The Beauty of Parent-Teacher Conferences

I received the grades the day before. They accompanied the kids home in sealed envelopes (yes, they were still sealed ). I was happy with the results and therefore not expecting any surprises.

The conference morning began with Greyson’s English teacher. We discussed the typical topics—behavior, focus, quality of work. Together we looked at his progress and areas where he needed to work harder. Now, let me stop here and say that I DID NOT make it to Back-to-School-Night. I had four to attend on four different evenings. Between homework, soccer games, soccer practices, piano, and Mark out of the country, I was lucky to get to two; Greyson’s wasn’t one of them. I mention this because not going caused me to feel  “out of the loop.” I reminded myself that things probably hadn’t changed that much. Second grade is second grade. The new change seemed to be no required reading at home.  According to my little man…

Towards the end of the conference I asked Greyson’s teacher about this and she pulled out a calendar, “You mean like this?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“This is his calendar,” she said.

Yep. There it was. The M’s, representing Mark’s intitials, were blatantly written by a child—my son. She shared the rest of the story about how Greyson had come clean with the false initials when asked. We both laughed until we had tears in our eyes.

She brought out another assignment that Greyson hadn’t completed yet. He was in the process of writing his synopsis of his favorite fairytale. Cute idea.

I leaned over to read what Greyson had chosen as his favorite – Pinocchio. Classic. Needless to say, I was laughing again. I love parent-teacher conferences.

The PROPER Language of Adoption

As a nod to National Adoption Month this month I’ve been sharing some of my feelings about being an adoptive parent. One subject I feel very strongly about is proper adoption language, the language used within and typically modeled by the adoption community to express relationships and familial ties. Like it or not, adoptive parents are in the position of constantly having to justify their familial relationships to and educating others, especially if, like us, adoption has happened transracially (across races). I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has sidled up to me to ask, “Is he your son?” “Are they real sisters?” and “Are you her real mom?” These are “real” questions, asking us to quantify our relationships with our children. My kids have also been asked similar questions, like “Is that your real mom?” (What messages are my kids receiving?)

I have several things to say:

• Yep, we’re “real”—alive and breathing. 
• The questions and comments are offensive. They undermine the concept of family.

Adoption language is the language of families. Here’s a primer for you: 

• Parent, mommy, daddy, sister, brother for describing adoptive family members. 
• Birth parents, birth father, birth mother for describing the man and woman who conceived and gave birth to a child. 
• Was adopted instead of is adopted. 
•  My child instead of adopted child or own child. 
•  Placed for adoption or made an adoption plan instead of orphaned, given up, unwanted, or abandoned.

Yes, we are conspicuous; we look different. But we’re a family, like any other. Please extend your acknowledgement to us and other adoptive families by using proper adoption launguage.

Adoptive Parenting

I spent a good portion of my day in adoption workshops yesterday. The last opportunity I had to attend a workshop was in the spring, to listen to new and waiting adoptive parents. I went to hear their questions. I was impressed to hear what changes the adoption community had made to help parents with adoption awareness and advocacy. Those pieces weren’t in place when Mark and I adopted.

There are plenty of professionals (doctors, psychiatrists, etc.) who extend their services to include adoptive families. But many of them are not adoptive parents; they haven’t and don’t walk in my shoes. It has been necessary to need to help them with language and understanding parenting the adopted child. Adoptive parents do this all of the time—advocating for adoption and their families by educating others. Parenting is not adoptive parenting. Parenting adopted children is adoptive parenting, requiring extra parenting tools to address the additional layers our adopted children have. Adoptive parents need to talk and share with other adoptive parents.

Yesterday I had the privilege of spending time with Jean MacLeod, an adoptive parent who is also a writer and speaker. Due to the workshop being held on a work day, the workshop was intimate, more like a conversation. There was sharing among Jean and the group and some “ah-ha!” moments. You can find Jean here. I have her books. My favorite is Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections, which she co-edited with Sheena Macrea.

Sibling “Hiccups”

This year, being in different school buildings has provided growth for my younger two. Most of the growth has been good—fostering independence, confidence and new friends. But there has been some negative fallout as well.

