13 April 2006
privacy parties
Nobody had enough sleep last night, and I'm coming down with A Very Nasty Something.
The combination is pretty lethal for squabbling, roiling, yelling, crabby--um, "testing"--behavior.
Here they come again.
"Mo-om!!!" [When you are sick, you are never just "Mom" or even just "Mom!"]
"[Six] is hitting me!!!"
Mo-om!!! tiredly replies: "Move farther away from him."
My attempt at peace-making, or, rather, DMZ-building fails; the yowling increases.
"MO-OM!!! [Six] is hitting me....in the Privacy!!!"
Dragging my aching head up to more or less sitting height, I try to remember why I wanted kids.
Six: "Hahahahahahahaha. You Dumbhead! I didn't hit you in the Privacy! I hit you in the Private Party."
Oh, yeah. Now I remember.
The combination is pretty lethal for squabbling, roiling, yelling, crabby--um, "testing"--behavior.
Here they come again.
"Mo-om!!!" [When you are sick, you are never just "Mom" or even just "Mom!"]
"[Six] is hitting me!!!"
Mo-om!!! tiredly replies: "Move farther away from him."
My attempt at peace-making, or, rather, DMZ-building fails; the yowling increases.
"MO-OM!!! [Six] is hitting me....in the Privacy!!!"
Dragging my aching head up to more or less sitting height, I try to remember why I wanted kids.
Six: "Hahahahahahahaha. You Dumbhead! I didn't hit you in the Privacy! I hit you in the Private Party."
Oh, yeah. Now I remember.
Fear factor
When I first began to notice that I was drawn to adoption, I researched like a maniac. Well, I am a research maniac, so I guess I could also say I researched like myself.
Soooo many things to be scared of. This was way back in the day, relatively speaking: hardly any information available, so much of it negative. I concluded that the only safe way to do it, the only halfway sane way to do it, was to go for what had already become the ubiquitous "healthy infant, as young as possible."
My being single is what turned me toward international adoption, since my initial interactions with domestic adoption outlets were pretty discouraging on both scores. It looked like what I'd be offered was an older child, with "issues." Now, that makes sense, right? Assign the kids who are expected to need the most help, outside intervention, and specialist appointments to single parents.
Anyway. I turned to international adoption, and found that as a single adopting from China I would be considered for a referral of the coveted HIAYAP. And as I was working my way through the process, everything I heard in our parenting seminars (have I mentioned how much training and vetting one must undergo to achieve parenthood via nonbiological routes?) confirmed that "healthy infant, as young as possible" was the least scary way to go.
And then one day at one of the parenting classes, they passed around pictures of the staff's most recent trip to China. Among the shots of temples and crowd scenes and social workers smiling and waving in front of open air market stalls were some pictures of some of the older kids at the local SWI. Nothing spectacular. Just various unremarkable shots of little kids, in lines, seven or eight of them in each picture. Not doing cute stuff. Not staring imploringly or charmingly into the camera. In fact, their faces weren't even very clear.
But, right there, on the spot, I changed the age parameters on my "child request" form to "up to four years old" and checked off some "minor special needs" as well. No thinking. No research. No discussion. It was like some kind of a toggle switch: Click. Done.
People in the adoption community talk about this kind of moment a lot. Listservs are awash in wonderful stories that start something like, "I saw that face and just knew it was my daughter," or, "All of a sudden, looking at that picture, I saw my son looking back at me." But back then I'd never heard these phrases.
Plus I knew better than to make such a momentous decision that way. I knew that what I really needed/could handle/should limit myself to was a HIAYAP. I knew I had no idea how to parent the "older" child I'd just asked for, how to deal with her issues, where to find help.
And when the paperwork came through, accompanied by a tiny and quite unprepossessing picture, for a nearly four year old girl who'd tested positive for Hepatitis B, I accepted the referral.
To this day, I can't tell you why.
But I can tell you this: one day, some months--and some very hard months they were too--after Two came home, looking for some neglected and overdue paperwork, I found those pictures in a pile.
And there, third from the end of a disconsolate line of toddlers, there, most definitely, absolutely, and unmistakably, was my daughter.
Soooo many things to be scared of. This was way back in the day, relatively speaking: hardly any information available, so much of it negative. I concluded that the only safe way to do it, the only halfway sane way to do it, was to go for what had already become the ubiquitous "healthy infant, as young as possible."
My being single is what turned me toward international adoption, since my initial interactions with domestic adoption outlets were pretty discouraging on both scores. It looked like what I'd be offered was an older child, with "issues." Now, that makes sense, right? Assign the kids who are expected to need the most help, outside intervention, and specialist appointments to single parents.
Anyway. I turned to international adoption, and found that as a single adopting from China I would be considered for a referral of the coveted HIAYAP. And as I was working my way through the process, everything I heard in our parenting seminars (have I mentioned how much training and vetting one must undergo to achieve parenthood via nonbiological routes?) confirmed that "healthy infant, as young as possible" was the least scary way to go.
And then one day at one of the parenting classes, they passed around pictures of the staff's most recent trip to China. Among the shots of temples and crowd scenes and social workers smiling and waving in front of open air market stalls were some pictures of some of the older kids at the local SWI. Nothing spectacular. Just various unremarkable shots of little kids, in lines, seven or eight of them in each picture. Not doing cute stuff. Not staring imploringly or charmingly into the camera. In fact, their faces weren't even very clear.
But, right there, on the spot, I changed the age parameters on my "child request" form to "up to four years old" and checked off some "minor special needs" as well. No thinking. No research. No discussion. It was like some kind of a toggle switch: Click. Done.
People in the adoption community talk about this kind of moment a lot. Listservs are awash in wonderful stories that start something like, "I saw that face and just knew it was my daughter," or, "All of a sudden, looking at that picture, I saw my son looking back at me." But back then I'd never heard these phrases.
Plus I knew better than to make such a momentous decision that way. I knew that what I really needed/could handle/should limit myself to was a HIAYAP. I knew I had no idea how to parent the "older" child I'd just asked for, how to deal with her issues, where to find help.
And when the paperwork came through, accompanied by a tiny and quite unprepossessing picture, for a nearly four year old girl who'd tested positive for Hepatitis B, I accepted the referral.
To this day, I can't tell you why.
But I can tell you this: one day, some months--and some very hard months they were too--after Two came home, looking for some neglected and overdue paperwork, I found those pictures in a pile.
And there, third from the end of a disconsolate line of toddlers, there, most definitely, absolutely, and unmistakably, was my daughter.
