About every 6-9 months, I become convinced that the girls should go to private school. I get all worked up and angsty about it: Which school would be the best fit? Would each girl do better in a different school than her sister? Would I hate the other parents? Does a better quality/more tailored education outweigh the loss of economic and racial diversity? Yada yada yada.
The reality is, we don’t have the money to send them to private school right now anyway. (In fact, should we ever send them to private school, you will know that Mr. A is finally making some serious money.)
I can also argue that if we had an extra $25,000 for private school, it would be much better to spend that money on Chinese lessons and travel. I mean, it is educational to spend a month in Hawaii, right? Or, I could take them to Hong Kong or Taiwan for a Chinese immersion camp for a month. When I get to the travel part of the argument, I am usually able to let go of the whole idea of private school…for a while.
It turns out I am now being wishy washy about the idea of a dog. Last night, I got myself all worked up about wanting a specific dog right away. I thought of all kinds of cockamamie pro-dog arguments. Then, when Mr. A did not agree (disagreeing by mirroring my own previous objections even), I got very annoyed with him.
Finally, I did a little research about training puppies and realized that A) I don’t want to potty train a puppy in the snow and cold of winter and B) I don’t have time right now to take the dog to training classes (which I deem necessary because it has been 20 years since I had a dog and we don’t just want any dog, we want The Best Dog Ever™.)
Man, it is tiresome to live in my head sometimes.
I spent my afternoon rocking catatonically in the corner after barely surviving L’s preschool field trip to a farm. I was matched up with a group of two other moms and together we were in charge of eight five year-olds. Can you say BIRTH CONTROL?
Normally, a farmyard visit would be uneventful. I have taken my girls to farms millions of times, but never have I feared they wouldn’t survive to return home that night. Not so with the preschool field trip. In this trip, survival for the children was questionable. In addition to providing thousands of cowpies hidden into, around and inside smushy mudpuddles for children to stomp in, the organic farm also provided Death’s own playground.
I started to get nervous when we discovered the electric fences that ran all over the farm were still on. You could hear them snapping and popping. Trying to shepherd eight hyped up preschoolers down a 15 foot wide path with electric fences on both sides is not something I ever want to experience again. The old guy who was showing us around helpfully noted that “Electric fences have a steep learning curve. You only touch it once, then you learn you don’t want to touch it again.” Thanks old dude, but I don’t think these kids parents signed an electrocution waiver.
We managed to avoid losing life and limb on the fences long enough to eat lunch. I don’t know what kind of lunches those parents packed, but I am guessing they all included sugar. Or caffeine. Or Meth. Because after lunch, the eight kids were bouncing off the walls, just in time to take them up to the hay loft.
This particular hay loft had very, very steep steps. And a rather rickety board for a handrail, which none of the kids wanted to use. They wanted to hang on my body so I could drag them up the stairs, except they were too hyper to stop jumping while I was dragging them. It was precarious, to say the least.
When we got to the top of the stairs, we discovered the “railing” along the edge of the loft was a small board. The board right around preschooler head level–No vertical boards below it –as in providing no protection to the children who were climbing all over the hay bails and randomly bolting towards the edge/trying to chase each other/ jumping around wildly/ thrashing around yelling complaints and basically acting like maniacs who wanted to plunge to their death in the goat stalls below. The other moms and I had to form a human shield to keep them away from the edge. Our guide said “Wow, I usually let the kids go near the edge and look down at the goats, but these kids seem a little too wild to try that.” You think, old dude??
After we managed to get them down the stairs of doom, we went back past all the electric fences (narrowly avoiding death yet again) to the pond. You know what preschoolers think when they see a pond? They think it is a giant puddle to jump in. You know what is a bad idea? 8 maniacal preschoolers running and jumping around a large, slippery, muddy/opaque body of water. Exactly how far into the water can you go without technically being “in” the water, there were many strategies to learn the answer to that question. Not all strategies were unsuccessful.
Then the old dude upped the ante by inviting the kids onto a slippery floating dock with no railings…but not until he showed them how it lurches if you jump on it. Of course that is what they did, narrowly avoiding slipping in their muddy/cowpie covered boots into a watery grave by hanging on my arms and nearly knocking me over repeatedly.
We also managed to survive a walk along a cliff, a near run-in with a patch of poison ivy and a path where the only dandelions to be found were located where? You guessed it, right beside the electric fence.
By the time we got back on the bus, I vowed to never have more children AND to never go to another organic farm with children again.
Both girls are going on different field trips to two different farms tomorrow.
For one girl, we have been given very strict instructions to bring zero garbage packed lunches. No plastic bags, no paper bags, nada. Nothing but reusable containers that will be packed up to come home with us.
