Appearances Matter

A woman has guardianship of 6 year old twin girls. Their mother is incarcerated but they have some contact. The father is dead. Recently, one of the girls said – “I don’t look like you (taking about her hair). I want my hair to look like yours, and my eyes are different than yours.” All are Caucasian. The little girl is fair with blue eyes. The Guardian has olive skin and dark hair. She wanted to know the best ways to address this concern.

One adoptee that responded was harsh but truthful. “None of what you said was validating. You even called your phrases platitudes! All you did was list the reasons she’s not allowed to feel as she does. Regardless of what emotion they express regarding their losses, your response should be, ‘You’re right’.”

“I would have wanted to hear that I had every right to be sad that I don’t look like my caregiver. Then I would have wanted my caregiver to grieve with me. Many of us adoptees began processing our grief and are STILL processing our grief in our 40s 50s 60s and beyond. What a difference it would have made if the adults in our lives could have put words to that grief, acknowledged our losses, and helped us process those feelings in a healthy way.”

Another said – Here’s the thing: Kids are smart. They know when you’re offering them platitudes, when you’re repeating the things you’re “supposed” to say. Worst of all, they know when those things you’re “supposed” to say don’t resonate with them because you received them from other people who are like you.

Tell them the truth: We look like the people whose genetic material we inherited. Therefore, we look like our biological (and not our adoptive) families. One day, when they have children (if they have children), their children will look like them because that’s how nature designed people to work.

Like all organic things, we take our appearance and our genetic composition from the people who formed us organically. Adoption is not organic, and therefore these children will not look like the people caring for them. Because love doesn’t make you a parent. Genetics do.

My image of the book cover came from an adoptive mother’s suggestion, though she added – It didn’t seem to impress my daughter, but some kids might like it. We talked about it a lot. She really wanted us to look alike. She is Asian, I am Caucasian with blond hair, so we are very different. We had some matching outfits that she loved, but finally she straight up asked if we could have the same color hair, so I had it dyed a dark brown for quite a while. That seemed to do the trick for her. I’m not sure if she grew out of it or if it met her needs, but she’s a teen now and it doesn’t come up anymore. She’s fairly open about her needs and concerns, so if it was still a thing for her, I think she would tell me.

Many adoptive parents are quick to brush their own discomfort aside and attempt to distract the adoptee from it. Adoptive parents, please develop the courage to face the depth of loss adoptees experience and sit with them in it awhile. Doing so will bring healing and healthy relationships so much sooner.

Today’s Teens Are A Lot More Understanding

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is believed to be caused by overwhelming experiences, traumatic events and/or abuse during childhood. This came up today in association with a former foster care youth who had a terrible experience in foster care, is now in her teens and wants to share that with others.

One mature woman shared her experience – I went into the system at 3, taken from mom at 5, and emancipated through marriage at 16. I tried to share my story. I got a lot of rejection from other teens. That was a different time, though. Teens these days are a lot more understanding of trauma and mental illness and they welcome the opportunity to hold space for those who have gone through horrific experiences.

Another person was very supportive of this teen’s desire saying, It’s her story and she’s old enough to share. Will she receive backlash….possibly. But I bet she’s going to get more support vs. backlash, which is what she is seeking. She’s seeking a community that says “I hear you and I understand”.

Foster care children have been stripped of everything. It is hard to understand why people would take children into their home for foster care and not intend to make them feel at home. Examples –

Only buying the child the bare minimum or giving them hand me downs. One mature woman who was once in foster care shares – It always made me feel less than or like a charity case.. often I was given her biological daughters clothes/school supplies from the previous year etc. I remember the first time I got my own winter coat at around 7-8 years old. It was like Christmas to me.

It is no wonder children subjected to these situations develop personality coping mechanisms. Schizophrenia and DID are often confused with each other, but they’re very different things. Schizophrenia is a psychotic illness: symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, disorganized thoughts, speech and movements and social withdrawal. It does not involve alternate personalities or dissociation.

People with DID are not delusional or hallucinating their alternate personalities. Individuals with DID may experience some symptoms related to psychosis, such as hearing voices, but DID and schizophrenia are two different illnesses. There are very few documented cases linking crime to DID. The idea of an ‘evil’ alter is not true. People with DID are more likely than the general population to be re-traumatized and experience further abuse and violence.

Personality disorders are a constant fixed pattern of feeling and behaving over time, usually developing in early adulthood. Personality disorders, like borderline personality disorder, involve extreme emotional responses and patterns of behavior which make it hard for the person with the disorder to have stable relationships and function in society.

