UnchartedParent.com

As I mentioned two weeks ago, friends of mine just adopted a baby from Vietnam. Like any new parents, they are sleep-deprived. Fortunately, there are a number of people in our community who are willing to be supportive, deliver meals to the family for a few weeks and generally help out if they can. After all, those of us who are parents remember those early days with a new baby where sometimes just staying awake and getting the baby fed and changed as needed for twenty-four hours represents solid achievement. We’ve been there, we sympathize, and we want to help.

What some people don’t understand, however, are the unique needs of parents who have just welcomed a baby through adoption versus those who have brought their biological newborn home from the hospital. While many qualities of the homecoming are similar, there are a few important differences.

At the risk of offending those who believe that what I’m about to say could and should not apply to them, let me offer some tips on how to help out someone who has just brought home an adopted baby—especially one adopted from another country.

It’s important to realize that a baby of any age brought home from another country has just had her entire life completely uprooted. Everything that child knows, everything she’s ever taken in through any of her five senses has just been ripped from her—people, places, climate, smells, sounds, language, formula, clothes, sense of time, you name it. Some babies in this situation will appear infinitely calm and settled, falling asleep at the drop of a hat. That’s what my daughter did when she was an infant. What we realized later is that this peaceable disposition was simply her baby method of dealing with the jarring messages her senses were sending her—she just shut down. (Anyone who knows three-and-a-half year old “Emmie” now knows well that “subdued” is not an appropriate word to describe her true personality.)

Given this context, the adoptive parents’ job upon homecoming is to teach the baby that they are her parents and to acclimate her to her new family and new surroundings. This is the parents’ number-one priority; in other words, it must take precedence over just about everything else. So please, don’t hesitate to offer assistance to the new family, but don’t be offended if you’re not invited into their home to visit for a while. It has absolutely nothing to do with you; the parents are just trying to help their baby figure out her new world. Moreover, new adoptive parents probably aren’t going to let you hold their baby; this measure is to help the baby bond to her new parents and is something that adoption agencies strongly recommend to prospective adoptive parents in pre-adoption preparation.

In short, adoptive parents may be somewhat protective and private with their new son or daughter for a while, and it’s important to realize that that is for the child’s benefit. They will absolutely appreciate that dinner you bring to their house or that offer to take their older kids out for ice cream or to a movie for a couple of hours. And you will get to see the baby and even hold her—it just might not be as soon as you expect.

But try to remember: there’s a reason new adoptive parents are so protective. They’re not being anti-social; they just need to put their child’s needs first—just like any parent.

We parents always wonder what our children really think of us. Yesterday, three-and-a-half year old “Emmie” dropped some clues.

Out of the blue, Emmie said to me, “Daddy is a good man.”

I smiled. How sweet. Her father would be so pleased to hear that.

Later that same day, I was simultaneously making her lunch, nibbling on my own meal, folding one load of clothes and starting the next in the washing machine.

“Mommy,” Emmie began.

“Yes?”

“You’re a nice laundry girl.”

Aw, how sweet.

It’s nice to know what your child thinks of you.

If you are planning a large, group children’s holiday activity, please don’t plan it to compete directly with THE traditional activity associated with that holiday.

We have an enormous, popular, annual Halloween event in my community. Almost all of the merchants for several blocks on Main Street open their doors to hundreds of little trick-or-treaters. They give out candy, snacks, books, little toys—all of the things little ghosts and goblins love. Someone always has coffee for grown-ups, a horse pulls kids around the block for hay rides, the kids get an extra chance to show off their costumes and see their friends, the adults socialize and inevitably we run into people about whom we’ve been thinking for months but never get the chance to see. It’s incredible small-town fun, and we never miss it.

Except this year.

