I've been reading the yahoo groups, the RQ discussions, blogs etc about adopting an older child. To me, A's much bigger "Special Need" is her age, not her limb difference. I'm much more concerned about how this will play into her adoption than her physical issues...
There's a bunch of different views out there:
- These kids deserve/want/need a home, and no matter what, even 3 hours before their 14th birthday, they should get a home.
- These kids at some age are too much associated with their culture, and moreso, their ADAPTIBILITY to life outside an SWI is too little to make their adoption successful, let alone an IA successful.
- There's going to be a lot of down days, and some up days, and over time it'll get better.
- This is going to be a really hard road and if you're lucky, you come out of it in one piece, but it's doable, though you'll pay the cost heavily.
- This is awesome. No one has ever had issues, do it, do it, do it!
Well, the skeptic in me guesses that the statistical bell curve most likely will put us in the middle road of all these ideas, but we're prepared for the worst, hoping for the best.
But I've been thinking about "home" as we twiddle our thumbs trying to not think about our paperwork languishing in various offices around the country...
What makes the place that instantly comes to your mind when someone utters that word to you? I don't doubt that H will think of this place as her home until adulthood. The good, the bad, the up's, the down's, my guess is this will be the place. But what about A?
My idea of home has changed over my life. There's the child's view of the house you are living in at that moment in time. Now I had a weirder situation in that my parents were divorced. Sometimes I viewed my Dad's house as my house too, sometimes not. So the notion of the little house you grew up in always being the place to return to is foreign to me. Also, no one stayed in that same house, and very few do in this country as it is.
But now, if someone says "home", I don't think of my loving parents and my childhood pets and a room with strawberry shortcake dolls in bins. I think of this house...I think of my daughter and my husband and our cats, and the pile of papers I've been promising to go thru for 6 weeks sitting on the kitchen island. And I guess I thought most people thought that way...home isn't a stagnant concept, it changes as life changes...
I have a neighborhood friend. She has a good heart, but is opposite my viewpoints on about everything. I honestly imagine her being the one who is like my SIL - the one in the family that will just . not. grow. up. and. move. on. I imagine her being the one the rest of the family mutters about when she calls mom for the 3rd time this week...she made a post on fb that made me choke on my bagel (ok, it was a handful of m&m darks, what's your point?!)...she posted that she was "going home to xxxx foreva". This woman used to travel 1/2way across the country every 3 weeks or so to visit her childhood home, before she had kids. She once told me "I wake up most mornings, thinking...I could just get on a plane and go home and be there in a few hours and never leave." And I wondered...what about your husband? Your home, your friends, your job, your...life?!
So she posted this. People asked if they were moving. She answered she could only hope so. She'd keep dreaming. Her husband of almost 10 years can see this stuff. What kind of committment has she made to him, to her two children, if she thinks like this still? I had never heard of someone who could have created this whole life and been willing to toss it for this view of what is still, really, home. And that's not even getting into the philisophical debate of if it can actually really go back home when you're 30-some years old...
So I read this post on fb last week...is this how A will feel? What will "home" be? Will it always be faraway in China? Or will she move onto a new phase of life, like many of us do, and think back to China lovingly, to the people who cared for her, but embrace a new "home."? Or will this strange country always be strange and odd to her, something that happened, and some good and some bad came out of it, but she'll never feel at ease here? When we take her back to China to visit someday will she post on fb that she's "finally headed home"?!
I know...I hope...she'll have fond memories and always feel a tie to her Chinese home. I hope she has those ties there. I do hope though that at some point she will bring up images of her room here, sitting here being a typical teenager petting her cat, annoyed that I can't drive her to the store right now because I'm shuffling thru that stack of papers that I've been meaning to sort for the last 6 weeks...when she's asked "what's going on at home today?" At least until she someday moves on to make her own home for herself.
2 comments:
You raise an interesting question and touch on something that not many people are willing to acknowledge. No matter how much we want to provide loving homes for our children, we cannot (and should never try to) sever their ties to the past.
That aside, personality plays a huge part in how a child adjusts to her new circumstances. We were blessed in that Cheeky is happy-go-lucky and very adaptable. I know others with older kids who have struggled more.
Of course, much of how our children perceive their adoption will depend on how they were prepared, but it will also depend on how easily we are willing to adapt to them. So, I guess my point is that our personalities and adaptability are just as important to this process as the personality and adaptability of the one being adopted.
When we are willing to put ourselves out there, when we are willing to be hurt and broken for our children...that is when this strange thing called adoption begins to work. Even then, the past is what it is. My Cheeky talks often of her other home and her other family. That is her home as much as this one. And it's okay.
I'd love to hear more about your daughter if you ever want to share. My email address is shirlee@shirleemccoy.com.
Also, as you've seen, I like to keep many links to blogs about older child or SN adoption. May I add you to my blog list?
I guess that home is different for everyone. I am inexplicably tied to this area. Chicago is and always will be home, no matter where you put me. Even with over 20 years of family "life" in the Great Southwest, I still look forward to going "home". That being said, the houses I have lived in and the one I live in now have always been "home". I never suffered from the angst that I expected when we moved from one home to the other. For Himself? Homes is where he hangs his hat. It's with me, our child and our animals, but I believe that that's a conscious choice. I'm not sure he would call this place home if we were wiped off the face of the earth tomorrow. I'm the same way in that sense, I will make a "home" with my family anywhere the wind might take us, but given the choice, I will always return to this place.
Now that we've covered that, I've had a curious thought. I wonder if resources for step-parents might give you a few more tools for your arsenal. Now don't go all wonky on me, I'm not discounting the adoption process or your role as a mom. What I'm thinking of is the part where step-parents work to establish a "home" for children who are cognitive of the fact that they're "from" somewhere else. Step-parents work to establish themselves as parents to children who are cognitive that someone else has been established in that role...Just a thought...
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