DID is a dissociative disorder. Rather than extreme emotional reactions to the world, people living with DID lose contact with themselves: their memories, sense of identity, emotions and behavior. Unlike personality disorders, DID may first manifest at almost any age.

What Should Never Be

One might think this only happens in third world countries, children without a stable home being taken in for the free labor they can provide but it happens here in the US too and often through the foster care system.

Read an account this morning about a woman who wants to foster a teen in order to have a live-in babysitter for her younger biological children. She also expects help with the housework, other chores, as well as help for her business that is baking and selling cookies. Probably looks at it as another avenue of revenue (foster care stipends) as well.

She expects so much gratitude that the foster care teen now has a roof over their head that they will not require payment for all of the work she expects for free from the unfortunate teen. And after the teen turns 18 and ages out of the foster care system ? She’ll simply sign up for another one.

The woman was dumb enough to put her sister down for a reference. Here’s why that part –

The reference sister is 8 years younger than this cold calculating woman described above. For two years, the younger sister lived with her older sister and her husband and the two kids, a boy and a girl, who she does describe as typical siblings, mostly no trouble at all but squabble sometimes as siblings always do.

Living with her older sister permanently damaged their relationship. She felt that her older sister only saw her as free labor, money (forced to hand over half her pay from a small, part time job) and babysitting. She describes feeling taken advantage of and says those years were HELL. And even so, she does still babysit for her sister sometimes but does control the amount of time she is willing to give now that she has moved out.

So, I know that children in third world countries are often exploited as domestic labor and I can even understand some expectations in a foster home of at least not contributing to extra household work for the family by keeping picked up after one’s self. I have read about situations so bad, that the foster parents actually put a lock on the refrigerator and pantry shelves, severely controlling the amount of food a foster child is able to consumed.

Maybe the system is not always broken and there are genuinely caring people doing this for the right reasons but it does seem from all the stories I come across that there are a lot of opportunistic and exploitative people taking in youth with nowhere decent or safe to go and sometimes the unsafe and awful conditions are actually in that foster home.

None Of This Is Okay

And some of us don’t. I will be the first to admit that I have ZERO experience with the Foster Care system. However, I belong to a group that includes adults who were formerly in the foster care system. Back in the month of May that focuses on raising awareness about foster care, I chose a book written by a woman who had grown up in the system. I was able to get some sense of it by living her experience as shared in the pages of her book.

Today, I read a thread that indicated there are foster parents who say that they’d NEVER let their biological children share a room with a foster child. The reasons are what is troubling about that statement. Some will even say foster children are “damaged strangers” let into their home (I guess for the revenue they bring into that home with them).

One of the concerns seems to be about the potential for abuse from a foster child towards the biological children. In reality, abusers are more often actually family members. One issue I became aware of in reading the book – Foster Girl by Georgette Todd – is how often the biological children in a foster home abuse the foster child.

The reality is that not all children who end up in foster care came out of situations of neglect or abuse and even if they did ? That does not mean they are deviants. Try a little compassion. It’s scary enough being a foster kid and being brought to a new place or home but imagine, if you are then shut out and locked in a room alone. This is totally cruel and guaranteed to heap more trauma on the unfortunate child.

It may be that even an unruly child is only crying out for love and patience. How can you make a wounded child feel safe and comfortable, if you’re afraid of them ? In the best circumstances, they may need their own room so that they can feel safe when they are feeling stressed, angry, overwhelmed, upset, etc.

Sadly, there are too many foster parents in it for the money. They provide only the most basic necessities. I don’t think that’s helping a foster youth with the traumatic and stressful situation that is the precursor to being placed in foster care.

Temporary Assistance

What could go wrong ? We’re family. One of us needs help temporarily. An older family member is willing . . . but the outcome is not what we expected.

I know this up close and personal. When I was struggling to support myself and my young daughter, an opportunity arose to make some significant money but it would require me to travel and it was not a situation that I could pack my toddler daughter along for the ride. I didn’t even know if I could do that work. And I didn’t know how long it would last. I just knew that increasingly my financial situation was becoming a crisis and I had to do something . . .

So, I left her with her paternal grandmother with the intention of that situation being temporary. Over time, it became permanent but not with the grandmother, with my ex-husband who remarried a woman with a daughter and eventually they had a third child born of their union. Therefore, even as my circumstances changed, I did not seek to intervene, believing that being in a family with siblings (and I did know that from a young age my daughter had wanted at least one) and which I, as a single mom, could not provide – was the best option for my daughter. I didn’t know until very recently that the situation was not entirely as good as I once believed. But she and I survived and remain close – thankfully.

