OmegaMom

Dear God, this has to be a joke!  Right?  Right?

DEAR DR. BROTHERS: I am the parent of an adopted child from Eastern Europe. We have had her only about four months, but it is obvious that she is not fitting into our family. Our two older children think she is “retarded,” and indeed she sits sullenly in the corner most of the time, or rages at everyone with tantrums when she doesn’t get her way. I am wondering if I made a terrible mistake, and my husband feels the same way. We wanted to help an unfortunate child and enjoy another little one in our family, but this is too hard. What would the implications be for our two natural children if we arranged with the agency to place her with another family? — S.D.

DEAR S.D.: It does sound as though your family might be better suited to a child from a nearby state or community — perhaps an infant — than to a foreign child with many language and cultural adjustment problems ahead of her. Most people who adopt from overseas are asked to attend classes explaining what kinds of problems typically come with that type of situation, and what you might expect in the first few days, weeks and even months of suddenly becoming a parent to a child from another country, another culture, one who may have suffered some deprivation or even abuse as a baby.

Perhaps your kids could help their newly adopted sister to learn the alphabet and form English words, and she could help them out with a little foreign-language lesson. In any case, you will all need a great deal of patience to give the child a fair chance.

If you absolutely find nothing good happening and want to “return” her, you will at least have tried your best to help her adjust to your family. And while you’re at it, teach your kids some manners. I hope you return the child only as a last resort, because she shouldn’t be made to feel like an animal at a Humane Society shelter, hoping for the permanent adoption that finally sticks.

ACK!  What agency did these people use?!  How did they pass a homestudy?!  Don’t they know anything about attachment?!  Didn’t they get any preparation for the possible effects of institutionalization on older children (and younger children)?!  Did someone maybe wave “Attaching in Adoption“, by Deborah Gray, or “Toddler Adoption: The Weaver’s Craft“, by Mary Hopkins Best, in the general direction of these people?

And what about Dr. Brothers’ response?!  Have the biokids help with the alphabet and have her give them foreign language lessons?  Excuse me?!  Please tell me something got edited out by the version of Dr. Brothers’ column I read.  Please.  Where’s the advice to get counseling?  Psychological assessment?  Early-intervention program in the county?  An attachment therapist?  It’s obvious from the first paragraph that Dr. B. thinks these folks are a poor fit for that child (I think they’ve got some Big Problems, myself!)–why the hell didn’t she provide a real helpful answer?

But, hell, if you’re going to give advice, maybe the advice should be:  Get that child away from those “parents”, and to a different couple or single person who actually has a clue.

Holy cow.  I wake up, slug down some DayQuil and zinc tablets (yuck), wade into my blogroll and my email groups, and I stumble across this.  Sheesh.  I am continually amazed at people…

(This is not to say that beforehand preparation and post-adoption counseling is the be-all, end-all for a situation like this.  We all know that some children who are adopted at older ages have serious attachment issues that can be horrible to deal with in everyday life.  But it’s obvious from the question that these people are…well, I’ll be gentle…”clueless”.)

Technorati: Adoption, attachment, older-child adoption, unprepared idiots

As a white female raising an Asian-American daughter, I have to rely on other people’s narratives to get an idea of the sorts of things OmegaDotter will face as she grows up.  I regularly pop into the blogs of a few adult Korean adoptees.  I wander around sites such as Model Minority, Also Known As, and AngryAsianMan.  Sites like these can give me an idea of what it’s like out there for folks who are of Asian descent.

So when I saw that there was a panel discussion about “Growing Up Asian-American”, I had to check it out.

Since the panelists were female, it was pretty much a strictly “growing up as an Asian-American female” talk.  No discussion of the minimizing of Asian males in American pop culture.  But, since what we have in the house is–gasp!–a budding Asian-American female, the talk was very apropos.  (Though it would have been nice to have an Asian man talking, too.)

Featured were two ladies, V. and C.  V. is a developmental psychologist; C. is in the sciences.  Both are second-generation Chinese; C.’s parents immigrated around World War II, V.’s in the (I think) ’60s.  They both grew up in white-bread America, the midwest.  And they report similar experiences, though their family backgrounds were quite different.

They talked about the delicate balance between being different being perceived as being “bad” versus being “special”.  They both report that their first experiences of racially-based taunting occurred in kindergarten.  They both felt that they had to come to terms with what being “Asian-American” meant to them–a journey of self-exploration that started in their teens and culminated in what they are now, self-confident and professional women who honor their heritage yet consider themselves fully American.

Over the years as I have read about the Asian-American experience, I’ve heard, over and over again, about the encounter with the white guy who sees the Asian-American female as the submissive, sexually voracious, perfect woman, with the added titillation factor of “is she different ‘down there‘”.