In an impressive display of trapped-inside-the-box thinking, the folks that run our Main Street decided that since this event always takes place on the last Friday of October, that’s when they would hold it this year, even though the last Friday in October this year happens to be Halloween. And it’s always held in the early evening, so, darn it, it will take place from 5:30-7:30, even though the town’s designated Trick-or-Treat time is that day from 5:00-7:30. (Trick-or-treat times in my area are official and set by each town.)

So we can participate in our community celebration or permit our kids to celebrate in the traditional neighborhood fashion, but not both.

If this were a different holiday, I might call that downright Scrooge-like. Would you hold a town Christmas tree-lighting ceremony on December 25?

My six-and-a-half year old was disappointed when I told him he had to choose, and I don’t blame him. I know this isn’t an issue of major consequence, but that’s part of the point. Halloween is about having fun. How hard would it have been to step just a teeny, tiny bit outside of the box and say, hey, let’s hold this event on a different day so the kids can have more fun? (And, by the way, from a business perspective, wouldn’t the merchants prefer to participate in an event with the usual mob in attendance rather than an event which will be minus at least half the usual crowd this year?)

I did not originally intend to write this post. After all, anyone can make a mistake. But then, in the interest of providing some community feedback, I politely emailed the event’s organizers to let them know my feelings about this year’s scheduling. The reply I received tersely informed me that this year, the traditional “last Friday in October” happened to be Halloween. (Thanks. I’m a mom. I knew that.) So that’s when the event is. Case closed. See you next year.

Okay, I’ve vented. I can’t do anything about this, and it’s just a Halloween party, after all.

But if you’re planning a big holiday event and you see that it’s going to conflict with another event in which you know everyone who attends your event will want to participate, try to care. Think outside the box and adjust your schedule.

This post is about my son, the hired goon.

Yes, that’s my six-and-half year old son, “Jack.” Jack came home from school one day recently with some money in his pocket. I knew he hadn’t left for his day in elementary school in the black, so I asked where he’d acquired his pocketful of change.

“K____ told me he’d give me a dollar if I kept S_____ away from him.”

I stared at him. A vision appeared to me: I saw Jack in twenty years, his biceps bulging, his words weighted down by a thick Jersey accent as he stands cross-armed in front of a mobster’s limo, inquiring just who might be asking to see “da boss.”

After I asked him to repeat what he’d told me—just to make sure I had the facts right—Jack and I had a talk about the inappropriateness of his new job, about thinking about other children’s feelings, about being mean and being nice. And I made it absolutely clear to him that his hard-earned wages were to be returned.

I’ve got no problem with my child, who has until this point had little appreciation for the value of a dollar, discovering the worth of private enterprise. But what happened to lemonade stands, newspaper routes or just helping out around the house? Yes, when I put my kid on the school bus in the morning, I expect him to learn social dynamics and lessons both academic and practical.

But who expects her kid to come home at the end of a day in the first grade only to find that her child is in training for a stint on the casino floors of Las Vegas?

This post is really a follow-up to my last one regarding things you should never say to an adoptive parent.

Recently, several adoptive moms I know have been on the receiving end of comments from other women—mostly mothers through biology—that have run something like this: “Oh, you’re adopting. That’s so much easier than having the kids yourself.”

To which I can only respond, “Clearly, you’ve never adopted a child.”

What, exactly, is easy about adoption? Is it the myriad answers parents must devise to difficult questions along the way, questions like: domestic or international? If international, what country? Am I truly prepared to parent a child of a different race? If I’m not, what does that say about me? Do I insist on an infant or will I accept an older child? If an older child, how old? What about a sibling group? What if I get that phone call years down the road that my child’s birthmother is pregnant again and again needs to place her child—my child’s biological sibling? How do I fill out that sheet that asks, disability by disability, whether I am willing to parent a special-needs child? If I’m not willing to accept those disabilities, can I live with myself by checking the box that specifies “no special needs”? How do I feel about opening every aspect of my life to a complete stranger to prove to him or her that I am worthy to become a parent? Can I afford two, five, ten, twenty thousand dollars or more to complete this adoption? Can I handle, emotionally and financially, committing to an adoption process in one country, maybe even to a specific child, then have that country’s process close down midway through and be forced to begin all over again? Can I cope with a process that will leave me waiting for an indeterminate period of time that may last anywhere from six months to six years—or longer? Can I love a child born to someone else as much as I would love a child born to me?

