I'm Your Mummy: When Is Information Too Much?

This is perhaps the first controversial posting I've done on this site.  I know this because some on my list are also adoptive parents.  I've had enough conversations with some of them to know we are all over the map when it comes to our choices on how and when we bring details of our kids' adoptions and their cultural origins into their lives.  We each have choices to make and I'm sure many of them are private, which I respect.

Before I start I should say that we are parents of an orphanage child from China.  Parents of children from a wider spectrum of adoption circumstances (such as open adoption or fostered children) have a much tougher job as parents and I have nothing but the utmost admiration for them and for their commitment to their children.

There's An Article in Psychology Today....

In the months before going to China to bring Mimi home we attended the requisite pre-adoption seminars and heard all the current findings on the issues of when/how/why and with whom adoption information should or shouldn't be shared.  We knew that adoptees who hadn't been told until they were teens and older were universally unhappy about this so here we saw a clear-cut guide. On everything else there was something of the 'what's currently known' factor and we realized that we would have to navigate many of the subtleties of adoption awareness just as we had to with every other aspect of raising our daughter.

I'm a firm believer in intuition - I think it guides much of our parenting progress if we listen to and believe in it.  This is of course the underlying subconscious river on which is laid a foundation of education, awareness, self-reflection, and observation.  Each parent has to make choices they feel are best for their children and not every parent will go the same way at the same time.

When we got home from China I think I went through a period of what I'll call 'guidance-overload'.  Everyone wanted to tell us how to navigate the emotional waters of being adoptive parents and having an adopted child.  There were websites, magazines, books, and groups of every stripe.  It seemed to dominate our parenting orientation.  I saw it the other way around. Mother first, adoptive parent way, way, second.

Enough!  I finally said.  

Growing up I was surrounded by adoption and this continued into adulthood.  Cousins, in-laws, acquaintances, BFFs. Perhaps that's why it seemed like a perfectly natural option to parenthood.   As a writer I am a voracious and curious student of human nature and have been privy to the inner workings of many life journeys, including adoption beginnings.  Even with all the personal questions unique to adoptees  I was amazed by something: With expected variances based on their personalities, they are all on the same personal journey as the rest of the human race.  While their adoption is a thread in the fabric of a lifetime of concerns, challenges, joys, desires, disappointments, dreams, it is not the defining pattern. Certainly some wrestle with the loss of a DNA history for short periods of time, some put the questions into the background, some came to terms with the unknown, others still hold out hope, even as a tiny flame.  Some have met their birth parents, others have not, some by choice, others not. All in all, they seemed to be taking things in stride.

I also learned this:  Not one of them loved their parents less because they knew they hadn't been conceived by them.  Not one had strained relationships with siblings or other relatives because of their beginnings nor were they consumed by bitterness or anger because they'd been adopted.

And not one of them had written a book, magazine article, or joined a special-interest group, listserv or speaker's bureau focusing on their adoption.

That got me thinking.....and when we were told in rather strident and authoritative terms what, when, and how to tell our daughter about the facts of her adoption and pride in her Chinese roots practically from Day One I admit we bucked the trend and went our own way.  I like to think we've taken the middle path in face of wildly swinging sociological trends:

y  Mimi knows she was born in China, although we gradually let up on the repetition chant - she gets it!  She also knows that I was born in Canada and her Dad was born in the USA, her grandmother was born in China, moved to Japan and her Grandpa is a dyed-in-the-wool Kansan farmer who lived most of his life in Taiwan.  Her view of the world is constantly evolving because we travel to visit relatives nationally and internationally and acknowledge the pull of our homelands. Being citizens of the world we celebrate all of our cultural origins in the course of our daily lives through food, music, art and literature as well enjoying a healthy ongoing dose of Americana.  In our view, this doesn't include Mandarin immersion for Mimi because we don't understand the need to send our kid off to a school that educates her in a language not spoken at home.... it feels like an apology, defining her immigrant journey as one of separation and reinforcing it within our family.  As an immigrant myself (and my husband the child of immigrants) we want to teach our daughter how to balance past and present with a focus on the here and now.  

We hope Mimi will want to learn Mandarin (or any other language) later on because being bilingual is always an advantage but that choice will be hers to make when she's old enough to make it.  Early language learning is optimal but in English-speaking Canada we begin studying French when we start 7th Grade and our class was reading and discussing Guy de Maupassant en francais five years later so it can be done.

y  Mimi knows she was adopted and what that means in ways that are digestible to her age level.  We have a couple of books for kids we've shared with her that come at the situation obliquely but  we've really not spent a lot of time with them or in conversation with her about the subject. She has seen photos of the day we brought her into our family on many occasions. She also knows we wept with happiness and when we look at the pictures together I always cry again.   The concept of a visible wellspring of joy brought about by our connection has rooted itself deeply in her and she loves to share with us her own tears of happiness when they happen.  The pure joy of belonging is acknowledged and anchoring. 

y   Mimi knows she wasn't grown in my womb. She asked once and that was it. She also knows that a lady did this for her and then she got her mummy: Me.   I don't use the word bio-mum, tummy-mummy, first-mummy, etc. to describe this other person.  Just because the word mother is all we have to describe a woman who gives birth doesn't mean I am bound by the limitations of our language. Because of this our daughter hasn't had to internalize the concept of two mothers, and the resulting confusion that I firmly believe is way too complicated for a brain still in the primal stages of development. There is plenty of time for this later (we will use the Mandarin terms ma and baba).  When I hear stories about little ones who have to cope by obsessively play-acting the story of birthing, abandonment and finding another mother I shrink a little inside - I feel for these kids, I really do.  Why do we feel it necessary to introduce such complex issues at such a tender and fragile age?  None of the adoptees in my circle have ever cried foul because they were denied the full story of their origins before pre-school.

Even so our daughter has absorbed enough to own her story.  Last week when we were staying in a B&B in Canada our friendly hostess mentioned her son had been born in the U.S.  Mimi, who can be shy with strangers was quite chatty.

    "I was born in China," she promptly volunteered.  

    "Really?" our hostess replied, delighted.  "My son was born in Denver!"  Mimi leaned back on the chair.  "My mom adopted me," she added with a shy smile.  

My husband and I exchanged surprised glances.  By the ripe old age of almost five and by the standards set by the information gurus, she was way late in verbalizing this to anyone.  She seemed quite comfortable about it, too.   We debated whether to open a discussion with her about what this disclosure might mean among friends or at her upcoming elementary school and decided, once again, to wait for her cues to take it to the next level. Chances are she's already shared this with her friends and her attitude tells us so far so good.  

We have come to believe if our daughter  nutures that kernel of safe harbor as she absorbs the gradual awareness of her beginnings, even when she comes to realize that the anonymous people who gave her life chose to pass her on to the fates, to the unknown,  and that doesn't define her we will have done our job.  We can only hope the nourishment she has absorbed into her being through the thousands of moments of love, compassion and the pure joy of a thriving childhood will sustain her through this later part of her life journey and allow her to focus on the business of living a full life.    

 

Most of all I hope we can give her a legacy of keeping her adoption story in perspective and come to understand that life is full of mystery for all of us.  Adoption should not be what makes her unique.  

But maybe this will:

The other day she said to me, "Mum, I want to be a nurse-scientist-astronaut policewoman."  

Now that would be something worth writing about.