Both the panelists discussed this.  When one would bring up an anecdote, the other would nod her head in instant recognition.

V. had emailed a survey to her sisters, her cousins, and a bunch of Asian-American female friends.

ALL of them reported numerous encounters with this type of guy.

It wasn’t 25%.  It wasn’t 50%.  It was ALL of them.

They had ALL had to come up with strategies to deal with creeps like that.

They had ALL had strangers come up to them in bars and ask them if their c*nts went sideways.

Picture me with my jaw dropped.

Oh, they recounted it with wry amusement.  They had tales of how they had learned to separate out the idea that it was okay for some men to prefer Asian females as a “type” versus the men who were fetishing the Asian female.  V. told a story of how she was at a bar with some girlfriends, and they played a game of “checking out the goods”…when V. was asked which three guys in the bar she’d prefer, she picked them out, and her friends laughed.  “Oh, V.!  They’re all D.!”–D. being her husband.  She had an epiphany then–that she had a “type”, and that for some American guys, their “type” happened to be Asian.

But–that they all had to have that epiphany to begin with, that they had to learn to recognize the signs of the creep to be able to forestall the sexual come-ons–this is saddening.  Depressing.

I look at OmegaDotter, and know that she, too, will be subjected to that.  She, too, will have to learn to recognize that particular subset of Creepy Guys.

They both married Caucasian men.  They had been raised surrounded by Caucasians; their ideas of what was attractive were inevitably colored by that experience.

They both talked about having a Moment, when they caught their reflection in the mirror or a window they were passing by, and wondered, “Who is that?!”, because they looked different from the outside than how they internalized themselves.

V. talked about how children go through a stage when they totally identify with their parents, which can cause the “my skin is different” realization…which, coupled with an equally developmentally appropriate “different is probably not good” stage can result in a child saying, “I’m brown, therefore I’m bad.”  (V. touched on the idea that the innate categorization abilities of small humans was probably a good evolutionary strategy:  you don’t know if different-looking foods are going to be good for you or good to eat; you don’t know if different-looking people [people outside your kin group] are going to be nice, so it’s good to err on the cautious side, etc.)

They spoke of the importance of role models as a child is growing up.

There was a lot of laughter and a lot of sadness.

It was a very good discussion.

Technorati: Adoption, Asian-American, being different

Back in the ’60s, the adoption professionals told parents who had adopted from Korea to raise their kids just like any other Amurrikin kid.

In the early ’80s, Holt International Agency took a group of adult Korean adoptees on a trip to Korea.  During the trip, the director heard from these Korean adoptees that they felt the “Americanizing” had left them bereft of any knowledge of their heritage–where they came from, what it was like, why they were adopted, what were the circumstances, what it was like to be around people who looked like them.

So Holt started a Korean Heritage Camp in Oregon in 1982.

There are now heritage camps for adoptees from many, many cultures–India, Korea, China, Russia, Ethiopia, Latin America.  It’s not enough.  It’s a drop in the bucket.  But it’s a start.

The Chinese Heritage Camp we went to with the Dotter is part of Colorado Heritage Camps.  Since OmegaDotter is only 4.5, the things they did were pretty basic:  Build a paper dragon boat.  Create a faux ribbon dance ribbon.  Learn to sing Happy Birthday in Chinese.  Begin exploring the question of adoption through a HeART Talk.  Learn the story behind the Moon Festival.

Older children learned Chinese dances, took Tai Chi and Kung Fu (the leader of the Kung Fu school is an amazing man.  Just amazing.  Imagine getting 60 kids into disciplined, organized order.  Just imagine it.  This man can do it.), explored things like paper block making, baking moon cakes, creating a journal on adoption, Chinese calligraphy.

Each year, the programs the kids are involved in become more complex, more engaging.  For instance, this year there was a panel of teen and adult adoptees one afternoon for teen adoptees to attend.

The counselors at the camp are mostly late-teen/early adult Asians, both adopted and second-generation immigrants.  Most of the teachers are Asian.  I think half the benefit of being there is simply being in a place where the majority of people you interact with are of your own race–without it being an “in your face” oh-darling-here’s-your-token-Asian-role-model.  They see teen and adult Asians being themselves, being individuals, some very involved and highly motivated, some being–well, just being teens, with short spiky hair, bling on the fingers, and blase teenage attitude.

There are workshops for the parents, as well.  OmegaDad and I attended a presentation on growing up as an Asian-American female in the U.S.; I attended a talk on “emotional regulation”.  There were lifebook presentations, discussions about trips back to China with your child, strategies for home-based language learning, how to start a Chinese speaking playgroup, and (of course!) scrapbooking techniques.

Each evening, there was an all-camp gathering of some kind.  The last night was a typical camp experience, where all the kids performed the dances, Tai Chi, and Kung Fu they had learned.

