In Which I Ask You All A Question

I always expected to have at least three kids. So did J. (He always said four, minimum). And then we actually acquired some children, and suddenly two began to feel like a WHOLE LOT OF KID. For a year or so, the idea of having any more never really crossed my mind. But suddenly, it is starting to. When people ask the question any more planned? I've stopped laughing in their faces and started saying hmmmmm, we don't quite know.

Because honestly, we don't. We don't feel like this is the right time for #3 (or, who knows, #3 and #4) but it is starting to feel like the right time to start thinking about it. Know what I mean? And we really haven't thought about it yet. We've talked about it for probably less than ten minutes, all together, over the course of about three short conversations. So right now, I have no opinions and no prejudices and that's why I'm asking for your opinions.

Because we have one important complicating factor. Four years ago, we decided that because of my messed-up DNA, pregnancy wasn't the right choice for us. But in the meantime, IVF techniques have been developed that could be game-changers. (we have ethical reservations about some of the IVF techniques that could have helped in the past - these newer techniques address those concerns. Not going to say any more about that because my total ignorance of all matters reproductive would VERY quickly become apparent).

The weird thing (for me) is just how totally neutral I feel about pregnancy at the moment. While we were waiting to adopt Pink and Blue, I grieved and grieved and grieved about all that I felt like we were missing out on. I grieved the specific losses we faced, but I also grieved the lost opportunity to be normal, to have a family that nobody would feel the need to comment on. And I guess that is one of the big differences from this perspective - no matter how we form our family from here on in, we're already on an unusual path. No number of pregnancies would ever get us our Normal back. Another big difference, of course, is that I'm pretty dang pleased with how our first go at being not-normal has worked out.

And that brings me to my biggest fear about pregnancy, if IVF was successful. It's not the thoroughly unpleasant side effects (the women in my family tend to have horrible pregnancies) and it's not the bit at the end, with all the screaming. No, what I fear most is that if we announced a pregnancy people would burst into tears and hug me tightly and say 'oh, I'm just so, so, so happy for you!' and tell me that they have been praying that this would happen.

This might sound stupid (what? You'd be annoyed because people would be happy for you?) if you haven't become a parent for the first time by adoption. But those of us who have probably all have our own stories about the people who take us aside and tell us their stories about how you never know what will happen! and how they knew someone who adopted, and then after they adopted, they finally had one of their own! I've had one person tell me, with a straight face, that this is definitely going to happen to me, because that is what always happens. I came within a micron of saying to that woman wow, even though I'm on the Pill? That really WOULD be a miracle!

Even J, who turns not-taking-things-personally into an Olympic sport, has noticed this attitude and finds it utterly creepy. There's a thinly veiled not even slightly veiled message from some people that a bio baby would be the right and proper happy ending to our story. Nevermind that they really have no clue what the start of our story was. If we said guess what, we're adopting again! to people, many would be pleased, but I fear that for some, a pregnancy would be the reason to get out the champagne. If people said oh, how INCREDIBLE! I think I would hear finally, the real thing! and its corollory, those twins of yours were just practice babies, a means to an end.

(You are not a means to an end for me, babies).

And then I fear that I would punch one of those people in the mouth and get arrested and then I would have to spend my entire pregnancy in jail. So yeah, that is my biggest pregnancy fear.

Okay, srsly. I guess I had thought that if we had any more kids, it would be via adoption. But suddenly I'm starting to think hmmmmm, it doesn't HAVE to be, necessarily. I absolutely know that IVF doesn't guarantee pregnancy, but it's an option that was never on the table before.

