When I sit down to write a list like this, I always get overwhelmed with the possibilities.  They are endless.  How global and world peacey should I go, how much navel gazing is allowed?  I can easily survey my list and feel self centered and petty.  Who am I to be wishing for _______, when there are people dying from war and famine in ___________.  I want this list to be specific to those of us touched by infertility and adoption, but first, for the record and to appease my guilt and self consciousness, let me say that I hope, wish and pray for peace and dialog between countries; for wisdom, support, and safety for our new President; and for economic stability internationally, nationally, and personally.

Now here’s my list, in no particular order, for those of us in some way involved with adoption and infertility.

1. I hope all of you who desperately want a child will have one by the end of 2009, or at least one on the way.
2. I pray for wisdom for all of you in infertility treatment in making all the big and small treatment decisions.
3. I wish that more countries would actively promote adoption as one part of their child welfare system, since every child in the world deserves a permanent family. 
4. I hope for major advancements in infertility treatment that will make it affordable for all.  (See the great Dec. 10th Creating a Family show on this topic.)
5. I pray that more people will look to our foster care system when considering adoption.
6. I wish there would be more understanding and less competition between those who decide to continue in infertility treatment and those who decide on adoption.
7. I hope that parents through donor egg and sperm will be open to the hard-earned wisdom of the adoption community about the benefits of telling children early about their genetic history.
8. I pray that the truth that adoption works can overcome the negative publicity that seems to surround all forms of adoption.
9. I wish for wisdom of state legislators as they consider the impact of legislation that can affect the availability of infertility treatment in their state.
10. I hope, pray and wish for each of you the joy, worry, contentment, and sleep deprivation of parenthood.
 
Please join in and add your hopes and prayers for 2009.

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This is the season for children.  I don’t mean all the hoopla of presents and Santa, although there is that, of course.  I am thinking on a deeper level.  Christmas is about hope and love in the form of a baby.  Although the Chanukah story is less overtly child focused, it is also a story of hope for the future.  In both stories, I also feel an undercurrent of worry.  For me, the universal themes of parenting—hope, love, and worry—are up front and center this time of year. 

I hope and pray that I will be a good parent for my children.  Actually, I don’t want to be good, I want to be the best.  As unattainable as that is, it is still what I wish for.  The problem is that it’s not always clear how to be the best for them.  They are each so different, and yet, I remain the same.  So I hope and pray for flexibility and for wisdom. 

I worry over each of them for much the same reasons and for very different reasons.  When they were younger, I thought that I would worry less about them as they got older.  I guess I thought that with each passing year, there would be less danger of something going wrong.  I smile now at my youthful ignorance.  I don’t mean that I worry about them all the time because I don’t.  I also don’t mean that worry crowds out the joy or the hope because it doesn’t.  But just as hope, joy and love are an integral part of parenting, so is worry.

Mostly, as I sit here in front of my fire typing away while my kids are either sleeping or reading nearby, I am filled with an overwhelming since of love and appreciation that they are in my life.  I know this sounds hokey, but frequently I think, “these people–my husband and kids– are my village.”  Sometimes I’m almost overwhelmed with the realization that we have been chosen to walk through life together.  They’ll grow up and move out, but we will always be connected through love and history.  I know that most families probably feel this way, but I think it is an especially neat thought for those of us who created our families through adoption.

Most of us had to work extra hard to get our kids, so you’d think we would live in a perpetual state of appreciation every season of the year.  Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t.  I should, I know, but the laundry and the cooking and the homework often push appreciation pretty far down the list of feelings that parenting brings out.  But for now, in this season for children, I feel blessed to have mine, each and every imperfect one of them.

P.S.  This season that fills us with joy is particularly hard for people wanting to be parents, but having trouble fulfilling that dream.  Either infertility treatment is not working or the adoption wait is getting longer and longer, but for whatever reason, they desperately want to have kids in their lives.  For them, this is a season of sadness.  We did a Creating a Family show on Dec. 10 on how to survive the holidays when you are hoping and praying for a child, but don’t have one.  The questions we received expressed so well the angst this season can bring for so many.  Please try to keep these folks in mind this holiday, and try your best to make this season easier for them.  But for the grace of God this could have been any of us.

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As those of you who read my blog regularly know, last week I wrote about the ABC show 20/20 The Toughest Call which aired on Nov. 28.  The show followed the Mulligan family as they struggle with their three children who were adopted at the ages of 11, 8 and 4 from Russia.  I received the following comment that I excerpt here.  To read the full comment, go to last week’s blog. 

In my experience, having been researching and working with members of the adoption community for about 40 years, writing presenting…the origin of the problem is twofold. You hit on one: expectations.

The deeper problem is MONEY and greed (isn’t it always?). Adoption is a $6.3 billion dollar a year international industry. Those whose job is it to redistribute children, and whose livelihood depends upon locating kids for eager parents willing to pay huge sums…are not vested in being supportive and hand-holding and certainly have no reason to scare off potential customers with the truth!

We need regulation of baby brokers and businesses called adoption agencies - even non-profit ones. We need to stop giving out adoption incentives that treat unscrupulous human traffickers on an equal plane with states who are trying to find homes for children who are truly orphaned or whose parents have been deemed unfit - right here in the USA…hundreds of thousands of them!

Why do people shy away from “special needs” older children and naively think that institutionalized children who do not speak English and may have been victims of FAS will fair better?….