It was a bit overwhelming.  You start off the day running, and it’s not over with until 9 p.m.  At which point, you fall into bed exhausted, only to wake up the next morning to start all over again.

When we arrived, we were a little intimidated and shy–we didn’t know anyone, we didn’t really know what to expect.  I had planned to meet up with two of the folks I’m on email lists with, and was expecting that to be our buttress.  But as I was leafing through the list of attendees, a name popped out at me.

“OmegaDad.  Look!  The T’s are here!”

“Who?”

“S. and S.!  They’re here with L.!”

“Ohmygawd!  That’s great!”

The T’s were travelmates with us when we went to China to meet OmegaDotter.  Their daughter’s assumed birthday is one day off from OmegaDotter’s.  We were thrilled–they were our favorite folks from the trip.  We ended up spending a great deal of time with them, and our daughters hit it off very well (though it was incredibly difficult to get a picture of the two of them together–they were like satellites careening around each other, rendezvousing then bouncing away, over and over again).  After the end of Sunday night’s festivities, the two girls took over the presentation stage while the roller-rink music played, and danced their tushies off.  And I have an indelible memory of the dotter being carried out of the Kiva (meeting commons) by OmegaDad, her elbow on his shoulder, her hand cupping her chin, looking utterly sad that she was leaving L.

Like I said, it’s not enough.  It’s a drop in the bucket.  But it’s a start.

Next up:  Reviews of the adult presentations.

Technorati: China heritage camp, adoption, heritage

The Omegas have been off gallivanting across the southwest to attend the Labor-Day weekend China Heritage Camp at Snow Mountain Ranch, Fraser, CO.  We left Thursday night and spent the night in a small town in Utah.

The next morning, OmegaMom woke up, sat up, and leaned over her dotter…

And the room spun around, and around, and around.

OmegaMom, alarmed, stood up. 

And the room spun around, and around, and around.

Remember that feeling, oh-so-long ago, of being just totally drunk, and no matter how much you tried to keep the room from spinning, it wouldn’t stop?  This was sort of like that.  Luckily, Mr. OmegaMom had a similar thing happen a few years ago, so we knew it was an inner ear infection of some sort wreaking havoc with my proprioceptive sense rather than a Dire Disease which needed immediate emergency attention.

We motored on to the camp that day, winding through canyonland Utah (bee-yoo-ti-ful!) and then hitting I-70 and trekking across Colorado.

Now.  When someone says to you, “Interstate Highway”, what’s your first response?  Mine is “flat, bee-line straight, boring”.  I believed MapQuest, and figured it would be a straight, high-speed shot from one side of Colorado to the other. 

I was forgetting one small thing:  the Rocky Mountains.

Those of you who live in Colorado are laughing your heads off right now.

I-70 twists and turns and soars through the low-lying western Colorado mountains, following the Colorado River, then plunges into Glenwood Canyon.  Once you come out of Glenwood Canyon, the highway rises and rises and rises through the western flank of the Rocky Mountains, slipping in and out of tunnels (the biggest being, of course, the Eisenhower Tunnel), passing innumerable ski resorts and swanky mountain towns.

Then you turn off I-70 to take Highway 40 (not I-40, this confused me a bit) through twisty turny Berthoud Pass.  We managed to do it on an evening when the clouds had come down to hover over the mountain tops and pour down the western side.  We dove into the clouds just as we started hitting the 15-MPH hair-pin turns going up to the pass. 

OmegaDad drove very cautiously.

Then we emerged into Fraser Valley, drove through Winter Park (straight into the setting sun), located our turnoff, and found ourselves in another world–one where everywhere you turned, there were Asian faces:  little girls, teenage boys and girls, adults.

By Sunday, the ear infection had turned into a nasty case of post-nasal drip (ewwww!).  Monday morning, we got up at the crack of dawn, chowed down on (free!) food at the commons, piled into the Little Green Car again, and drove for 13.5 hours straight back home.  During which time, my eyeballs began to feel fried, my left ear’s hearing left me feeling like I was in a deep deep tunnel and everyone was talking outside that tunnel, every bone began to ache, yadda, yadda, yadda.

We stopped to play in the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon and got many pictures.

When we reached our town, the dotter (who did amazingly well being stuck in a car for 13 hours!) exclaimed, “I can’t believe my eyes!”, then, a few miles later, caroled happily, “I so love Small Mountain University Town!”

So today, I am home, dosed up with NyQuil and ZiCam (oh, those zinc tablets taste foul!).

Next post:  the camp.

Photos:  to come.  The USB cable to my camera is Somewhere In a Large Piece of Luggage.  I hope.

Technorati: road trips, Colorado, Glenwood Canyon, China Heritage Camp, colds