And bringing this option to the table makes me ask all kinds of questions. I always assumed that all of our kids would be adopted, and that they would probably all be brown. What would it mean to Pink and Blue if we gave them a white, non-adopted brother or sister? Ummmm, adopted adults, what do you think? Opinions, parents with mixed families? I've really got no clue because I always assumed all of that stuff would never apply to our family. Adoption is what I'm used to. It feels normal to me, and I don't like change. Adopting again would in some ways be our easiest plan. But adoption is such a complicated issue - three separate people have flagged up this report over the last few days and what can I say? It's eye-watering stuff. (Start at p41 - thanks to Tafel for that pointer). I'm much, much more aware than I was a few years ago of the risks in international adoption, and I'm not talking about developmental delays from institutional care. I don't think it's a cut-and-dried 'no, we shouldn't', but I certainly don't think it's a cut-and-dried 'yes' either. There are no easy answers here. It's not simple.

If we do adopt from Ethiopia again, there's the question of infant or slightly older child. If we did want to adopt, say, a preschooler, we would probably have to get cracking because we would need to start again with being assessed, which would probably take about a year, and I wouldn't want too small an age gap between that child and Pink and Blue. (2009 is already quite crowded enough as a birth year in our family). And if we adopted another infant, I wouldn't want the gap to get too big. Would I? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. What should I be thinking about? School me.

And how about foster-adopt? I found out from our social services department that they ask people to promise that if they start a family by adoption, they won't have any birth children. What's THAT all about? It sounded to me (because the conversation was a bit longer than the one line I've given) like they are saying that it's not possible to love an adopted child as much a a birth child, so you can't have a bio kid after an adopted kid because you'll reject the adopted kid once you find out what REAL love feels like. Ummmmm... do I want to get involved with a social services department who think like that?

IVF (one or two rounds) would be cheaper than adoption.
J thinks that pregnancy is a bit gross.
I feel like some kind of traitor for even thinking about the possibility of pregnancy.
I know that's ridiculous.
I'm confused.

And so I ask this question to all of you - what would YOU do, if you were in our shoes? What should we be thinking about, rather than worrying about prison uniforms? As you can tell, I've got no idea. You won't offend me by blowing my favourite idea out of the water, because I don't have a favourite idea. You can go anonymous on this one if you have strong opinions and don't want me getting cranky at you. If you've decided to adopt after bio kids, or had bio kids after adopting, or just had more than one kid - how did YOU decide? On the other hand, how did you decide not to have any more? Extreeeeeemely curious, here.

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Just one more tiny thing - I've had a new rule imposed (by J) that I'm only allowed to blog (or comment) after I've written drafts of new chapters for this supposed book. I have agreed to this. I have not told him how short the chapters are. But it will definitely slow me down - I'm expecting my blogging speed to go from 'tortoise' to 'sloth'.
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Bite Sized

I have about ten minutes to write this. Let's see how fast I can type, shall we?

• Does anybody else think that teething is like PMS for toddlers? It's totally unprovable, some people suffer much more from it than others, and it's a fabulous catch-all for all kinds of unbearable behaviour. I notice this today because three people in my family are currently suffering from one of those ailments. You can probably guess who has got what. All I want to do is go back to bed with a hot water bottle and a bag of M&Ms. I have no idea what they want; if I did I guess this whole thing would be a lot easier.
  

• For a balanced and very thoughtful response to the recent changes in Ethiopian adoption, I recommend that you read this post. For what it's worth, here's my solution: Not a slowdown - fines. Money is the problem, right? So let's make the solution about the money. If agencies faced fines, I think they would waste a lot less of MOWA's time with poorly prepared applications, and (much more importantly) be much more intimidated about misrepresenting (okay lying) about children's circumstances. If an agency sends incomplete paperwork to court: they get a fine. If they send incorrect paperwork to court: they get a great big fine. If they send falsified paperwork to court, they get a HUGE, ENORMOUS, totally financially crushing, see-you-later-don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out-sized fine. And the person who tips off the authorities that agencies are falsifying information should get to keep half the money. I'm not kidding. I think this would work.

• In other Ethiopian news: There has recently been an outbreak of violence against Christians near Jimma. One of our friends is from Jimma. Those of you who pray, please pray that peace will be restored, neighbours will be able to live together without tension, and that this will not be the start of wider sectarian violence in that region or the country.