For the other girl, we have strict instructions to only bring lunch in disposable wrappings. No lunch box, no tupperware, no water bottles. Nothing will be sent home.
Crazy, no?
I love when I open the door for questions. It always ends up making me think of topics I probably wouldn’t have thought to write about otherwise. Here is the first:
Hermia asks:
I’m studying to be a school counselor. Today in my class we discussed a journal article studying delays in children adopted in the late 80s and early 90s from Romania. We talked about some of the ways children may be affected by early life in an institution and supports that might be helpful. It made me wonder — what would you want a school counselor to do to support L and your family during L’s elementary school years? Do you forsee anything coming up for L or your family?
Given our recent experience with ignorance coming fromthe OT at L’s school, my first impluse would be to say I don’t want ANY help from L’s school. I suspect there is no one at school who knowledgeable enough about adoption issues (e.g. health/mental health related to post-institutionalization and trauma, attachment or issues relating to transracial/transcultural adoption) to be meddling in our business or who could be of much help to us at all.
When I can dial back the know-it-allness and defensiveness, though, there are some little things that could make a big difference for adopted kids. It would be awesome if someone did some adoption sensitivity training with teachers. Maybe they would stop doing the stupid ubiquitous family tree project that our school and many others still do, if someone pointed 0ut how distressing it can be for some adopted kids or kids with non-typical family backgrounds.
I also would like to make sure that people at school don’t perpetuate the dumb adoption fairy tale that is so prevalent in our culture. L probably wasn’t abandoned because her parents “loved her so much” they were sending her off to safety like baby Moses. She wasn’t saved from a terrible orphanage by rich and benevolent adoptive parents like Little Orphan Annie. Like most adopted kids (as well as many kids in non-nuclear families) L’s story is complicated and there is no happy ending. If her teachers don’t understand and respect this, I would rather they not talk about adoption at all.
From our very little bit of experience, I also think that school professionals (like most of the general public) can be woefully uninformed about issues related to post-institutionalization. Learning disabilities, sensory issues, attachment issues, and trauma histories that are common in adopted kids and can obviously impact a child’s experience in the classroom.
In our attempts to figure out what kind of school services would benefit L, I have been forced to repeatedly point out that her issues are likely the result of spending a year in an orphanage and the lack of one-on-one care she probably received. Over and over, these supposedly well-educated professionals seem surprised that I would think there would be any long-term effects because L was still little when she was adopted.
(I mean, seriously? Didn’t these people have to study child development to get an education degree?)
The trick, though, is helping people understand those issues without invoking the “oh, the poor neglected baby!” reflex. I have heard this from medical and educational professionals when I have shared information about the delays L had when she first joined our family. L isn’t a poor baby, she is a survivor. I am not sharing her history with them for sympathy, I am giving them pieces of L’s puzzle. They need to know these things so they can understand she missed out on some early experiences and needs our help filling in the gaps in her development.
It isn’t really fair for me to expect the people at school to be adoption experts, but I wish they were. I don’t really know how you could fix those things as a school counselor. It seems like a pretty tall order.
Today, I had a meeting at L’s school to talk about the results of some developmental evaluations. While the outcome of the meeting was interesting, I ended up annoyed by not one, but two stupid comments.
L’s teacher means well. She tells me all the time that L is such a sweet little girl. L is sweet and easygoing and the teacher likes her a lot. Unfortunately, on two separate occasions the teacher has said “L is SO cute and sweet! I guess you’ll have to keep her!” Both times, she said this in front of L.
Is it really rocket science to think that it might not be a good idea to imply to a kid who has already lost one set of parents that we might not keep her if she is not sweet and cute? I let it slide the first time, but now I am going to have to write a note to the teacher because I was so surprised I failed to correct her during the meeting. I hate confrontations like that, but it has to be done.
At the very same meeting, I was the unhappy recipient of an even dumber comment. I was telling the OT that L will never recline while watching TV, nor will she allow herself to be positioned in a way that makes her head sideways or leaning while she has to look at something. If you as me and my Google-educated opinion, this probably indicates a vestibular and vision issue.
The OT did not seem at all concerned about L’s refusal (since babyhood) to lay down on her side or recline. Instead, she told me this could be a “good thing” because she “has noticed that Asian kids tend to have very high levels of muscle tone. It could just be that she likes to have good posture.” Then she wondered if anyone had ever done studies on Asians and their high tone issues.
That was the moment when the OT lost all credibility with me.
Seriously, L does have decent muscle definition, but anyone can see that asking her to do these things cause discomfort. She isn’t trying to sit up straight on a bean bag chair because it feels comfortable. She is doing it because it is less uncomfortable than leaning is for her.
Asian muscle tone, my ass.
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