“We adoptees create our OWN culture, and adoptive parents are an integral part of it as we have cultural foundations rooted and footed in two different nations. I would challenge you all to support your children further by helping them challenge and redefine the stereotypical cultural expectations of their birth culture, and create an amalgamation of their own. It pushes the boundaries of diversity, it pushes the boundaries of what is accepted in society, and it also brings us all closer to truth, and understanding of who we really are as a society.”~ Christopher Brownlee, adult adoptee, co-founder, Vietnamese Adoptee Network (VAN)
The Culture of Adoption
My children and I attended Chinese Culture Camp last summer. Played out against the stunning backdrop of Colorado’s mountains, it was a wildly successful weekend. Paradoxically, the Camp’s success had little to do with its emphasis on China; under the Chinese dance, art, language and crafts, lurked what might have been the most important reason our families gathered:
Culture Camp is a place that gives our international adoptive families a feeling of belonging. We’re not asked about how much our children cost, and our kids aren’t questioned about their “real” parents; we can just be ourselves without carrying the un-informed baggage of the non-adoptive world. Camp gives us all a mental break; it embraces and accepts our trans-racially adopted children, and it reinforces and regenerates our adoptive parent support system. We leave Camp with the energy of shared experience.
There is an enormous power when a group of people get together with love at their center. Belonging to an international adoptive support group means that power is initiated by parent-love and by the accepting, knowing camaraderie of our kids. It is camaraderie that is generated, internalized, and ultimately strengthening for each of our children.
Sherrie Eldridge, author of the book Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, is also an adult adoptee. She agrees there is a bridge that can help our children cope with being between two worlds, and she calls it the Culture of Adoption. Our daughters and sons can turn to this collective force of other trans-racial adoptees for the unspoken understanding of others who belong. This is the invisible benefit of participating in adoption support groups, and in attending Culture Camp. It is a comfort zone for all of us, but especially for our children who are “rooted and footed in two nations”.
The Culture of Family
Our children’s group sense of belonging is rooted in our own Family Culture. The tools we give our children to deal with adoption and race are grounded in our parent-child interactions; our kids will derive their coping skills from US. Creating a place of belonging at home will create a strong spark the adoptee can carry within, in the outside world. Sheena Macrae, adoptive parent, writes about using the tools of time and togetherness as Family Glue, the real essence of belonging that underpins a Family Culture:
“… it’s about teaching our children what our family is. For many of us with post-institutionalized children, we may have to spend time getting to know them, and showing them who we are, how we operate. Not just about the roles of mom or dad, but our take on the world and on the diversity issues that affect out families.
To do this, moms and dads need to spend time together with their children, and need to take time to hear their children. Essentially, this time spent by parents teaches children that they are valued, and therefore are of value. This is an important lesson for an adopted child, whose core may be laden with loss and lack of self-worth.
If we have made a transracial family, family glue doesn’t erase the factor of color. Family glue isn’t there to hide adoption from the public’s prying eyes; it’s not a cover-up for facts. Family gluesimply makes our children ours.”
A parent can emphasize family togetherness by celebrating connections, and by drawing the boundaries of togetherness. A healthy family consciously works and plays together.
Raising Family Awareness ~ Valuing Each Other
Call a family meeting and include everyone in your household
Describe the special attributes of each family member
Describe family goals
Talk about family unity and draw or talk about what families do to stay close
Ask each member to list three things that make it difficult to stay close, then problem-solve the difficulties as a family
“All for One and One for All”--attend each child’s school / sports / extra-curricular events as a family and celebrate each child’s accomplishments. Make regular participation in an adoption support group, or visit to Culture Camp, a family outing; make it clear to all that it is an important part of your family life.
Design simple family rituals to reinforce love and belonging, adoption and birth. Invite your children to share their thoughts and incorporate their ideas
Shine a daily “ritual” spotlight: at dinnertime, ask each family member to describe the high-point and the low-point of their day - no interruptions from others, allowed!
