child will never know personally, he’ll just hear about them in stories, in the abstract. But even those things in my family history that *I* don’t know personally still have meaning to me, because I can trace myself back through the lines of those women and men in the stories, and I know how they all connect to each other and to me. How do you give that history to your adopted child when it’s all theoretical and it isn’t really *his people* after all?
The thing about adoption is that it shifts your view of “family”. When you have children, whether it is through birth or adoption, YOU get to decide how you define family and what you teach your children about family/ancestors/relatives, etc. YOU get to decide what stories are passed on and what message you want them to send to your children.
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The thing about the stories you are talking about is they are all experiences. They don’t have anything to do with blood or genetics. They are experiences of people that are passed along because they are funny or insightful or whatever. They aren’t passed along because of blood.
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I have a very extensive family genealogy. Who knew, if you are almost completely descended from colonists, it is pretty easy to trace through the last 400 years…I even have some family records that go back to about 1,100 AD in England. But by far, the people and stories I am most interested it are the three and four generations directly before me. To me, the stories that mean the most to me are those about people I knew and had a real connection with. My grandfather is dying right now and all the stories I am hearing about him are meaningful to me because I care about him and he was important in my life. His experiences shaped my father’s life which in turn shaped mine. THAT is meaningful to me.
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When we were in Taiwan, I heard stories about Mr. A’s family that were also very interesting to me (even though I am not related to them by blood) because they told me something about Mr. A’s parents’ experiences and through them Mr. A’s experiences. It helps that I have always been interested in history and family stories are a little piece of living history, so I find that fascinating. Mr. A and I aren’t related by blood, but his history has an impact on my life. Our lives are intertwined so we are family.
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And now, with the opportunity to know L’s family, I am hungry for any scrap of story I can learn from them. We don’t know much yet, but I am filing away little tidbits to share with L just like I will share the stories I know about my family and Mr. A’s family. When we light incense for the ancestors, we designate three families: Mine, Mr. A’s and L’s.
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I know from your previous question, mccxxiii, I know you are struggling right now with what your family will look like and how it doesn’t fit the idea you previously had. If one of your fears is that an adopted child won’t feel connected to you or your family, I think you don’t realize the power you have to shape that connection. We teach our children what is important to us every day. Family will be as big or as small as you make it.
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I also want to add one more thought, if you are someone who puts a lot of weight in blood and genetics, you should understand that your child may put a lot of weight in those things too. If it turns out to be important to your child, will you be willing to support them in including their biological relatives in their family? Are you willing to put in the work for an adopted child to feel connected to your biological family too?
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I say this a an admittedly somewhat standoffish person. I have to work at making connections for our kids with our extended family because it doesn’t come naturally to me to have such a big circle of close people. But closeness with their cousins and aunts and grandparents and birth family is something I want my children to experience, so I work at it. Family is what we make it.
Holy crap, I looked through the questions I have left to answer and I may be answering questions until groundhog day. Please bear with me as I try to knock some of these out!
Kate from the Industrious Eye asks:
I’d like to hear more about your experience with vision therapy for L. Did you feel it helped her, and if so, what differences do you see? I have a problem that I could pass on to my kids that is sometimes treated with vision therapy. But it’s a controversial subject. Because it wasn’t how I was treated, I don’t have much insight.
When L was about 3.5, I figured out that she was having some issues with her vision based on some basic developmental tests performed by her preschool. Before that, I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. After a lot of therapy and research, we figured out that L had the following issues: a visual processing disorder which included tracking/pursuit problem and a significant delay in her visual motor skills; a problem with her visual-ocular reflex (vision and balance), midline issues and sensory integration issues. Let’s just focus on the vision stuff for a the time being.
We can’t be sure why L had these issues, but there is a strong possibility that it was because she missed being held, rocked and moved around when she was very young (around or before 3 months old) and living in the orphanage. We can all take a minute to think about how sad that is, but the reality is, L is fine and these issues were identified and treatable unlike many other issues common with institutionalization and neglect.
