I am a mom to a beautiful, smart, funny, witty, bright and clever
5 year old daughter. She is the apple of my eye and the centre of my
universe.
My daughter, J, was born in China. For reasons that we will
never know, J's birthparents, or tummy parents, as she currently calls them,
were not able to care for her. Through a series of events that we will
never fully comprehend nor be sure of, she was eventually placed in the care of
the Guigang Social Welfare Institute. By the grace of God, she was
matched with us in 2008 and we became her parents in March of that year.
We are amazingly lucky to have been able to become her Mommy and Daddy.
As a parent, and more particularly an adoptive parent, there are
things that define me. Some may be shared by other parents, some may not.
Some may be a breath of fresh air to adoptees, and some may be offensive.
The only one that troubles me in the latter. I hope to never say anything
that will offend adoptees, and I hope that none of these will be taken that
way. Honestly, I'm really not concerned about offending anyone else...
Here are some of my defining thoughts:
1. When you adopt internationally, citizenship is an important
part of the process. When your child becomes a citizen of your country,
it is an exciting day. But please remember that you are actually taking a
substantial part of your child away from them. When we went through the
immigration process for our daughter, we were performing an essential part of
the adoption process. But we were also being forced to take away our
child's Chinese citizenship. This is something I feel guilty about, even
though we had no choice in the matter. So when J became a Canadian Citizen, it
was bittersweet. We feel Canada is the greatest country in the world, for
so many reasons. But we've grown up here and it's all we've ever known.
We are not at all happy about having to revoke J’s Chinese citizenship in
order to become a Canadian…
2. We have no fear or anxiety about J ever finding her
birthparents. If any mechanism ever is developed that will allow us to
find them, and J wants to do so, we will support her 100%. I would be so
happy to be able to have them in our life. J will have questions someday
that she won't be able to answer without them. They have had to make the
most difficult decision a parent ever has to make. I hope that they would
be pleased to see that their child is happy and healthy, and respect the fact
that they have suffered great loss in this process. Ultimately, the process of
reuniting a child and his or her birth family needs to be based on the
willingness of the parties. I am not one
of those parties and do not have a say.
I’m ok with that.
3. We did not “save” our daughter from China. We did not adopt to “make a difference in
the life of a child”. Here is why these
comments annoy me… If these things
happened as a by-product of the decisions we made, then so be it. But it is clear that our first motivation was
selfish. We wanted to be parents. We wanted to have the joys of parenting and
we wanted to experience the pride of having an awesome kid. We did this for us. I admit it.
How could I feel we “saved” J?
We swooped in there, took her away from everything and everyone she knew,
to satisfy our need to be parents. Today,
she loves us unconditionally and is a proud Chinese Canadian girl. But someday she will go through a phase where
she resents us. And with reason. We have no right to expect her to be grateful
to us for becoming her parents. Because
to us, this adoption is about creating a family. But to her, adoption is about loss, trust,
and heartache. She says she misses her
tummy mummy and tummy daddy, even though she does not remember them. She says she misses her foster family too,
although she says she doesn’t remember them either. We need to be conscious of the fact that her
emotions in this process need to be respected, supported and addressed
appropriately.
I feel we are good parents to J.
But that will not be enough as she grows up, and we are fully aware of
that. She will have to deal with the
emotional toll an adoption takes on a child and remains with him or her as they
grow up. All I can hope for is that I’ll
be able to be by her side during this process and support her as a mom should
always support their child.
4. J does not believe in Santa Claus. Or the Easter Bunny. Tooth Fairy, either. I never did and haven’t made her to. At 5, she also knows that it is not up to her
to spoil the magic for other kids and respects that. I have assured her that I will NEVER lie to
her about anything important. Truth and
trust is essential in our family. I do
not lie to her about her background either.
I tell her what we know (in age appropriate bits and pieces), with
caveats where they are appropriate. I am
allowing her to choose what she believes in.
As such, I will be able to maintain as she grows older, that I never
lied to her about anything that was important (and hope she won’t consider it “important”
that I lied to her about the fact that chocolate is spicy….).
5. I believe the celebration of the day our child joined our
family should be called whatever feels right to us and to our child at any
given time in her life. There has been
much discussion about the use of “Gotcha Day” and the objections to
it. Some families have justified their
use of “Gotcha Day” in very interesting and convincing ways. We don’t use the term. We refer to the day we met our daughter as
our “Forever Family Day”. But that’s
because that works for us and I don’t feel comfortable with “Gotcha Day”. But I have no right to tell anyone else what
they should say. I’m all for doing my
part to increase sensitivity. But that
doesn’t mean I can tell people what works best for their family.
6. I don’t believe in
protecting my child from everything in this world. I feel that teaching her the skills to deal
with everyday risks is far more important and enduring than ensuring she never
gets hurt. Let’s teach our kids that
they need to be careful in dangerous situations, instead of making sure they
are never put in any situations that carry a risk. Let’s teach them that they will see and hear
things in their lives that are not acceptable in our family (swearing, drugs, promiscuity, “adult”
clothing on children, etc) instead of sheltering them from those things and having
them see those things later, at a time when they are ill-equipped to make
decisions about them on their own. Let’s
teach kids that they need to make decisions about their friends and what behaviours
they are willing to accept from their friends towards them, rather than running
to the school or to other kids’ parents as soon as there is something of which
WE don’t approve.
These are some of the thoughts that define me and our family. I may add to these from time to time, as I know there are many more....
So take it or leave it-this is me. I'm proud of me-of our family-of our life. We rock! :-)
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