• I don't know what to say about the incredible series of posts that you have all written about attachment. For once in my life, I have nothing to say. Words fail me. It's been amazing. The best I can do is: Thank you. And you, and and you, and you.
  

Attachment Triage

In trauma response, Triage (pronounced /ˈtriːɑːʒ/) is the process of determining the priority of patients' treatments based on the severity of their condition. This rations patient treatment efficiently when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately.The term comes from the French verb trier, meaning to separate, sort, sift or select. (Thank you Wikipedia)

I think I mentioned once that my children used to slow-crawl-chase each other around the house. It was adorable. I loved it; I thought they were learning to play together. But now I know what was really going on: Pink was trying to hunt Blue down and kill him.

If Pink could be granted one wish, I think that it would be this: to be an only child. She sits on my lap and when Blue comes close, she uses her new, shiny boots to aim a kick at his head. He tries to join in reading with her and she bites him on the hand, hard. He sits next to her on the floor and she scratches his face. He makes any kind of move into her personal space and she sets up such a shrieking that I start to worry about what the neighbours must think. (She does get into trouble about this, by the way, but this is about attachment rather than discipline so I'm going to leave that topic alone).

And I think - Pink, what's going on? You shared a womb with this boy. I look back at the time when we got our referral, and almost want to laugh. Oh babies, my babies I would say to their photo. You have already lost a mother, and now are going to be torn away from everything you have ever known. I can't imagine the pain you will feel. Then I would weep a little bit and, choked with emotion, say but babies! You will always have each other. And I would stroke their pixellated little faces and smile a teary smile.

For children who had lost so much, it seemed like such an astonishing blessing for them to have not just a sibling, but a womb-mate. Their other half, their other self, the other one who was right there at their own beginning. I assumed that being twins would mean they would have a head-start, attachment-wise. I thought that even if they didn't like us, they would have solace in the deep familiarity of a twin. I always assumed that their two-ness would be a source of instinctive comfort to them, but right now, it seems that the reverse is true.

Because it's not just Pink's dislike of Blue that makes things complicated. When two become three, it's possible that uneven attachment within the family unit will result in triangulation. But what about when two become four? There are so many new dyads going on when two children are adopted at once, and it all begins to feel not just difficult but frankly, pretty mathematically complex. So what's the word for what happens at our house? Square-ation? Diagonalisation? I think the technical term is probably hot mess.

I drew an attachment-o-gram for the people in our house, sometime in December. This is what it looked like:

Mummy loves everybody. Daddy loves everybody. Pink loves everybody except for Blue. Blue loves everybody except for Mummy.

Yeah, Blue loves everybody except Mummy. I am not saying that lightly. I wanted, more than anything, to be able to feel like everything was either fine or travelling towards fine. But as time went on and Pink became more and more secure (clingy, at times, but a normal kind of clingy, not an 'I'm terrified you're going to leave me' kind of clingy), I could see an increasing contrast between the two of them and by the time I sat down to draw this diagram, I knew that the arrow between the two of us mostly only went in one direction.

I don't think I appreciated, before we adopted, just what a spectrum there is in attachment. I knew about RAD, but I guess I thought that if we didn't face RAD then everything would be pretty much fine. And our babies were so young when we adopted them. Three months! And some children suffer much more neglect than they did, for much longer, and form new attachments easily. But because Blue was only three months old when he came to us, because he was held to be fed, because his sister seemed to attach so well, it can be very easy to minimise just how awful his early experiences were. It can be very easy to forget how totally logical, how totally understandable it would be if they continue to affect him. And I was aware that all children are different - some cling, some run. I didn't want to turn into the sort of mother who would drag my toddler off to the psychotherapist or the hypnotherapist or the aromatherapist for imaginary emotional problems, problems created in my own fevered imagination, problems invented to feed my own need for drama.