What else is easy about adoption? Is it committing to a lifetime of knowing that at anytime from toddlerhood through adulthood, your child may come to you with wrenching questions about his or her origins and your answers may be unsatisfactory? Is it the risk that some adoptive parents take that a birthmother may change her mind after the adoptive parents are already emotionally invested in that child? Is it the fear that someday, even a geographically invisible birthparent may show up and say, “This child is mine”?

And yet, there’s more. Is it easy knowing that the very fact that your child is yours means that somewhere a woman will probably grieve every day of her life for the child she could not raise? Is it easy missing the early months, sometimes years, of your child’s life? Is it easy to tell your child when he or she asks to see baby pictures, “Sorry, I don’t have any”? Is it easy for parents who turn to adoption following unsuccessful, multiple infertility treatments to change course after so much disappointment? Is it easy for those same parents when they have to explain to their adoptive child that no, he or she is not “second-best”?

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.

I’ve got one biological child and one adopted child. I’ve been through infertility and I’ve been through the adoption process. I’ve recovered from a terrible delivery and a severely colicky newborn and I’ve been through the process of bonding with a child who lived her first months without me. Neither one of these journeys was easy. They were vastly different, and they both offered their magical moments and presented me with challenges greater than I could have imagined.

It doesn’t matter how you become a parent. Parenting, as we all know, is many things, but it is not easy. The fact that the road to arrive at parenthood may be easier for some than for others is beside the point, and that divide cannot be marked by biology versus adoption. Frankly, I don’t see why people feel the need to make this comparison at all.

If you think adoption is the easier route to parenthood, then the odds are that you are not an adoptive parent.

Everyone knows—or you darn well should know—that you don’t tell a pregnant woman that she looks fat. You don’t tell a woman about to give birth that she needs to mind her manners. You don’t tell parents that their children are so ugly it nauseates you to look at them.

This stuff is easy . . . right?

What apparently is less well known, however, are certain statements that are inappropriate to make to an adoptive or pre-adoptive parent. There exists a long list of these remarks that adoptive parents hear with surprising frequency. In many cases, I believe, the people who utter these words mean well, but there is a certain lack of knowledge and/or thought in their remarks that are discouraging the first time a parent hears them, and downright infuriating by the twelfth.

Let me share one of the sentences you should never say to an adoptive parent: “That child is so lucky.”

Why is this an inappropriate remark? Think about it: the one thing that every adoptive child shares is loss. The child’s side of the adoption story begins with the loss of one’s biological parents. Depending on the circumstances of the adoption, the loss may also include culture, ethnicity, race, language and the ability to find out if that crazy, snorting laugh or cowlick that just won’t stay down is an inherited, family trait or something unique to that individual. In short, so many things about family and culture may be forever broken for this child, despite the best efforts of his or her adoptive parents to fill in the blanks where they can. And somewhere, there is a good chance that at least one birthparent is mourning the loss of a child she could not care for, something that will probably haunt her for the rest of her life. This child is not “lucky,” nor, in the logical corollary to the assumption of luck, should an adoptive child ever be burdened with the expectation that he or she should be grateful for the fact of his or her adoption.

There is, of course, some luck involved. It is fortunate that we live in a world where a child in need of parents can be united with parents in need of a child to form a family in a way that pure biology does not allow. Like any child, if the adoptive child grows up in a home filled with love, adequate food, shelter and clothing, receives an education and everything necessary to become a healthy, productive adult, then he or she is of course lucky.

