11 March 2006
"Resilient" means STUBBORN
Not literally, of course, but in practice.
Two of my kids were adopted as "older" children from China. "Older" means not-an-infant. My twelve year old was probably about three years old when she came home; since she was not an infant when she arrived at her institution, her age is an approximation (and a darned good one as it turns out). This was back in the day when international adoption from China was just getting a good head of steam in this (and other) countries, and the main reason everybody was signing up was the chance it offered to adopt an infant "as young as possible."
"As young as possible" may sound crass to those who haven't been touched by infertility. Why should people get to pick and choose when you don't get to do so for birth children, it is all too commonly and smugly asked. Well, let's see now: I am pretty sure that people who are not infertile DO get to choose an infant "as young as possible." And anyone who's adopted and who is honest about the research they (should) have done will tell you there are very good reasons to want to bring a child into a family at the youngest possible age. Many kinds of risks are minimized; big scary risks. Attachment disorder is a very real risk of of international adoption (and also, for that matter, of rearing birth children as well), for example.
Anyway. I started the process as one of the "as young as possible" people because I had done my homework and knew that that gave us all the best possible odds going in. But then during one of the required classes (and by the way--glad as your media is to bring you one ugly adoption-gone-bad story after another, adoptive parents are screened, poked, prodded, investigated and trained to do a job any dope-addled 12 year old is allowed to do 9 months after screwing whoever comes along) pictures of a visit to a Chinese Social Welfare Institute were passed around. Toddlers, lined up, looking owly. Two and three year olds, with sweet round faces, slightly ill-fitting clothes, and what I read as yearning looks on their faces.
Why should they all be passed over for babies, I asked myself, my heart clutching and tears stinging my eyes (how embarrassing I thought as I furtively pretended to look for something in my bag on the floor next to me). Hooked.
So I asked for a toddler.
My referral was for a child who was supposedly four (she wasn't, as it turned out). Her referral picture was unprepossessing: a stricken look with a grimace that was intended as a smile, arms and legs awkwardly stiff, no expression in her eyes.
It was not love at first sight.
Our journey to love was hard, hard, hard. It tooks us both a couple of years, and then some. The sudden cataclysm of fierce, to-the-bone, animal love I felt for my two babies (one birth, one adopted) did not happen with this small, scruffy, goofy, infuriating, vulnerable longing daughter of my heart. No, this one was a journey--that all too common and all too unthinkingly employed word being in this instance a literal description.
No one told me she had attachment "issues," though the social worker knew two seconds after I opened my door for the first post-placement visit. She knew because my daughter launched her little body at the social worker and wrapped herself around her knees in a close, hysterical mimicry of affection for this woman she'd never seen before. The social worker told the agency. She wrote it up, even. But no one told me.
It was early days in international adoption. The internet wasn't really around, not for the non-geek anyway, the way it is now. I knew nothing about what I was in the middle of, what I needed to do, how to help her, how to help me.
My first groping step in the right direction was to realize that she could not be parented like my first daughter needed to be parented. My second groping step, figured out by myself, in a vacuum of no help and less information, was to realize that my daughter needed desperately to LOSE EVERY BATTLE she joined with me--the one for control of the room, the one for control of herself, the one for control of me. The usual parental givens--let your preschooler make a choice between two outfits when she's getting ready for school, don't fight food battles, walk away from a tantrum--not only did not apply, but were counter-productive. They did NOT make her feel safer. Quite the contrary, anything that looked like a "win," terrified her to the core, though that terror was disguised by a constant pose of "too cute for words" childish charm.
It's a truism in international adoption that the older kids make it in the orphanage because they are resilient. What I learned by hard (and heart-breaking, often enough) experience is that the resilient ones survived by subterfuge: they learned how to get their way by charming the adults in charge. Which means they learned that they could trust only themselves--and indeed, would you trust a bunch of dummies who can be controlled by little kids, however charming?
And what she had learned, being hard won, by the ripe old age of almost-three, was not easy to un-learn. What she knew, she knew. Argument, counter-example, cajolery, bribery, discipline, logical consequences, experience: nothing made a dent. Not for a long, long, long time.