Check with the UN. They state that adoption should always be a LAST RESORT!  Taking children one at a time from their origins does nothing to ameliorate the poverty of their family, their village or their nation. There are far more humanitarian ways to help. More than a dozen children adopted from Russia have been MURDERED by their American adopters! Many others abused and abandoned. It MUST STOP!!

The commenter is right that adoption is a business, even those agencies that are nonprofit charge for their services and most charge well.  But being a business is not inherently evil, and charging money does not mean that an agency can’t put the needs of kids before the bottom line.  The commenter lumps all adoption agencies together and claims that adoption agencies are not vested in providing parental support and are afraid to scare off prospective parents with the truth.  She conveniently overlooks the fact that many many adoption agencies do just that and more.  They invest in extensive post adoption services by having trained counselors on staff to help parents once home.  They offer culture camps, groups for teen and young adult adoptees, and in person and online communities for adoptive parents.  They give humanitarian aid to the birth countries to help alleviate the core problems and to provide for those children who will not be adopted.  They forgo the quick buck by putting the needs of the kids first. 

These good agencies regularly turn away prospective adoptive parents by placing restrictions on age, marital status, sexual orientation, and divorces that are more stringent than required by the law of either the US or the sending country.  At times I quibble about whether these restrictions make for better parents, but the point is that the agencies believe they do, and are willing to turn away the money they would make from those that don’t meet these requirements.  Good agencies have for years tried to present “the truth” about the potential difficulties by requiring adoption education for prospective adoptive parents long before it was required, and many require more hours of adoption education than the 10 hours specified in the Hague Treaty.

In my book, I urge parents to select these good agencies and provide steps for doing so.  We are now in the post Hague treaty era, and I think we’re going to see more adoption agency consolidation.  It looks like the better agencies will flourish, and those solely in it for the money will go under.  This may be a bit of wishful thinking on my part, and time will tell, but there is some evidence of this happening.  Of course, this only applies to international adoption from agencies that place from other Hague countries, but we all hope that there will be a spill-over effect on domestic adoption agencies and international adoption agencies that place from non-Hague treaty countries.  I’m not a complete Pollyanna; I know that it is still possible for money-centric adoption agencies to exist, and that many adoptive parents are choosing them because they are still more focused on finding a child than on the realities of raising that child, but we have made a good start.

I agree with the commenter that there are hundreds of thousands of children in need of homes right here in the US—actually there are over 500,000 children in state care, and about 130,000 of them are currently ready and waiting for a permanent home.  Many people are mistaken about the demographics of these kids, assuming they are all older black teens.  While there are some really terrific older kids of all races, the average age of a child currently available for adoption from foster care is 8.2 years.  Forty percent are under the age of six, although many of these are part of sibling groups.  Of these waiting kids, 38% are white, 32 % are black, and 20% are Hispanic. 

I also agree with her that all children from abusive and neglectful pasts, or that were exposed to alcohol or drugs prenatally, are at about the same risk for future problems regardless whether they come from the US foster care, or from Russian, Ukrainian, or Colombian orphanages  The one difference is that you usually have more information on these potential problems with US foster children, and you will almost always get a monthly subsidy to help you meet that child’s need.  I join her in urging all parents, especially those considering adopting a child over the age of five, to strongly consider adopting from the US foster care system.

I’m not sure what point the commenter is trying to make when she cites the number of Russian adoptees that have been killed or abused by their adoptive parents.  I’ve seen this argument used before to suggest that international adoptions be curtailed, and it always seems to be twisted logic, at best.  Obviously abuse and murder are horrible, and of course we need to do everything in our power to support struggling families post adoption and prepare them beforehand so that they can make an educated decision on whether they are equipped to adopt this child in the first place.  I have not seen any peer reviewed research on these cases, but I’ve read a lot of news reports, and many (most?) of these children had serious emotional problems likely caused by years of living in an institution or by pre-adoption abuse.  Rather than suggesting a need for fewer adoptions, I think these tragic cases demand sooner adoptions to get these children out of abusive homes and institutions and into well prepared families before they are emotionally scarred.  Also absent in this argument is the statistics of abuse and death in orphanages, or what happens to these kids once they age out of these institutions.  I’ve seen the statistic that of the 15,000 Russian orphans aging out of state-run institutions every year, 10 percent committed suicide, 5,000 were unemployed, 6,000 were homeless, and 3,000 were behind bars within three years of leaving the orphanage.  No child deserves to be abused or die an early death on the streets, and in my opinion, early adoption lessens this possibility. 

The commenter lists suggested readings, and I’ve read them all, as well as many more that support the “adoption is bad for kids and birth country” argument.  There are, of course, many articles that support the other side.  I suggest that the commenter listen to the Oct. 22 Creating a Family show with a panel of adult transracial adoptees, and the Aug. 6 Creating a Family show where I interviewed a leading researcher on post adoption adjustment.  But more important to me than anecdotal articles, is peer reviewed research, which unanimously shows that children do better in permanent families than in institutions or foster care.  It also shows the most children, even children that have been badly abused and neglected pre-adoption, do very well once placed in loving and resourceful homes.  And that is the real point. 

The commenter states that adoption should be the last resort.  Well, duh!!  Of course it should be the last resort.  In an ideal world there would never be the need for adoption.  In an ideal world all children would be born to people who were ready and able to love, feed, clothe, educate, and guide them for 18+ years.  In an ideal world there would not be extreme poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, emotional illness, and couples having sex without contraception before they are ready to become parents.  But we don’t live in that world; we live in a world of poverty, addiction, and poor choices.  And in this very real world, adoption can be and often is a life saver for children. 