~ based on work by Doris Landry, M.S., L.L.P. & Jean MacLeod
Dick Fischer, editor of Adoption TODAY Magazine, beautifully summed up consciously spending time with a young child in his essay on Fatherhood. He advises:
“Get down on the floor, connect eye to eye and share a simple dialogue sparked with excitement and imagination. Teach your child to dream, explore the world around them and learn to “just imagine” by finding animals in the clouds, building bedspread forts in the living room or floating Popsicle stick ships down the gutter after a spring rain. A simple touch can be magic too. My daughter loved to touch and be touched, often falling asleep while lying on my chest, listening to my whispers and feeling the beating of my heart next to hers.”
If we are willing to devote hours to getting a child to soccer, ballet, piano lessons and Little League, it makes sense that equal effort should also be made to underscore the fundamental importance of Family Glue, of simply being together with our sons and daughters, of listening hard to the whispers and knowing the beating of two hearts.
Truth is an essential ingredient of “Family Glue”. ”Honesty makes ‘family pillars’, the pillars that hold the family upright and together” (Sheena Macrae). For an adoptive child, honesty and trust make that child feel safe, allow for effective learning and discipline, and make the child feel her parents truly “know” her. Working at honesty requires a great deal of communication and vulnerability, from children, and also from adults. A parent must be willing to discuss topics that are personally uncomfortable, and must be willing to field the tough questions that are part of adoption-parenting territory. Our children deserve to know and understand the duality of their birth, abandonment and adoption story, in order to accept and incorporate the experiences and emotions they come to us with. There is no honest way to discuss your child’s life story and past identity without talking about birthparent loss, the sad conditions that led to a happy adoption, and the split feelings that these dichotomies engender. Focusing on adoption loss does not equate with fixating on unhappiness. Acknowledging loss is an important first step in moving forward: a child can then learn to recognize it, own it, channel it and control it.
A parents understanding and acceptance of a child’s feelings is key to forging an empathic parent-child liaison; it’s putting a strong foundation under those pillars of truth. Adopted children are fearful of hurting their adoptive parents, and are unwilling to risk rejection. Parents must initiate discussion; we must model and teach behavior and emotional leadership, and pro-actively be part of a child’s internal world.
Teens who seek approval from peer groups or gangs are looking for a sense of belonging that their own parents couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. How do we ensure that our adopted children will have a deep belief in their entitlement to a place within our families? How do we help our children bridge all of their different pieces? How do we help them belong?
We teach “family”, we spend time together, we tell the truth, and we tell their story.
Several years ago, prompted by heart-piercingly wistful comments from international adoptees, I wrote a book about a nine year old who was adopted from China as an infant. At Home in this World, a China adoption story is a first-person narrative from a girl who is exploring the duality that international adoption has placed upon her. This girl, my heroine, understands that she needs to know about her past and deal with it head-on, in order to grow into her future.
All of our internationally adopted children eventually struggle to integrate their stories, “before and after”. A child who is comfortable expressing grief and anger, who feels understood by her adoptive family, and who carries the collective strength of other adoptees, can make a personal place in the world between her birth country and the USA, in an “amalgamation” that incorporates both.
Christopher Brownlee, Vietnamese adult adoptee, wrote, “We adoptees create our OWN culture, and adoptive parents are an integral part of it as we have cultural foundations rooted and footed in two different nations.”
Adoptive parents are an integral part. It is our job to recognize our children’s “invisible” adoption culture, guide them to it, and participate as family support. Home is not just where the heart is: for our “rooted and footed” kids, home is where they were from AND where they are now, and their emotional integration and connection to both. It is their Culture of Adoption, and their Culture of Family, welded together by trust, truth and love. A sense of belonging allows our children to meld both halves to create a whole. It gives them permission to accept two sets of parents; and it gives them a view of a future in which they may feel centered and at home, anyplace in this world.