But children who are adopted are not by virtue of their adoptive status lucky. As every adoptive parent knows, the emotional turmoil, uncertainty of the process and often wrenching decisions that must be made along the way ensure that adoptions have at least as much to do with love, dedication, determination and strength as they do with luck.

So please do all of us adoptive parents, and our children, a favor: don’t tell us that our kids are lucky.

And a personal message to my close friend who has hopefully landed in Vietnam by now to pick up her new baby daughter: congratulations; we are so excited for you! Now grab a cab to your hotel room and take a nap before you meet that child!

Ah, life in northern New England. I live right by a state capital, but over the past several years I have seen all manner of wildlife just in the course of my daily life: chipmunks, hawks, bald eagles, foxes, bear, hummingbirds, monarch butterflies, skunks, beavers, bullfrogs, groundhogs, bats, snakes, finches and, I think, a coyote. For six-and-a-half year-old, budding scientist “Jack,” life offers a working, outdoor laboratory to back up what he learns on all those prehistoric and Planet Earth DVDs.

But I didn’t realize until earlier this week what he’s been studying.

A few evenings ago, I was putting dinner on the table and glanced outside my window to the sight of two deer, an adult female and what looked to be a younger animal. They were only a few yards from the house, and I called Jack over to witness the show.

Jack surveyed the chocolatey-eyed, white-tail deer, moving from window to window to observe them as they watched us in turn and sought out the tastiest foliage they could find.

“Jack, aren’t they beautiful?” I asked. “They’re so close to us; isn’t that amazing? What do you think?”

Jack considered the deer and my question. Finally, he offered his assessment in an objective, analytic voice. “I think they’re going to mate,” he said.

My husband and I locked eyes, our faces frozen, not trusting ourselves to release our reactions. Then my husband most unceremoniously clamped his hand over his mouth so Jack wouldn’t hear his guffaw and rushed out of the room, while I managed to swallow my laughter and affirm my son’s hypothesis.

“Well, um, yes, that’s certainly a possibility.”

Now I know how it feels to be a deer in the headlights.

There are moments in parenting that we know are unavoidable. We don’t know when they will happen, we don’t know what the context will be; yet, even though we’ve never been there, we know that they are coming.

I experienced one of those moments last week. It was an early October weekday, between 7:20 and 7:25 in the morning.

I was waiting with six-and-a-half year-old “Jack” at the bus stop, kidding around like we usually do. We heard the bus, then visually confirmed its approach.

“Bye, Jack,” I said. “Have a fun day. I love you.” I held out my arms for my hug.

“Bye,” he replied. His took a step toward me to give me my hug.

Then, with a quick glance at the yellow school bus—already occupied by some of his neighborhood friends—he retreated. “I love you, too,” he said. But there was no hug.

Did I get mad? Did I mope for the rest of the morning? No, and no. I’ve been waiting for this. A little boy’s reluctance to hug his mother in public is as inevitable as the disappearance of baby fat from his face, the evaporation of parents’ ability to use spelling as a means of communicating with another adult in a child’s presence without said child comprehending what the adults are talking about, or the sudden appearance of a huge tear in one knee of almost every pair of a growing boy’s pants. It’s part of his growing up, part of his growing away.

So, prepared as I was for this development, I smiled at him as he climbed the bus’s stairs and was whisked away. After all, at the end of the day, he came back to me again.

But somewhere deep inside, I knew that we had come one step closer to the time someday when he gets on that bus (or, more likely, drives away the car that we’ve filled with gas) and leaves, only to return for sporadic visits. Such separation is good; it means that I’m doing my job at least in some way preparing him to live as an adult in the world at large.

So the moment was inevitable. But so too was my wistful recollection of the chubby-cheeked infant who couldn’t conceive of a world where anything was more important than mommy.

In both writing and parenting, we must sometimes confront things which make us uncomfortable. My blog post today is about something I’ve noticed lately—or at least I think I’ve noticed—that makes me very, very uncomfortable. It might make you feel uneasy to read it, but that’s okay with me, because it should.