Today, I read about a woman and a similar but different situation –

27 years ago my great aunt was supposed to watch my mother’s sister’s newborn for a few weeks because she was only 16 and unprepared. When she tried to get her baby back, my great aunt basically loaded her with court costs until it was prohibitively expensive for her. We weren’t allowed to tell her adopted daughter that she was adopted. The whole family thinks of my great aunt as a savior because the birth mom’s life didn’t turn out great. I wonder if losing her child is a big part of the why.

The rest of the story –

The girl didn’t find out that she was adopted and who her birth mom actually was until 2 years ago. Her birth mom was diagnosed with cancer. The mom passed away last year.

We don’t always see where our actions are taking us. For many adoptees once given up, there is a constant stream of reunions with genetic family that does some of the healing work that tearing a family apart causes. I do believe we all do the best we know how in the moment we make a decision. The reality is where things go from there and that is not always foreseeable.

How Poverty Affects Adoptions

I don’t know if anyone has done a study on the percentage of children given up for adoption due to simple poverty (and poverty is not simple, I realize this). I know it was a factor in both of my grandmothers losing custody of my parents and it was certainly a factor in my losing custody of my daughter. Divorce and lack of child support left me desperate enough to temporarily leave my daughter with her paternal grandmother. That ended up with her staying with her dad and a step-mother for the remainder of her childhood. It was a factor in my sister losing custody of her daughter – she was denied government assistance because she was living with my parents during her pregnancy. Therefore, because they didn’t want financial responsibility for my sister and her child, they pressured her to surrender her daughter to adoption. This is all in only my own family of birth.

Someone asked – Do you believe that financial illiteracy is the reason people are poor and that programs teaching life skills like checking, bank accounts, and savings would work to eliminate poverty ? While these skills are useful for any maturing adult, I don’t think they would eliminate poverty. Rich people have bigger safety nets. Financial illiteracy is not the reason people are poor and there are rich people who don’t know how to manage their money as well.

Someone answered the question – why are people poor ? With this – Capitalism. Rich people exploit others to gain wealth, keep money/land/resources for themselves, create systems that work to their advantage (and poor people’s disadvantage), pass it on to their kids who in turn use their wealth to get richer. Scarcity mindset is real and in my experience rich people are the most paranoid about losing any wealth. There is more than enough to take care of each other but our system doesn’t by choice. Some people think “if only poor people managed their money, they could accumulate wealth.” This completely misunderstands how wealth is acquired and horded in this country.

Generational and systemic poverty plague the poor. How can you climb a ladder in a system built to make the rich richer and keep the poor poor ? Our economic system is built upon the 1% wanting to make that difference bigger every day. How can anyone achieve socioeconomic upward mobility when your grandparents were poor. Therefore, your parents had to sacrifice an education and instead find work to support themselves and their families. Then their children end up in the exact same situation. The deck is simply stacked against the impoverished. This tends to become a *major* generational trend. Even assistance is created in such a way that it keeps the poor poor.

Case in point – Medicaid and Food Stamps. As soon as a person gets a non-minimum wage job, they lose their benefits. Without these, health care and groceries are significantly more expensive than slightly above minimum wage will cover. The result ? You’ve either got a person making $20/hour, but barely making ends meet if at all. Or a person without resources and access to food and healthcare, simply because they would rather be self-supporting.

One mother wrote – I gave up my first two kids to adoption because I was broke. I didn’t know how much help shelters could be. I kept my third child thanks to a shelter and I got on my feet. I now have a place of my own for us to live in. I wish I would have known how to keep my children before.

I do believe as a society we can do better than we have been doing. I don’t know how we get there. If we supported families adequately, children could remain where they want to be – in the family they were born into.

Please Don’t Make Me Stay

This is how an open adoption can become really tricky. I read this morning about a situation where the biological child is allowed to sleepover at their original parents home every other weekend. What is happening is that at the end of the weekend, the child does not want to return to the legally adoptive parents.

Now the adoptive parents are mad and are blaming the biological parents for the situation. They are insisting that the child choose between the two sets of parents. If the child does not, they will sever the adoption.

After the adoptive parents insisted on the child being returned early, which the biological parents complied with, now the child is screaming and crying that their biological parents should come and get the child. That this child doesn’t want to be there anymore.

Not surprising, the adoptive parents are blaming the biological parents for causing the child to behave that way. They also blame them for now breaking up what had been in their own minds a happy home.