And for a while I hoped that this was only one of those imaginary problems. It never used to seem like a pattern, just an agglomeration of bad luck. He's sick. He's tired. He doesn't dislike me, he just prefers his Daddy. When he wasn't very cuddly, or didn't want me if he hurt himself then okay, that might just be personality. But when he rejected me and snuggled deeply into the lap of a stranger one week at the library - and then someone else, the next week, and then another again, and started doing the same at church - then, I was worried. Not calling-the-adoption-agency-for-emergency-suport worried, but worried enough. He would show a lot of signs of security - checking in, chatting, really good eye contact - and then lots of signs of insecurity - inappropriate stranger behaviour, ignoring me, a rigid body when he was being held by me - all in the same day. I watched him, and I found out some things that I wish I had never needed to know.

I found out that it is easy to project feelings of love onto any reasonably contented infant, but that a child who can move suddenly shows where their heart really lies. I found out that I really had expected my children would prefer mother over father, even if I had never said it out loud.I found out that keeping a child mostly at home might be wise for a hundred different reasons, but that it can give a false sense of security that comes crashing down once the child actually spends time in a situation where stranger interaction is inevitable. I found out that when Blue picks strangers to snuggle up to, he prefers brunettes. I found out that nothing throws insecure attachment into sharp relief like a sibling whose attachment seems to be fine. I found out that a child can show a lot of signs of secure attachment and then a lot of signs of horrifyingly insecure attachment within the same day, the same hour. I found out that nobody in my 'real life' has any idea what this means. I found out that attachment issues aren't necessarily two-sided. In fact, I felt like a teenager again as I remembered just how painful it was to fiercely love someone who didn't seem to love me back.

And I found out that each time I tried to draw him in, to get closer, I had Pink screeching and pushing him away.

I cannot possibly explain just how big an issue this was. Because of course - she needs me too. If she wants to cling, I want to let her cling. And which child do you think is more likely to be picked up - the child who is grabbing my legs, saying 'mu-mmy! mu-mmy!' (yes, that's FINALLY happening) or the child who is running as fast as he can in the opposite direction, covered in his sister's bite marks? Yeah, you guessed right.

I wasn't deciding to prioritise her over him, it was just sort of happening. Hour by hour, day by day, she was getting the lion's share of the attention. The number one Big Thing I have learned, parenting two children, is this: It's not possible to put two people's needs first at the same time. Not possible. Sometimes their needs coincide, but often they don't and that means that a lot of my day is spent making split second decisions that essentially reduce to: right, which one of you is going to lose this time? This is fairly trivial when they are both thirsty and want a drink, or hot and need their jackets taking off. But when they both need therapeutic parenting my brain feels like it is going to just give in and finally explode.

Call me stupid, but I did not realise how difficult this would be when we decided to adopt two at once. Overall, I think we had excellent adoption preparation. Our homestudy involved months and months of weekly visits from the social worker, so you'd hope so, right? We covered the usual adoption topics in considerable depth, and I feel like we went into this as well prepared as was possible. We discussed attachment. We discussed race. We discussed discipline. We discussed food. We discussed our own childhoods. We discussed pretty much everything, I thought - but we never discussed the realities of adopting two un-attached children at the same time. We were asked one question about multiples during our assessment, and I improvised wildly and said something like we would treat twins like any other siblings, siblings who happen to be the same age. And our social worker said Yes! Absolutely! and ticked a box, and that was that. I think that they were just wanting to check I didn't want twins to be a pair of dolls to dress up in matching outfits, and my answer reassured them. (As if I would do that!

What do they think I am?Some kind of monster?) And so we were approved for twins. But we were never asked the question how are you going to do all the one-on-one attachment activites you've waxed lyrical about if you get more than one? Where do you plan to put baby #2 when you are babywearing #1? How do you propose to do all of those slow sweet silly games with your child that rely on focused, individualised attention if your other child is clinging to your leg and biting her brother's foot? Do you plan to keep one of your children in a stasis booth for part of the day while you do attachment stuff with the other one, and then swap? Because frankly, lady, that's the only way your plans are going to work.