I want to live in a world where we do everything in our power to make sure that every child that can not or should not be raised in their family of birth gets placed with a permanent adoptive family as soon as possible.  First choice should be extended family, and if that’s not possible, then an adoptive family in their community or country.  But if no local family is found, then every effort should be made to quickly find a family abroad.  Adoption saves lives and psyches, and for adoption to continue to be this life giving option, we absolutely must control the cost.  Money can and does contaminate the process; it removes any incentive to help birth families raise their kids and it subverts the order for finding a permanent family.   Adoption is too important for kids for us to risk it being tainted by large sums of money. 

The commenter is partially right that approaching the systemic problems one child at a time is not the most effective way to solve societal problems, but it is the most effective way to solve this child’s problem.  The commenter and others she cites overlook that the alternative to adoption is often remaining in abusive or neglectful homes or institutionalized care.  Even the most caring orphanage workers or foster parents are not an equal substitute for parents.  My core belief is that all children need parents, and they need them as soon as possible. 
 

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Did you see the 20/20 show, The Toughest Call last week (Nov. 28) on troubled children adopted from Russia?  Friday night is date night for us, so I didn’t see it live, but my inbox was full of messages about it on Monday morning. 

The premise is nothing new to those of us involved with adoption, but it always interesting to see it through the eyes of the general public.  The show followed the Mulligans, a childless couple that adopted two sisters, ages 11 and 8, from Russia in 2004, and shortly later adopted a four year old Russian boy.  The show follows them from their first weeks home (via home video), through boarding school for the eldest and tantrums with the youngest, and finally to the Ranch fo Kids in Montana for emotionally disturbed adopted children.  It is a sad tale indeed.

The Mulligans went into adoption bright eyed and enthusiastic with good intentions.  They had love to give, and these Russian orphans needed love.  It seemed like the perfect fit.  It is now painfully apparent that they were woefully unprepared to adopt older children.  They wanted healthy normal kids that would respond like healthy normal kids to their love, and would flourish in their new environment of designer rooms and the best American money has to offer.  Instead, much to their surprise, they got children damaged from abuse and neglect. 

It is not my place or my intent to criticize these well meaning parents.  I haven’t walked in their shoes, and I know enough to know that until you’ve lived through an experience you have no right to judge.  Raising emotionally disturbed or brain damaged children is a challenge for the best parents.  They clearly want to help their children and are not willing, at least for now, to throw in the towel and give up.  I admire tenacity.  This show, however, disturbed me. 

The beginning of their adoption story is told through home videos.  These videos were heart wrenching, and quite frankly seemed exploitive to me.  One video was taken less than a week after they brought their first two children home.  The camera followed a frightened confused 11 year old around the house while she sobbed and tried to escape.  It felt more like the child was being chased by the camera toting parent.  The parents said they took the video to show others how chaotic their life had become.  Mind you, this was less than a week home, and a child crying uncontrollably and running aimlessly around the house seeking a way out surprised them.  What in the world did they expect?  Of course, I wasn’t there and I also don’t know what was left on the editing room floor, but what was shown on the video looked like a terrified grieving child, and seemed like a reasonable reaction one week after everything she knew in her world had been obliterated.  Her pain, confusion, and fear were palpable.  I wanted to sit down on the floor next to her sobbing body, and just be with her to let her know that she wasn’t alone. 

The show continued with other scenes of the oldest daughter acting out, the youngest daughter acting perfect, and the son acting troubled.  The parents told the world that their daughters’ birth mother was an alcoholic abusive prostitute.  As I watched, my overwhelming reaction was to question why this intensely personal information and moments of a child’s life were being aired on national TV.  It’s one thing if an adult chooses to share personal information with the world, but a parent does not have the right to do that to a child.  For the life of me, I can’t imagine recording the videos in the first place unless urged to do so by a therapist of social worker, and that seems highly unlikely one week post adoption.  There have certainly been times when my children were suffering and acting in what I consider an irrational way, but recording these moments for posterity never entered my mind.  And I’m certainly glad that when I’m stressed and acting less than my best no one is following me around with a camera.  The home videos looked like evidence gathering for their eventual lawsuit against their adoption agency. 

I am not suggesting that these children do not have serious attachment issues.  I have no idea.  Certainly some of the behavior described on the show would indicate poor attachment.  What I am suggesting is that one week post adoption is far too early to be labeling a child or collecting evidence, and that exposing your child on national TV is not a good way to foster attachment. 

Another things that irked me about the show was the analogy of adoption to an arranged marriage and the “logical” conclusion that “if the chemistry isn’t present, it won’t work.”  I don’t deny that there is often a serendipity aspect to life where it feels like things are just meant to be.  Where the child you get, either through birth or adoption, just fits perfectly with your personality.  When this happens, it’s an undeserved blessing.  (Is there any such thing as a deserved blessing?)  Most of the time, however, we have to work at relationships, including relationships with our children.   We have to look for things we have in common, ways that we can connect, ways that we are alike.  Chemistry can be created; that is our job as the parent.

I don’t know how things will turn out for this troubled family.  They need ongoing support and therapy in order to stand a chance.  They need advice on how to raise children that have troubled pasts, and they need some plain old parenting advice.  They received wise counsel and a sympathetic ear from Joyce Sterkel at the Ranch for Kids in Montana, which is at least a start.  I hope and pray that they will find competent counselors in their home town that understand attachment, family dynamics, brain damage, and parental stress. 