It is clear that they ALL need to go into therapy. The child should be seeing an adoption trauma competent therapist. The adoptive parents also need to see a therapist to help them understand the child’s behaviors and triggers. While in therapy, the adoptive parents should also work through their own fears and insecurities. And the biological parents should be in therapy as well. It is difficult to explain to their child why they cannot legally come and get her without the adoptive parents permission.

These are the kinds of wounds MOST adoptees are all too familiar with. Once the child is surrendered (not a decision that child made for their own self) and the adoption is finalized, then the living with this situation begins and for the adoptee, the processing of this reality will consume their entire lifetime.

That is why the adoption group I am a part of is always counseling mothers and/or their partner to try to raise their child before taking this permanent step (and as the case above reveals – can be terminated – which is how some children end up in second adoptions, which just compounds the trauma for the child).

Whatever Happened To The Village ?

Modern life can be very isolating. In adoption circles, it is recognized that the reason many parents, and especially single mothers, lose custody of their child is a lack of support – financial, familial and mental health.

It is more difficult for some parents to tap into support than others. Parents who may be new to a particular community; parents who are raising a child with some sort of mental health or behavioral challenge or health concern; parents who are barely scrapping by from pay check to pay check and who may not have the financial resources to sign their kids up for extra-curricular activities that might otherwise bring them into the orbit of other families; parents who are working unpredictable schedules that make it hard to make plans. All those factors can make it extra challenging to find – let alone connect with – your “village.”

If you’re a parent who is finding it hard to find support in your community, start out by looking for that support online. Online social networking has been a godsend for me because we live a rural wilderness isolated existence. Therefore, my mom’s group (formed 17 years ago) keeps me in contact with other mothers sharing some unique and similar impacts of daily living. Our children are all turning 16 this year and our group started as email exchange threads and eventually migrated to Facebook. Another useful group for me as I discover the effects that rampant adoption has had on my family is a group that is made up of mothers who lost custody, adoptees, former foster care youth and adoptive parents. This group is especially helpful for unwed mothers considering the surrender of their baby to adoption after birth.

Once you’ve tapped into online support, you may also find groups focused in your own town, city, county or state that bring with them opportunities to create in person relationships in your community. Maybe you can find an online group for parents and kids in your local vicinity – this offers the best of both worlds. There you may find instantly accessible online support when you’re looking for that. And advice in the midst of a really bad day (or even longer night!) which every parent faces at times. You may find in person events, get-togethers that provide opportunities to meet online acquaintances face-to-face.

For many people, that village of yesteryear simply no longer exists. Happily for many of us, we have discovered that modern technology is allowing us to find a new way. Even in dire financial emergencies, there are now online methods of fund raising. In smaller communities, such as the one I live in there are often jars set up near the cash registers of sympathetic businesses to help some local cause. In community Facebook pages, one can even inquire about jobs or temporary needs for furniture, appliances, clothing etc after an unfortunate event in a family’s life.

All this to say – it is still out there – support for families in need. It just looks different now.

Evolving Approaches

There may come a day when adoption is a rare occurrence but that day isn’t here yet. What is happening is that adoption is experiencing a more honest, truthful and open approach to the reality where adoption has already occurred. And there is at least one group (I know because I belong to it) where the members seek to convince mothers-to-be who may be considering a surrender of their baby for adoption to at least try parenting first. That is one of the ways that adoption may become rare someday.

One question may be – how young is too young to tell a child they are adopted ? Some advice is – not to ever wait. Putting off talking with your adopted child about how they came to live with you often becomes a never good time to tell. I know of one case where that situation has become very very complicated and the truth is still not shared with young adult adoptees. It has become difficult in an unusual way, so understanding this, I am not judging it, but it is an example of what can happen when telling is put off until the child is “older”.

One adoptee shares – I had an adoption story that was bare bones to start with, as I got older, more information and whys were added, discussions evolved from that retelling. So, create a short TRUE story of how you came to adopt your child – 4 or 5 sentences long at a very young age. Practice telling the story to a friend, in the mirror so YOU are comfortable telling it. Then ask your child if they want to hear about when you adopted them….and tell your child that story.

Waiting until the child is older means they’ve lived that many years without you being truthful with them about who the child is. Just don’t wait. You want your child to trust you and they will if you are always telling them the truth. Set a date on the calendar to do it soon, a very short story of how you came to adopt them…

Another issue that often comes up with transracial adoptions is about teaching these children about their culture of origin. It’s never too early to start introducing things from the child’s heritage.