The truth is, I had no idea at all just what it would mean to be working on attachment with two kids at the same time. I'm going to insert all the usual disclaimers about our twin referral here - very lucky, extremely grateful, yes indeed, no question. But seriously, no idea.

With twin-life in general, when people say 'oh, twins, how DO you cope?' my most frequent answer is: Triage. And I say it like I'm joking, but I'm sort of not. Sound extreme? You're welcome around here on a rainy afternoon, just after naps, anytime. The irony is, I make jokes about how having twins is all about triage, but I never noticed how I was utterly failing to properly triage the attachment situation that was staring me right in the face. The whole idea of triage is that you don't just care for the patient who is screaming the loudest, you care for the patient who needs intervention the most. On a battlefield, the person shouting the loudest is probably going to be okay, and I think that it's probably the same with children. The child who is wrapped around my knees, showing me she wants me and needs me, isn't going to get forgotten. The child who is quietly ignoring me probably needs connection much, much more. I was being an idiot, and letting the important get crowded out by the urgent.

And I'm pretty slow about these things, but eventually something clicked and I got it. I started to shove Pink off my lap and plonk Blue down there instead. Actually, I was pretty mean about it, sometimes. I would read Shades of People with him, and she adores Shades of People. So if she wanted to read along so that she could point at the giant infant on p14 and say 'bay-bee', she was going to have to suck it up and get deal with being close to him. And if she didn't want to, that was fine, but she was not going to shove him off my lap and sit there herself because Mummy has two babies, Pink-my-sweetie, Mummy has two babies, and Mummy loves you like crazy but Mummy loves Blue, too, because Blue is Mummy's baby just like YOU are my baby! And Mummy is having a cuddle with Blue right now, and it would be lovely if Pink wanted a cuddle too - we can all cudddle together! - but if she doesn't want to cuddle with Blue then she needs to play with a toy because Mummy is cuddling with Blue now, sweetie. And some of you are thinking no wonder your children are having trouble with speech and language if you use sentences that long to talk to them! but mostly I was just talking and talking to cover the sound of her screaming at me in protest.

But she got used to it. And more importantly, so did he. He started to relax with me much more. I spent a lot of time on the floor with him, crawling around, and letting him feed me stale cheerios that he found under the high chairs. And for a while, whenever someone asked me 'what do you do?' I would tell them about my job, but I would silently think I'm working on attachment with my son, that's what I do. I've always worked hard on attachment with them - always. But it's always been with them. It's only recently that I realised just how much he needed it to be with him.

And now suddenly, the last four weeks or so - it's like a switch has been flipped. He's always known I was The Mummy, but it seems that pretty much overnight he finally decided to stop shopping for a replacement. He will still go to other people for cuddles, but after a while he wants to crawl out of their laps and into mine. And then last week, he climbed out of his father's lap and into mine, and wouldn't budge. We went to the library again today and he snuggled with me all through the song time. He cast flirtatious glances over my shoulder at the other ladies, of course - otherwise he wouldn't be my Blue - but he wanted to stay with me. And when I come home from work he runs up to me and squeaks and wants a hug, most days, which sounds like a small thing but feels far from small to me.

And so here we are, for now. We haven't got there yet, wherever 'there' is, but I feel like the spiderweb of connections that we have is getting more and more tangled and dense and holding us together more tightly every day. I feel like I have learned a lot about attachment over the last few months, but the biggest thing has been - we couldn't have addressed this unless we had admitted it. Critically considering our attachment has not been easy, but I am profoundly thankful that I knew enough to realise that needing to work on our attachment did not mean that our family was failing. I'm convinced that we are more likely to fail our kids when can't imagine that attachment might ever be an issue for us, when we try to sweep these issues under the carpet. I try not to be strident (no, honestly, I do) but the more I see, the more I read, the more I learn, the more strongly I feel about this. Without turning into aromatherapy-panic-mothers, I think we owe it to our kids to be real about this when it's real in our lives, even if it does make us feel uncomfortable, even if it does remind us that our families are different when we would rather forget. I know that a lot of you feel the same - and if I had ever doubted that, this week would have shown me how wrong I was.