The Mulligans are a cautionary tale for others, and I’m more interested in what we can do to prevent more stories like this.  The one thing that was absolutely clear to me is that they were unprepared for adopting older institutionalized children.  They also seemed unprepared for how to foster normal sibling relationships, especially the typical triangulation that some kids are so good at (with one child playing the role of the perfect child and the other taking the part of the troubled one).  I don’t know if they were unprepared because their agency failed to educate them or because they didn’t want to really hear what their agency had to say.  Prospective adoptive parents, intent on getting a child, sometimes resent being told that they need to read more books or attend more classes.  They don’t want to hear that it may be a long hard row to hoe.  They don’t want to be told that maybe they should adopt only one child, rather than quickly go from zero to three.  They want to believe that if they can help their children look the part of a normal American kid by dressing them from Gap Kids and decorating their rooms from Disney, they become normal American kids.

Adoption agencies also often share the blame.  I don’t know anything about the specifics of this case other than that the Mulligans are suing their adoption agency, but agencies walk a fine line between preparing prospective adoptive parents and scaring them away, and some agencies do a better job than others.  Adoption is a business and prospective parents pay the bills.  Any reputable agency should provide post adoption services.  Family struggles are typical, and this family in particular could have used good advice in their first months home.  As I always tell people when they are selecting an agency: look for an agency that feels more like a child welfare agency, than a child finding agency.

The Mulligans said they went public to let others know about the pitfalls of adopting older children.  Fair enough.  Families that adopt older children from abusive and neglectful backgrounds need to be prepared, and this is a message the public needs to hear.  Good adoption agencies and professionals have been saying this for years.  I just hope the Mulligans, and especially the Mulligan children, haven’t paid too high a price for this public education. 

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I received an interesting question via my contact page this week.  I thought you would all be interested in my response, plus, it was too long to use on my Frequently Unasked Questions page.  Here’s the question:

After seeing all the stories in the news about multi-racial kids finding pride in the election of our new president, I was curious whether this positive media coverage has increased the number of foster/adopting parents willing to consider a mixed race child. I suspect that many prospective parents held back from considering it because they feared the stigma society would subject the child to. I love your show and feel it is helping me find my way to discern what would be best for our hopeful yet cautious attempt to become parents. Thanks you for providing such a caring and informative source with a wide range of discussions. I recommend this blog & podcast to everyone.

That’s an interesting thought, and truthfully I don’t know the answer.  I think it is too early to tell whether Obama’s election will increase acceptance of transracial or multiracial adoption.  I think (and pray) that it is a major step to further reducing racial prejudice, be it overt, subtle, or institutional, and it makes sense that it might increase adoption of mixed race or full black kids.  But I think we were well on our way to this goal even before Obama’s election. 

From the families I consult with and others that I talk to when I speak at conferences, I have seen much more interest in domestic adoption of all types since international adoptions from Guatemala and Vietnam have closed, and the waiting times to adopt from China have increase so significantly.  When I talk with them about options in domestic adoption many are totally open to adopting an African American child and are willing, and even eager, to do the work of preparing to become a mixed race family.  In international adoptions, the majority of children adopted have skin in varying shades of brown.  In fact, Ethiopia has been one of the fastest growing countries for international adoptions to the United States for several years. 

Unfortunately, as you point out, public perception of transracial adoption lags behind the reality.  The truth is that transracial adoptions work for kids and for families.  I see this success every day, but much more important, the research confirms it.  This is not to say that children of color being raised in a white family will not have issues to overcome.  They likely will.  It is also not to say that it isn’t better for black and brown kids to be raised by black and brown parents.  It probably is.  But if that is not possible, then all efforts should be made to find parents of any color because kids need parents more than they need matching parents.  I hope Obama’s life story will help dispel the myth that transracial families are inherently fraught with all sorts of insurmountable problems.

Obama, as the world now knows, was the child of a black African father and white American mother.  His father left when he was two and was never again involved in his life.  He did live with his Indonesian stepfather for five years, but for most of his life he was raised by his Caucasian grandparents and mother. 

His memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, is an honest portrayal of the successes and struggles of being raised as a black child in a white family.  He points out that although he was mixed race, the world perceived him as black, and he had to learn to live in American society as a black man.  His journey was not always smooth and his struggles were not those of an average American adolescent, but he survived and obviously has flourished.  The love and support of his mother and grandparents supported and grounded him.  I reviewed this book under transracial adoption books because I think it is a great resource to help white parents understand from a black child’s perspective what it is like to be raised in a white family and society.  It was written shortly after he left law school, and is not a political book.

I have noticed lately with the families I consult with a greater willingness to consider adopting from foster care.  I don’t think this has anything to do with Obama or even the greater acceptance of transracial adoption since the majority of children available for adoption from foster care are Caucasian.  I think it is the result of Guatemala and Vietnam closing to international adoptions, and other countries, such as China and now possibly Ethiopia, increasing restrictions on adoptive parents and waiting times.  I guess it’s true that every cloud has a silver lining.  I just wish we could avoid the cloud, but keep the silver.
 