Arguments have escalated as they lock horns over who has the upper hand. Yelling is commonplace. Kindness has diminished. Sibling rivalry rears its ugly head.

Artwork by Aubry

And I don’t like it.

So I focus on bringing them back together, but not so that they are joined at the hip like  in the past, unable to play with other kids because they’d rather spend time with each other, one stagnating at a regressed social age and the other bigger than his britches.

Recently Aubry asked me if Greyson could read aloud to her. I was thrilled—that he had asked her and that she wanted to help him. I have my fingers crossed that this was a step back in the direction of grace, respect and civility.

G-Dog’s Birthday

Greyson was bouncing off the wall long before November, his birthday month, arrived. As soon as Mark’s birthday passed, it became all about him and turning eight. Because of family commitments, Greyson will get to enjoy his birthday for over a week and drive us all a little crazy with his excitement.

I have written about birthdays as triggers for grief in the adopted child, but my youngest doesn’t seem to be affected. Instead he is overcome with the need to be reassured that he is important, that he matters and fits into us, his family. This need stems in part from being the youngest and from being adopted. Sure, he’s turning eight, but his quest for identity is in “full speed ahead.” He can speak of nothing else. The focus on him consumes him.

I realize that questions will come up. They always do. At the oddest times. But we’re prepared, having had many conversations about adoptions since he was very young, often with all of us joining in. Questions are part of parenting children who were adopted.

My advice for adoptive parents: Lay the ground work early to make the questions down the road easier to answer…talk about adoption early and keep the communication channel wide open.

Family Trees, Roots and Branches

School.

Family tree projects. Family history projects.

Mmmmmmm…

It’s Aubry’s year to creat hers and what I’ve noticed this time around is a huge change from years past. The family history project is more encompassing. I feel her school has taken into account every conceivable way families might come together. And that’s a good thing.

For those adoptive parents who scratch their heads wondering how to help their child through a possibly sticky project, consider these options:

• Have your child use a photo or her created picture of herself for the trunk of the tree. She can put someone she loves on each branch OR she can add her birth family members in the roots of the tress and adoptive family members in the branches.
• Create a timeline depicting important happenings in her life—vacations, special events.
• Create a timeline depicting historical national and international events during her life. She can see herself in the scope of the world. 
• Create a forest of trees, with one tree representing her and others designating important and loved people in her life.

After discussions on how she wanted to create her family history project  Aubry chose to do hers as a tree, without any nod to adoption.

Pieces of Me

November is National Adoption Month.  EMK Press, an adoption publisher, is releasing their newest title, Pieces of Me: Who Do I Want to Be? Voices for and by adopted teens, edited Robert L. “Bert” Ballard.

I recently read Pieces of Me and can’t wait to receive my copy. It’s a timely and much-needed book for adoptive parents and adopted teens going though the discovery process –  of finding, understanding and embracing who they are. 

Pieces of Me is divided into five sections,created around the idea of putting a puzzle together:  gathering the pieces, stolen pieces, fitting the pieces, sharing the pieces, and where do these pieces go? Artwork and rich graphics draw teens in. 

Contributors range from ages eleven to sixty-three. The voices of birth parents, adoptive parents and adoption professionals are loud and clear. Through poems, stories, songs, quotes, activities, art, and provocative questions Pieces of Me offers hope, healing and help for the adopted teen. I know it will be a terrific resource to help me with my children as they navigate their journeys to finding themselves.

“I tell you this story because
for too many years,
people have told my stories for me.
I am ready to speak for myself.
So where do I begin?”
Juli Jeong Martin,
transnational/transracial adoptee (Pieces of Me, page v)

Here is an excerpt from my interview with Bert Ballard, the editor of Pieces of Me:

Where did the idea for Pieces of Me come from? Why now?

Pieces of Me began about 3 years ago with Sheena Macrae and Carrie Kitze, both adoptive parents and editors/authors at EMK Press. (Carrie’s also the publisher.) The idea was to put together a book similar to Adoption Toolkit with lots of different contributors and perspectives built on the theme of “What my parents couldn’t tell me.” I was involved in the initial planning phases at that time.