Two of my kids were adopted as "older" children from China. "Older" means not-an-infant. My twelve year old was probably about three years old when she came home; since she was not an infant when she arrived at her institution, her age is an approximation (and a darned good one as it turns out). This was back in the day when international adoption from China was just getting a good head of steam in this (and other) countries, and the main reason everybody was signing up was the chance it offered to adopt an infant "as young as possible."
"As young as possible" may sound crass to those who haven't been touched by infertility. Why should people get to pick and choose when you don't get to do so for birth children, it is all too commonly and smugly asked. Well, let's see now: I am pretty sure that people who are not infertile DO get to choose an infant "as young as possible." And anyone who's adopted and who is honest about the research they (should) have done will tell you there are very good reasons to want to bring a child into a family at the youngest possible age. Many kinds of risks are minimized; big scary risks. Attachment disorder is a very real risk of of international adoption (and also, for that matter, of rearing birth children as well), for example.
Anyway. I started the process as one of the "as young as possible" people because I had done my homework and knew that that gave us all the best possible odds going in. But then during one of the required classes (and by the way--glad as your media is to bring you one ugly adoption-gone-bad story after another, adoptive parents are screened, poked, prodded, investigated and trained to do a job any dope-addled 12 year old is allowed to do 9 months after screwing whoever comes along) pictures of a visit to a Chinese Social Welfare Institute were passed around. Toddlers, lined up, looking owly. Two and three year olds, with sweet round faces, slightly ill-fitting clothes, and what I read as yearning looks on their faces.
Why should they all be passed over for babies, I asked myself, my heart clutching and tears stinging my eyes (how embarrassing I thought as I furtively pretended to look for something in my bag on the floor next to me). Hooked.
So I asked for a toddler.
My referral was for a child who was supposedly four (she wasn't, as it turned out). Her referral picture was unprepossessing: a stricken look with a grimace that was intended as a smile, arms and legs awkwardly stiff, no expression in her eyes.
It was not love at first sight.
Our journey to love was hard, hard, hard. It tooks us both a couple of years, and then some. The sudden cataclysm of fierce, to-the-bone, animal love I felt for my two babies (one birth, one adopted) did not happen with this small, scruffy, goofy, infuriating, vulnerable longing daughter of my heart. No, this one was a journey--that all too common and all too unthinkingly employed word being in this instance a literal description.
No one told me she had attachment "issues," though the social worker knew two seconds after I opened my door for the first post-placement visit. She knew because my daughter launched her little body at the social worker and wrapped herself around her knees in a close, hysterical mimicry of affection for this woman she'd never seen before. The social worker told the agency. She wrote it up, even. But no one told me.
It was early days in international adoption. The internet wasn't really around, not for the non-geek anyway, the way it is now. I knew nothing about what I was in the middle of, what I needed to do, how to help her, how to help me.
My first groping step in the right direction was to realize that she could not be parented like my first daughter needed to be parented. My second groping step, figured out by myself, in a vacuum of no help and less information, was to realize that my daughter needed desperately to LOSE EVERY BATTLE she joined with me--the one for control of the room, the one for control of herself, the one for control of me. The usual parental givens--let your preschooler make a choice between two outfits when she's getting ready for school, don't fight food battles, walk away from a tantrum--not only did not apply, but were counter-productive. They did NOT make her feel safer. Quite the contrary, anything that looked like a "win," terrified her to the core, though that terror was disguised by a constant pose of "too cute for words" childish charm.
It's a truism in international adoption that the older kids make it in the orphanage because they are resilient. What I learned by hard (and heart-breaking, often enough) experience is that the resilient ones survived by subterfuge: they learned how to get their way by charming the adults in charge. Which means they learned that they could trust only themselves--and indeed, would you trust a bunch of dummies who can be controlled by little kids, however charming?
And what she had learned, being hard won, by the ripe old age of almost-three, was not easy to un-learn. What she knew, she knew. Argument, counter-example, cajolery, bribery, discipline, logical consequences, experience: nothing made a dent. Not for a long, long, long time.