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Those who have had to work hard so very hard to become parents—either through infertility treatment or adoption—often feel the pressure to be “The Perfect Parent”.  A couple of weeks ago a new mom told me that now that she was actually a parent after five long years of trying, she felt inadequate and scared of failure.  Her long journey involved four IUIs, three IVFs, one miscarriage, one birth mother changing her mind, one country switch, and finally the arrival of one beautiful son.  She felt that these numbers should  add up to total bliss, but three months into this parenting gig, she mostly felt inadequate.  While she was trying to create her family, she didn’t have time to stop and think; she just had to keep checking off the next item on her list, scheduling the next appointment, filling out the next form.  Now she had time to think, and she was plagued by fear of failure.  Failing her son, failing his birth mother, failing to live up to the hype in her homestudy. 

My heart ached for her.  I’m an old hand at parenting, but I understand where she is coming from.  I think most of us go into parenting thinking, or maybe assuming, and definitely praying that we will be The Perfect Parent.  Heaven only knows that I thought, assumed and prayed for that.  And yet, I’m not—not even close, and it certainly isn’t from a lack of trying.

There is something arrogant about thinking you can be The Perfect Parent, but I suspect that I’m not alone.  For me, it was less arrogance and more the desire to control life.  If I could somehow be The Perfect Parent, I would be able to make sure nothing really bad ever happened to my children.  Surely The Perfect Parent could better protect her kids from the vagrancies of life. 

It also seemed to me that The Perfect Parent would have less regrets, having, of course, made no mistakes.  As a new parent I was all for bypassing regrets.  Actually, that still appeals to me, but the reality remained illusive because it turns out that parental perfection is impossible.  There are simply too many moving parts.  Just when you figure out how to get a two year old through the day with a minimal amount of fuss, he turns three, and all bets are off.  As soon as you figure out what approach usually works best for child number one, along comes child number two, and once again, all bets are off.  Just when you think things are settling into a smooth routine and perfection is within reach, your husband changes jobs, or your father has a heart attack, and (are you beginning to see a pattern?) all bets are off.

Perfection is not only impossible, but trying for it is unhealthy for all concerned.  Can you imagine the pressure of being the child of The Perfect Parent?  For the most part now, I am content in my imperfection.  It’s not that I don’t want to be a good parent; I still want that more than anything.  But I no longer worry so much about being The Perfect Parent.  I’m not cut out for perfection or even striving for perfection, and apparently neither are my kids.  We seem to be a rather imperfect lot with our warts and blemishes only partly concealed from the rest of the world.  But maybe that’s for the best since perfect people make me edgy. 

But here is what I want that new mom to hear: our kids don’t need perfection.  They need our love and our best attempts, but they can handle our many mistakes along the way.  Parenting, like life, is a journey not a destination.  Bruno Bettelheim, the famous child psychologist, wrote a book awhile back.  I must admit that I’ve never read the book (of course, The Perfect Parent would have it read and highlighted), but I love the title, The Good Enough Parent.  We don’t have to be perfect, just good enough.  What a wonderfully freeing concept!

Nowadays, my goal is pretty simple: I just try to enjoy the process.  I’d rather be a happy parent than a perfect parent.  I figure that if I enjoy parenting, I will make good decisions most of the time for my children and for myself.  There are definitely times in the midst of homework struggles, sibling squabbles, and teen screw-ups that this goal seems pretty unrealistic, but I persevere.  And even on the worst of days, it is more satisfying and realistic than striving for perfection.

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Halloween this year got me to thinking about planned obsolescence. OK, just stick with me on this one, I promise there is a connection, albeit tenuous.  In this time of increased attention to sustainable living and carbon footprints, the whole concept of planned obsolescence seems irresponsible.  Why should manufacturers make a blender that is designed to last only a couple of years?  A blender ought to work, if not forever, then at least for 10 years.  I take pride in my old appliances and 10 year old car.  I feel like I’m doing my part to reverse some of what got us into this economic and environmental mess that we are in.

I know this is going to seem like a strange segue, but what started me thinking about planned obsolescence was Halloween.  I love Halloween in our small town.  We live on a dirt road with only a few houses that no trick or treater, or parent of a trick or treater, would ever come down, so every year we pack up our costumed kids and join most of the rest of the town going door to door through a residential area near downtown.  It’s like a city-wide block party.  Parents talk, kids gorge, and we celebrate small town life. 

I look forward to this annual tradition.  Over the years, my older children gradually have dropped out, opting for hanging out with friends rather than going house to house with parents, but I was still caught off guard this year when my youngest announced that rather than go trick or treating she wanted to go to a Halloween party with friends.  What??  I thought I had at least one more year before I was put out to pasture.  My husband thought the idea of going out to dinner rather than trick or treating was great, but I moped through dinner focusing on my newfound obsolescence.

I know that my job as parent is to work myself out of this role.  But although I know it, I don’t always like it.  For a few days after Halloween, I continually thought about all the other things about parenting younger kids that I miss.  In general, I’m no longer in charge of my kid’s time.  I used to be able to plan a family hike, trip to the museum, or the DVD for family night.  That isn’t my role any more, dadgummit.  We still do things as a family that I plan, but my children have their own schedules and desires that often come first.  I miss curling up with a chapter book with my kids each night.  I still usually spend time with them each evening, but we no longer share a book, since they prefer to read to themselves.  In my perverse mood, I even missed going grocery shopping with them.