For example, a Puerto Rican child adopted by a white family. Some suggestions – Introduce Spanish as a normal part of your household, even if that means everyone learning it. Watch as much cultural content about Puerto Rico and its history as possible, and try to find opportunities to connect the child with their culture. Connect with the child’s biological family’s religious traditions – if that is a possibility – so it isn’t foreign to them. Always speak positively about their family, heritage, and culture. Plan a family trip to Puerto Rico when the child is of elementary school age, and then return as frequently as your finances allow. Bonus – learn about your child’s roots and connect to them in tangible ways. Try making some local friends who are Puerto Rican and see them regularly. If this all feels like too much, just recognize that your child is currently surrounded by American culture 24/7.

It goes without saying that this advice applies to all other ethnic groups and countries from which Americans adopted children on an international scale.

Even in those situations where the biological parents are addicted and may even be violent, or maybe the mother never wanted to keep her child, leaving the hospital as soon as she gave birth . . .

There is likely to be some extended family somewhere who would be open to some form of contact. Every child should have those biological ties as much as it is safe and of course, desired by the child themselves. And don’t forget – people DO often change over time. How they were at one point in their lives evolves and they become more conventional in their lifestyle and behavior.

Finally, it’s okay if a young child doesn’t understand what being adopted actually means. An adoptive parent should openly talk about it anyway. The child will always remember being told their story, about their birth or whatever is known and can be shared in a positive manner. Adopted children will talk about being adopted, if they have always heard that, even before the child fully understands what it means. Truly, it IS simply a part of who the child is.

No Support

I was reading an article this morning about a social networking site known as Urban Baby.

Urban Baby was part of the first wave of confessional Internet women’s writing about parenting, one that occurred in tandem with our society’s withdrawal of support for parents and children, and the simultaneous ratcheting up of expectations of what makes for good mothering. Blogs like Dooce — that’s Heather Armstrong, also known as the “queen of the mommy bloggers” — wrote openly about struggles with postnatal depression, while others took on the challenges of raising a special-needs child.

This new world of parenting was challenging and liberating, but, most importantly, optimistic. There was the almost-always unspoken assumption that the Internet was going to change the world of mothering for the better.

But that did not happen. For all the delights of the mom blogosphere, its members fell into a trap all too common to our time: We might kvetch about our problems jointly, but we struggle, for the most part, alone.

Despite, say, all the online chatter about the struggle to get a child into a “TT” — that’s Urban Baby lingo for top-tier — private or public school, very few connected their struggles to the greater society and economy causing their woes. Rare was the moment on Urban Baby when someone asked why there were so few TT schools — it was simply yet another problem to surmount. That remained true as the mothering blogosphere and forums lost ground to social media, to Instagram posts by neighbors and celebrity influencers alike about the wonderfulness of their parenting lives.

For my part, I belong to a mom’s group that started out connecting only by email and eventually ended up on Facebook. All of our children are turning 16 years old this year. We all conceived within that brave new world of reproductive technology. We have been together since before we knew we were successful. We met once when the children were two years old at Elmo’s World. I’m so glad we did. One of our more outspoken moms died from breast cancer some time ago and it was heart-wrenching. She was our second loss to cancer. More than one of our mom’s lost their spouse in one way or another during our time together. Only the current politics has divided us and that is bittersweet indeed but all of us are trying – to hold onto what unites us and not pick at the wounds of the country that affect us as well.

Yet that ambitious appetite for change was desperately needed, as our current covid-19 world is making all too clear. We are — even in a life-altering pandemic — the only developed country not to offer paid family leave or sick days to all. Nearly a fifth of families with children under the age of 12 are reporting they do not have enough food.

Children have been out of school since March, and for many, there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight, except for more in the way of subpar online classes that need parental supervision. And forget complaining about the high cost of child care: Our decision to leave it almost fully to the free market may well result, according to the Center for American Progress, in the loss of millions of child-care slots. This combination might well turn out to be cataclysmic — not just for children, but for their mothers, who, minus the child care offered by school, might well find themselves permanently exiting the workplace.

On Urban Baby this week there were final goodbyes, one last show of virtual hands for Zip codes, and final reasons they were here before everyone scattered. As one poster pointed out, “UB has been a release valve for all of the pent-up frustration and all of the challenges of modern motherhood.” No doubt. But, ultimately, emotional release is a thin gruel.

Mothers, fathers and their children need more — more help, more support, more resources. This was true before the current crisis, and it’s even more true now. When it comes to the online world of parenting, the biggest failure is not one of organization. It’s that for all their complaints, all too many of the people doing the talking on sites like Urban Baby still believe that they can individually surmount the ever-increasing challenges of American life rather than changing the system that underlies them. Until that mind-set changes, nothing else will.

My thanks to Helaine Olen’s op-ed in The Washington Post (for all of this except my personal comments).