As development for the project evolved, it was realized that there were a lot of topics that needed addressing. It was also realized that no matter how talented Sheena and Carrie are (and they are VERY talented), as adoptive parents, they could only take it so far. This was a very important lesson to come out of the development of this book, the realization that adoptive parents cannot be and cannot do everything, that there are some places they cannot go.

Adoptive parents are no doubt very important in the life and development of the adopted child, but there are some things and some places that the parents can’t go, like into the world and experiences of the adoptee. There are some things outside of the parents’ control – and that is a good thing! A parent’s role is to love, support, encourage, and care; it is not to fix, heal, or put the pieces together. Ultimately, that is left up to the adoptee.

Given this important realization, I, as an adopted person (and a willing person) was asked to take over the editorial duties, and the decision has proven to be fun, challenging, and a growing experience.

As for why now, well, it was just a project I really felt I wanted to be a part of, and I’m glad I did. I had finished graduate school when I started the project and the timing felt right.

Pieces of Me: Who Do I Want to Be? focuses on the teen reader,  but every adoptive parent needs to have a copy. The book will make you smile and laugh. It will make you ache and cry; it will also give you perspective, make you think. Pieces of Me can be ordered here.

Halloween and El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)

My kids are looking forward to Halloween and El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

Pumpkins have been purchased and will be carved Friday evening in preparation for Saturday night’s festivities. The kids are still deciding just what garb they’re wearing for Halloween. Mark and Holden have put their heads together to see what they can come up with to scare the neighborhood kids. Oh, the excitement!

So, after Halloween is over and the kids have decided that they really don’t want to eat five pounds of sugar, we turn to El Día de los Muertos. The kids will likely add to an altar, already started, in the front hall. We will serve the Guatemalan Fiambre, a delicious pickled red salad, with dinner. Unlike Guatemalan tradition, we do not visit, party and eat at relatives’ gravesites (many have been cremated). But, weather permitting, we will try to fly kites.

The Guatemalan tradition of flying circular barriletes gigantes, kites some forty feet in diameter, occurs in several villages around the Guatemala City (where Greyson was born) warding off evil spirits and honoring the deceased. The bright colorful kites are made of tissue paper and decorated with images and messages as they soar through the air whipped around by hummers and streamers.

Thoughtfulness

I was upstairs writing when Josi’s friend appeared with a special delivery, “This is from Josi.”

It was a warm just-from-the-oven dense fudgey-chocolate brownie sprinkled with powdered sugar. Yummy!

But the best past was the note written in marker on the paper towel that the brownie was wrapped in, “I love you – J.”

Thoughtful girl…she makes me feel all warm and happy inside.

Jealousy

It’s normal. Part of life. But teaching my kids to deal with the green-eyed monster has been a challenge.

For years Holden and Josi were upset over what they saw as special treatment of Aubry. Trying to explain the nuances and vastness of sensory spectrum disorder (SPD) to young kids was not an easy task. There were some things they did well – like following our commands of never taking anything from her unless it would hurt her or someone else. There were some they didn’t – like aggravating her futher when she was in sensory overload.  

Time is the great equalizer. Eventually the jealously subsided as the kids grew older. They acquired compassion for their sister and understanding that SPD required different parenting and inter-sibling skills.

Jealousy came to the forefront again, as Aubry realized that her little brother received more attention than her. “Why does everyone think he’s so cute?” 

My biased answer was that he was cute.

That answer bombed out with her, “I’m UGLY?!”

Arghhh!

“Honey, you are beautiful and when you were little people made over you too. That’s what adults do sometimes,” I said.

I realized Aubry’s jealousy stemmed from her own insecurities about herself and also from the fact that they were so close. Too close. When with him and others, she felt invisible.

So Mark and I focused on building Aubry’s independence from Greyson, confidence in who she was and discovering her gifts.

At her request we put Aubry in swimming. It appears to be working – satisfying her sensory issues, promoting her independence and confidence in herself.

Aubry’s first meet was last weekend and she did well. “You’re coming? All of you? To watch me?”

The icing on the cake was her reaction after each of her heats. Looking up at us from the deck, her smirk grew into a huge smile as she saw thumbs up from her brothers and heard us yelling, “Way to go Aubry!”