After about a week of feeling sorry for myself, I decided that I needed to make a mental list of all the things I don’t miss about having young children.  I was reluctant to quit my pity party, so at first, I honestly couldn’t think of one thing.  And then on Tuesday as I was preparing dinner while watching the news, I realized that I don’t miss the arsenic hour: you know, that time in late afternoon when dinner needs to be fixed and baths taken, and the kids are tired and cranky and picking fights.  Arsenic hour, also known as “the witching hour” (although I always thought that they got the first letter wrong on that name), used to make me feel like that cat in the poster clinging with just it’s claws to a tree branch with the words “Hang In There” printed underneath.  Once I remembered arsenic hour, I was on a role.  I don’t miss early Saturday morning soccer and baseball games.  I know it’s heretical to say that in the land of children’s sport, but I thought it was inhumane to have games earlier than 10:00 on a Saturday morning when everyone knows that is the only day a parent stands a chance of sleeping in.  And I certainly don’t miss science fair projects, which seemed to come like a tsunami and consume our dining room table, living room floor, and family time.  And quite frankly, it’s nice to be able to vacuum a room without sucking up a hundred or so Lego pieces with every pass.

You are probably wondering why I’m telling you all this, since it likely feels irrelevant to those of you just starting or trying to start on your parenting career.  That’s a good question, but when I sat down to write this week, this is what I felt like pondering.  And hey, what good is a blog, other than to record your obsessions, er umm, I mean thoughts.  But in addition to the “it’s my blog, and I can say what I want to” reason, I think it has relevance to those of you at the beginning or hoping soon to be at the beginning.

I know that the advice to “stop and smell the roses” has become a cliché and is often poorly received.  I distinctly remember one afternoon when I was trying to clean red food dye off every surface of my kitchen including the ceiling (a budding scientist’s experiment gone wrong, the details of which are still too painful for me to fully remember, but should have been added to my above list of things I don’t miss).  A friend who had teen-aged kids called, and in a moment of ill-timed wisdom, told me to cherish this moment.  I truly thought I would kill her or at the very least spray her with what was left of the baking soda, vinegar, and red food coloring mixture.  So, I offer this advice with humility and an understanding of the difficulty, but try to notice the things you enjoy at each stage of your child’s life.  You don’t have to do this all the time and likely won’t be able to do it during the arsenic hour, but periodically make yourself catalog those moments of bliss that can be found at every stage.  My moments of pure enjoyment now that my children are older include having thoughtful conversations, playing family games of Spades and being able to whole-heartedly try to win, and really enjoying the TV show or DVD we watch together on family night.

I also share my thoughts on parental obsolescence since to do the job of parenting well, you must plan for your replacement, and that replacement had better be your child.  We start the planning for our own obsolescence almost from the very beginning.  We teach, or try to teach, our babies to comfort themselves to sleep; we give our toddler choices of what shirt to wear; we let our kindergartener select the family movie; we encourage our elementary schooler to pick his sport, even if it’s bowling; and dadgummit, we let our middle schooler go to a Halloween party rather than trick or treating with her parents.  It is tempting to make yourself irreplaceable, but be careful what you wish for.  The only thing worse than becoming obsolete to your child, is to not become obsolete.  And the up side to becoming obsolete is being able to gradually become friends with your replacement.

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I’ve always been fascinated by transracial adoption. Of course, I adopted transracially, so that certainly accounts for some of this fascination, but my interest long predated our adoption.  I think what is most intriguing to me right now is the disconnect between research and public perception.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because on the Oct. 22, 2008 Creating a Family show I interviewed a panel of adult transracial adoptee about transracial adoption from their perspective.  In preparation for that show, I re-read a lot of the research on transracial/multiracial adoption.  The research is almost unanimously clear:  transracial adoption can work, and work well, for both children and families. 

Transracial adoption has been a popular research topic, but I rediscovered one of the best studies in terms of thoroughness, follow-up, and inclusion of same race adopted children and birth children.  Rita Simon and Howard Altstein started their research in 1972 and followed 204 families for 12 years.  These families had 366 children; 157 were transracially adopted, 167 were white birth children, and 42 were white adopted.  Of the transracially adopted children, 76% were black and 24% were Native American, Asian, and Mexican.  The majority of children were under the age of one when adopted.

Simon and Altstein published a number of reports during the 12 year period, but the 1984 follow up was the most interesting to me since the children were adolescence and early adults (the median age of the transracial adoptees was 14.9)—old enough to have an opinion and to have experienced more racial issues.  The study was designed to find out “about their sense of belonging in the family, the sibling’s ties to each other, how they described themselves racially and socially, their scholastic and career goals, and, most of all, their feeling about having been transracially adopted.”

Simon and Altstein evaluated closeness to parents, siblings, grandparents, and other relatives and concluded that the transracial adoptees were as integrated into their families as were the children who had been born into them. The parents’ evaluation of their relations with their children was also very high for all of the comparison groups- transracial adoptees, same race adoptees, and birth children.

The transracially adopted kids were doing about as well academically as were birth children and adoptees of the same race.  Seventy-five percent of the transracial adoptees planned to go on to college, while 94% of the birth children planned to go.  No particular academic or behavioral difficulties were found in this study.  (Not all research supports this finding.)

There were no significant differences in self-esteem between the transracially adopted children , the same race adopted children , and the children born into the families.  When the black transracial adoptees were separated from the entire transracially adopted group, their self-esteem score was identical to that of the birth children.  All of the groups (transracial, same race, and birth) scored well in terms of self-esteem.  With a score of 10 indicating the highest self-esteem and 40 the lowest, the mean score in all groups was between 18.0 and 18.5.