I’m talking about the attention that I’ve noticed my three-and-a-half year-old, Asian daughter has been attracting lately from mature, white men.

Yes, you read that correctly.

To be fair, “Emmie” is pretty darn cute. Moreover, she knows it, and she can exercise her feminine wiles with a skill I would have presumed to be impossible from a three-year-old if I hadn’t already been watching her flaunt them for a year. But that’s no excuse.

Recently, I watched this happen twice in a single day. As we waited in line in an ice cream store, a group of four men and women in their fifties and sixties all cooed over Emmie’s adorableness; I, like any proud mother, thanked them and smiled at my angel. But though three of the group then moved on to discuss their ice cream options, the fourth, a man, kept his eyes and his words on Emmie. He patted her head as he asked her questions. He pinched her cheek. He kept talking to her even after I positioned my own body between him and my daughter and deliberately struck up a separate conversation with her myself. At no point did he ever do anything clearly inappropriate, but I found his persistence unsettling.

The second episode took place in a children’s museum, and it was worse. Located just over the border in Vermont in a fairly rural setting, this museum offers an outdoor water-science exhibit in good-weather months that children adore. They don bathing suits and learn about water and motion as they splash about the exhibits, never even realizing that they’re learning. Emmie was enthusiastically restructuring plastic tubes and connector pieces to create wildly shaped fountains when a fiftyish white man came over to her with his daughter of ten or so.

At first, I thought nothing of it. Everybody interacts with everybody else in this mini-water park; I’ve talked to other people’s kids there more times than I can recall. I was sitting nearby, and when the man began to talk to Emmie about what she was building, I smiled. He injected his own ideas into the structure she was assembling, and I rolled my eyes, thinking he was just ignorant because he didn’t realize that Emmie was perfectly capable of deciding what she wanted to make and how she wanted to get there.

But then the man’s own daughter approached him to ask for his assistance, and he blithely waved her away. I watched as she tried again, and he shooed her off again. As he did this, he continued to try to “help” Emmie and talk to her, until I got up from where I was sitting to end the exchange. Before I could walk the six steps to where she was, Emmie decided she’d had enough, too, and she walked away from the man and toward me. I grabbed her hand and we moved on to another part of the exhibit.

Did the man ever touch Emmie in any way that was inappropriate? Again, no. In fact, he never touched her at all. But his focus on my daughter at the complete expense of his own left me with a feeling that I can only describe as nausea.

It’s possible that I am overreacting here, that I saw something in these interactions that wasn’t really there. But that’s where the gut-check comes in. As parents, sometimes we find ourselves with nothing but a gut feeling to inform our actions, and my gut tells me that there was something at play in these and similar exchanges that went beyond the innocent admiration of a cute kid.

Any adoptive parent worth his or her salt makes an effort to learn about the unique challenges we might face beyond those posed by raising any child. This is particularly true for those of us who adopt a child from a race or culture different from our own. There are questions of identity we may encounter, experiences of prejudice our children will suffer that we can only try to comprehend, questions about why they were relinquished whose answers will be as varied as the children who ask them.

As the parent of a child from Korea, I’ve tried to educate myself about American stereotypes regarding Asians. I know that there is a tendency in American culture to glorify Asian women sexually, and somewhere in the back of my mind has been the little yellow sticky note reminding me to address this with my daughter in some fashion when she is older. But never did I imagine that I would find myself protecting my child from this dangerous stereotype when she was only three years old.

They say that having a child changes everything, and I agree. Most of the changes are good ones, and even the changes that challenge us are usually worth it. But now the way I look at the world in which my daughter lives has changed once again. Compliments are no longer just compliments; they may be much more than that, and I am hurting my daughter if I don’t regard male attention with at least some degree of suspicion. I expected this at thirteen, but not at three. It makes me sad, it makes me sadder still to think that Emmie may face this throughout her life, and, frankly, at the age of three, it makes me a little sick.