I'm sorry to report that we have seen less progress on the Blue-Pink dyad. They are starting to enjoy tickling each other, but unfortunately when Pink hits Blue, Blue has now started to hit back. So things aren't static there either - but that's probably a story for another day.

Ready When You Are

Mr Linky is now live! So If you're participating in 'Let's Talk About Attachment', here's how to do it:

• Write your post (that's the hard part).
• Publish it on your blog
  
• Go back to the original post and look for the new widget at the bottom
• Type in your name
• Paste in the link to your post (not the link to your whole blog, ie we want to see www.bunnies.blogspot.com/iluvbunnies rather than just www.bunnies.blogspot.com)
• That's it!
  

A few extra points:

• Post any time until Monday 7 March.
  
• If you don't have time write something new, but you'd like to participate... pick your favourite previously-written attachment post and link to that.
• If you don't want to post on your own blog, either comment in the original post or email me and I'll post it separately.
• Do I need to say this? Everybody loves comments, so let's start some conversations. But remember to be nice. Obviously.

Thanks for joining in. I know I'm not the only one looking forward to reading these!

Let's Talk About Attachment

Here's an idea I'm kicking around:

I've been thinking a lot about attachment lately - my perspective on attachment has been changing since our babies came home, and has changed even since I wrote this. I want to write about some of the recent attachment issues we've been thinking about, but I'm not finding it easy. It's not all easy stuff, and in some ways I don't really like thinking about it. My kids were three months old when we adopted them, they must be totally fine, right? I don't need to think about it. We are just an ordinary family. They'll be fine.

And then things happen that let me know that actually, I do need to think about it. As my children have hit new developmental milestones, new attachment issues have popped up. A few weeks ago, I tentatively mentioned on an Ethiopian adoption forum that I didn't think we had 100% secure attachment going on in our house. I then said that I no longer saw that as a huge admission of parenting failure, and wondered whether actually it might not be fairly normal. I had hoped that others would say 'yeah, me too' but all I got was crickets. Of course, then I started to panic. Maybe everyone else really has made it. (And I bet they're all doing Ethiopia-themed craft during naptime, too, bah!) And then I remembered: Attachment theory wasn't developed to describe adopted kids, it was developed to describe relationships between members of ordinary bio families. (I know that classical attachment theory isn't the last word in how to talk about relationships between parents and children. Personally, I like Patty Cogan's term 'connections', partly because of the way it implies something that grows, rather than a place you get to and then stop. But when I find myself talking about this stuff, I end up using the word 'attachment', and all the other words that go along with that. Feel free to butt in and suggest better words and definitions if you have them!) It's more complicated with adopted kids, but not all bio kids are securely connected to their parents - it would be a bit freaky if all the adopted Ethiopian kids were magically doing A-OK.

So why is it so hard to talk about it? I think that the China adoptive community is better at talking about attachment than the Ethiopian adoptive community. This might be because there are just so many more complete adoptions from China - it makes sense that there is more dialogue about pretty much everything. It might also be because the program has been going for much longer - a lot of the adorable babies / toddlers are now at school, and behaviour that can be dismissed in a tiny kid suddenly pulls into sharp focus and parents are forced to start thinking hard. It might be because babies from China are often older than many of the infants adopted from Ethiopia, and attachment problems really are more widespread. But it might also be because there is a persistent view in Ethiopian adoptive circles that says attachment isn't as much of an issue for our families. When we were thinking about where to adopt from, we got lots of positive information about just how well Ethiopian kids attach. Ethiopian people love children! They are so well cared for! and so on. And this may well be true - the people who worked in the children's home where my babies lived were extremely kind. But they were also utterly overworked, and it was work to them - they weren't mothers to these children. My children spent three months flat on their backs on a mattress staring at a ceiling, and I'm not sure how much difference it made that the mattress where this took place was in a country where children are loved and valued.