This transracial adoption study did not measure “adoption outcome” or adoption success, but they noted that 18 of the 96 families interviewed in 1984 were experiencing serious problems.  In seven of these cases, the problems were attributed to serious mental, physical, or emotional handicaps present at the time of placement.  (All seven of these children were 4 years old or older when adopted, and all had been in foster homes and institutions prior to adoption.)  In the remaining 11 cases, both difficulties in the parents’ relationships and learning disabilities and developmental delays in the children were thought to be the cause of the serious problems these families experienced.  In only one of the 18 cases did parents view the problems faced by the family as being race related.

Opponents of adopting across racial lines cite concern that transracial adoptees will have confused racial identities that will plague them later in life.  This report found that 66% of the black transracial adoptees stated that they were proud to be black or brown, 6% stated that they were proud to be of “mixed background,” 17% said that they did not mind what color they were, and 11% professed that they would prefer to be white.  Among the 22 nonblack transracial adoptees (Korean, Native American, and Hispanic), 82% answered that they were proud of their racial heritage, 9% responded that they did not mind what color they were, and 9% declared that they would prefer to be white.  A fascinating finding was that the birth children’s responses were almost identical to those of the nonblack transracial adoptees, except that 7% stated that they would prefer to be black, Hispanic, Native American, or “different.”  It is important to note and painful to hear that about one-third of the transracial adoptees said that they were embarrassed when they had to introduce their parents to new friends or when they were the only nonwhite in a group.

The transracial adoptees did have more white friends than black and dated whites more often than African Americans.  Seventy-three percent of black transracial adoptees indicated “white” as their choice of friends, similar to the choice of the nonblack transracial adoptees.  White children were chosen as friends by 89% of the birth children and by 69% of the white adoptees.  All of the groups, however, had black friends.  Sixty percent of the transracial adoptees dated whites exclusively, 11% dated blacks exclusively, and 27% dated both blacks and whites.  Among birth children, 78% dated whites exclusively, 6% dated blacks exclusively, and 10% dated both blacks and whites.  The authors attributed the white preference in friendships and dating to the mostly white neighborhoods in which a high proportion of the transracial adoptees lived and the predominantly white schools they attended.

Although the panel of adult transracial adoptees on the October 22, 2008 Creating a Family show was not necessarily a representative sample, their discussion reflects a similar feeling to the Simon and Altstein study.  I tried to select a panel that varied in age and race: one Native American adoptee in her 50’s, one black adoptee in his late 30’s, one Korean adoptee in her early 30’s, and one Korean adoptee in her late 20’s.  In retrospect, I realize that Sandy, the Native American adoptee, was not necessarily representative of adult transracial adoptees since her adoptive family was highly dysfunctional, and her adoptive mother was mentally ill.  She did, however, add a counterbalance to the otherwise rosy picture of transracial adoption painted by the other adoptees on the panel. 

I thought it was interesting the number of questions we received from adoptive parents on how hard to push transracially adopted kids to attend cultural activities and language lessons of their birth heritage.  The consensus of the adult adoptees was to encourage, but not push, and they gave some specific suggestions of how to do this.  We also received a number of questions about what parents can do to help a child feel comfortable about looking different from the rest of their family and community, and how to handle teasing by peers. 

My favorite question though was the simplest: “What did your parents do right?’, and then we received a follow-up question: “What do you wish they had done differently in raising a child of a different race?”  I loved the panel’s honest answers.  We also talked about how to find the balance between honoring our child’s birth culture and focusing too much attention on their differences. 

Although adopting across racial and ethnic lines is not without its complications, what came through for three out of the four adoptees on my panel and for the vast majority of transracial adoptees in the Simon and Altstein study was the deep commitment to their families and contentment with being transracially adopted.  As this study concluded, “For the children . . . their adoptive parents are the only family they have and the only set of parents they want.”  Likewise, the vast majority of parents in the study express a deep satisfaction with transracial adoption and would recommend that others adopt children of a different race.  Transracially adopted families have all the warts and blemishes of other families, but at the end of the day, we are first and foremost a family.

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As a newly adoptive mom, I was the conscientious type.  I read all the books and attended more than my share of the lectures.  I was determined to ace adoptive parenting.  I knew that to get an A I had to instill in my child the cultural identity of her birth country.  This, the pundits assured me, was essential for her self esteem, for her to develop into a fully integrated adult.  Okie dokie, I’m nothing if not task oriented. Full integration here we come. 

We went to Love Feasts at a local Korean church, we read Korean fairy tales, we incorporated some Korean foods into our meals, we went to culture camps, we took the obligatory pictures of our daughter decked out in her hanbok.  Yes, it’s true, she ignored her Asian baby doll in favor of her Beanie Babies and later her American Girl doll (how prophetic!), but this was only a minor set-back in our quest for cultural identity. I send all my children off in the morning by calling after them as they run into school, “mah nee sah lang ay oh” (I love you very much) and my daughter sang it back to me as she disappeared into the building.

Fate smiled on us when the new associate minister at our church was Korean.  His wife and I became friends, and my Korean cooking improved.  I secretly beamed when my daughter begged for kim bap (a simplified Korean sushi) in her lunch box while my friend’s son, one year younger, begged for peanut butter and jelly on white bread.  I was making a solid A.

I felt I had reached the pinnacle when my daughter and I started taking Korean language lessons.  Now, for those of you from big cities, this may seem like no big deal, but I live in a small mountain town and trust me, it was a big deal.  I was sure to score an A+ at this cultural identity business.