While I am generally very anti-”lucky baby”, I will say in one way L was very fortunate that she ended up with our family because her presentation of issues is extremely atypical and medical professionals kept telling us there was nothing wrong. Because L could do skills she should not be able to do (ride a bike, use chopsticks) because she lacked foundation vision and vestibular/balance skills, it took a lot of research and persistence for me to figure them out and find the right people to work them out. My gut told me something was off with L and eventually I found out I was right. Had I listened to the first professionals, L would have suffered needlessly for years and had educational deficits from delayed treatment.*
In case you are curious, some issues that raised red flags (or were indicative of problems once we figured out what we were dealing with): L would only be in an upright or completely flat plane–she hated anything that required reclining, her drawing and coloring was horrendous compared to same age kids, she would draw on the right side of the paper with her right hand and the left side with her left, she was very physical but in a tightly controlled way–she never jumped from a high or spun around but liked having other people spin her, she would not pay attention to books at all–not even for 20 seconds (probably because she couldn’t make sense of the pictures), she could not learn phonics at all despite six months of trying, she could not play memory or figure out matching pictures even if the cards were face up, she was clueless about the shape sorter, yada yada yada. All stuff that seemed kind of OK, but when you know what you are looking for, these are giant flashing signs of visual processing and vestibular issues.
For the visual processing stuff, L did three blocks of seven sessions of vision therapy under the supervision of a developmental optomotrist when she was just over 4 years old. If you read the comments here, you will see that vision therapy has a lot of controversy around it, but it was absolutely life changing for L. It is kind of hard to remember how significant the changes were, but I made a post here after she had done vision therapy for about 6 weeks. Here is a post when she graduated from Vision Therapy.
L isn’t the same kid she was before vision therapy. She is academically right on target, though she still struggles a little with paying attention and sitting still (which is likely due to her sensory issues–which are another post entirely). Within 6 weeks of starting vision therapy, something clicked and she got phonics. Despite the fact that I had been trying to teach her phonics for 6 months before that, she got all the letters all at the same time — in about three days. Over time, her visual fine motor skills and visual memory have improved dramatically. She loves to listen to stories now and spends hours looking at pictures books. L started jumping off furniture and spinning herself around which I suspect she had never done because her vision and balance were so wonky. We also did occupational therapy to work on the vestibular-ocular and midline issues too, but the biggest changes happened in Vision Therapy (though I suspect she could use a bit more OT because she still won’t recline in a bean bag).
Controversy or no, I am a vision therapy convert. Answering this questions is very fortuitously timed. Just today, I read Fixing My Gaze which is from the point of view of an adult neurobiologist who had great success with vision therapy (also, it was fascinating!).
We spent about $2,000 on vision therapy, none of which was covered by our insurance, but I feel it was money well-spent. I also believe we spent much less because we chose to have L treated while she was so young and her brain was so plastic. I know it is only speculation, but I feel very sure that L would have had a horrible time trying to learn to read and may have been diagnosed as learning disabled had she not had vision therapy. She may never be a completely typical student, but I know her vision is not causing problems.
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*I know this is a long post, but I am writing more than I would otherwise because I suspect many post-institutionalized kids have similar atypical presentation of these issues and someone might recognize their kid in this.
I was going to write a typical “what I am thankful for” post, but I didn’t…and it would have been lame anyway. I didn’t post yesterday, so I failed Nablopomo. Whatevah, yo.
Today, we put up our Christmas tree. I turned on a radio station that was playing non-stop Christmas music. I was humming along and enjoying myself when I realized something: This is the first time in recent years where I didn’t feel totally uncomfortable enjoying Christian songs.
I thought about it and I think it is because my mom has stopped trying to shove church down my throat. I am not sure if she gave up or if she is regrouping for another attack in the future, but for now things are quiet.
Either way, I am enjoying my Christmas carols. I have decided I am reclaiming Christmas from here on out. Secular Christmas with Christian songs from my childhood.
I refuse to feel like I can’t sing Silent Night if I am a raging heathen.
Hallelujah!
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