The first year went relatively well.  My daughter, competitive spirit that she is, liked being better than me, and better she certainly was.  My mouth seemed incapable of forming the words correctly.  At one point the teacher asked me to stick my tongue out so she could determine if the problem was physical.  She sadly shook her head, while my child, the imp, rattled off something with perfect inflection and almost tripped over her smugness.

But by the second year, the bloom was definitely off the Korean language lesson rose.  On lesson days my dearest would jump in the car after school and immediately begin to whine: “Do we haaaaave to go?”  I began stopping at the ice cream shop on the way to the lessons.  (It’s not really bribery, you see, if it’s on the way.) 

I wrestled with what to do.  I wanted my child to feel pride in being Korean and I wanted her to at least be familiar with the language.  “You will learn about your birth culture dammit” just didn’t seem the right approach.  Also, I questioned how much use she was going to get out of being able to say soccer and kitten (an example of her latest choice for vocabulary words) in Korean. 

We agreed to compromise–my fall-back in parenting when a child feels very strongly about something.  We would shift the lessons from strictly Korean language to Korean culture and language, and we would stick with them until the end of the year and then reassess.  The problem took care of itself when the teacher moved that summer.  I noted with sadness that some time in 6th grade she stopped yelling mah nee sah lang ay oh over her shoulder as she ran into school.

Still I continued my quest.  We had attended culture camps in the past but had moved away from our former camp.  I had been searching for a camp that we could drive to.

Me: Hey, guess what, there is a Korean culture camp in July and it is only four hours away.

Daughter (age 11): Do I haaave to go?

Me (stalling and hoping for inspiration): Well, no….

Me (thinking): There goes the A. 

Me (out loud): but, I thought it would be fun for you and me to get away from home just the two of us, and we’d get to eat some good Korean food.

Daughter: I think I’d really rather stay at home.

Me (thinking): Oh great, I just wrote a book stressing the importance of cultural identity for internationally adopted kids and mentioned culture camps specifically, and now my own internationally adopted kid doesn’t want to go.

Me (out loud):  I hear there is a really big mall nearby, and we could go shopping while we’re there.

Daughter: We could always go shopping here.

Me (thinking): Do I stoop to throwing in a trip to Six Flags?  OK, shopping was borderline, but Six Flags would clearly put both feet on that slippery slope of bribery. 

Not that I’m against all bribery, as you will remember from my once weekly stop at the ice cream shop, but how low am I willing to go.  And at what point do I allow my child to decide how much Korean culture she wants.  In my dreams she was going to be a counselor at one in high school and college.  We tabled the decision and later decided that she could decide.  Yes, I tried once again to sway her decision, but she decided not to go.  And for the record, I resisted the temptation to throw in Six Flags.

This cultural identity business is tricky.  Our kids come from a different cultural heritage, but the reality of their day to day existence is, and should be, American.  I want my kid to be comfortable in both because when she leaves the protection of our family’s umbrella, the world will see her as Korean-American. 

There has been some interesting research on older Korean adoptees, although not much that has been published in peer reviewed journals. (I know I’m a research geek, but honestly, I can’t help myself.)  Many Korean adoptees say that they wish they had known more about their cultural heritage growing up—that they had grown up more comfortable in their Koreaness.  But I suspect, if asked, they would not have wished to have it shoved down their throats, especially as an adolescent.

Clearly my girl is comfortable in her soccer playing, iPod listening, piano lesson taking, American Eagle wearing American identity.  She’s the all American kid in many ways.  But my quest for Korean cultural identity is to help her feel comfortable with her other culture, the one she hales from but doesn’t live in.  I can’t recreate that culture for her, and I don’t know that that would serve her well.  What I really want is for her to feel comfortable in her skin, in all its Korean and American glory.  I think she does, at least to the degree that is possible for a 7th grade girl.  She tells me with a smile that she likes being Korean and she likes the attention of looking different from most of her peers.  She loves the food.  She remembers almost none of the language. 

I thought another couple of years at culture camp and language school would help cement the deal.   She disagrees, and at her age I think she gets to decide.  Although the quest doesn’t stop, the ownership should.  Right now she doesn’t feel much need to go very far in this quest. 

Last week when I went to tuck her in, she was re-reading for the hundredth time Tales from a Korean Grandmother.  I curled up on her bed and we laughed about our favorite folk tales.  As I was kissing her good night, she whispered, “mah nee sah lang ay oh.”  Yea, back attcha kid.  I guess, as with most things in parenting, I’ll settle for a solid B. 

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I received a question last week from a family trying to decide whether to take their four-year-old son on the trip to China to pick up their new daughter.  The anxiety of leaving her son was ruining what should be an exciting time.  I thought I’d share my thoughts with the rest of you. 

Most agencies I have talked with discourage families from bringing older children on the adoption trip, but I don’t think it’s so cut and dry.  Whether to take an older child with you depends on the age and personality of the older child, the age of the new child, your agency’s attitude, the referral method, the parents’ travel experience, the parents’ adoption experience, and the adoption process in the country. 

                         To Bring                                                               Not to Bring 

 If you decide to take an older child, talk with your agency at the beginning to gauge their attitude.  Some families recommend bringing a grandparent or friend along to stay with the older child while the parents are tied up elsewhere; otherwise, one parent can stay with the older child while the other parent runs around.  If you decide to leave the older child at home, consider whether one parent should stay home with her to minimize the disruption in her life.  If this is not possible or desirable, it is usually less disruptive if someone familiar to the older child moves into your house and stays with her there.  

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