And of course I'm not saying that nobody is talking about it. The other people on this forum may not be avoiding the issue - they may well have been busy making dinner, or washing, or you know, actually DOING attachment stuff with their kids rather than talking about it. Some people do blog about it. But if race is the elephant in the room in our adoptions, then I think that attachment is the horse. Or at least the medium-sized dog.

Many of us don't have any other kids. My adopted kids are our first try at parenting, and so how would I know what 'normal' attachment behaviour is like, outside of a book? How do we deal with having no clue about whether what is going on in our house is normal? (Or is that just me?) So. Who wants to talk about it? The idea I'm kicking around is that I beg you suggest that people (anyone who wants to) writes something on their blog about their experiences of attachment in their family and I'll link to all of them here*. Not just Ethiopia families - anyone.

You could write about the hardest thing you've faced with attachment. You could write about something you thought would be hard, but that turned out to be really easy. It can be happy or sad, long or short, whatever is happening or has happened in your house. Here are some starter suggestions:

For PAPs:
How are you planning to decide who gets to hold the baby (or teenager!) when you get home (and how are you going to tell the people who don't make the list?) Have you read a book that really shaped the way you think about attachment? If you have kids already, how does this affect your plans to work on attachment and connection with your new child? Do you think 'attachment' is just a big hoo-ha [again with the technical terms] over nothing?

For APs:
How has attachment with your adopted child been different to what you expected? How has it been exactly the same? Has it been a really big deal in your house, or not at all? What have you found easier - personally bonding to your kid, or helping your kid to bond to you? If you have an other half, does your child have a favourite parent? If it's not you, what do you do about it? How have siblings affected your family attachment dynamics?

Or, of course, something TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

Post anytime between now and Monday 7 March. I'll sort out a Mr Linky before that date, and I'm going to write something so it won't be completely empty. So, who's in?

*If your mother reads your blog and you would rather not use this opportunity for her to find out that you're not going to let her hold her new grandchild, (or you have some other reason for wanting to write, but not on your own blog) just let me know and I'll post what you write anonymously here. Or you can leave it as a comment if you'd rather!

All Of This Is Also True

The Family That Takes Prozac Together, Stays Together

This has been a much, much better week. The babies have been easier and J has had a few days off and I feel like a human again. Tall buildings have lost their immediate appeal. I'm thankful. I'm also incredibly thankful to those of you who reached out either here or offline to say ME TOO or IT GETS BETTER or YOU'RE OVERREACTING BUT I LOVE YOU ANYWAY. Bottom of my heart kind of thankful. It makes all the difference.

The same day that I posted here last week, I also finally gave into my mother's nagging encouragement and posted a whole bunch of photos on the boring other blog I maintain just for family. And yes! I felt like a giant hypocrite because with one breath I'm saying 'oh, poor me I'm not coping' and then with the next I'm saying 'oh, look at my adorable children and my perfect life!'

they are adorable, aren't they?

if somewhat bent on destruction.

and of course the thing is - both are real. My children are adorable, this is the life I always wanted, and some days I don't cope at all. Hello, cognitive dissonance.

Because I'm running out of naptime, I'm going to directly paste what I posted there. There are one or two duplicates of pictures I had already posted on this blog - apologies. I hesitated, but then I remembered that all of this is also true. That post is the other half of what's going on here, and it was called:

Let's Pretend That It's September


which is pretty much the last time I posted photos, I think. Would you rather hear excuses, or would you rather see photos? Yeah, thought so. Here's one of my favourite pictures, for being so nice about the delay.
And now my next question: would you rather have captions and dates, or would you rather just guess, and see the pictures before NEXT September? Yeah, thought so again.

It's LIFT the flap, not LICK the flap, little man.
(Sorry, it's impossible NOT to caption that one)

It's been a YEAR! (Well, ummmmm, I mean it WAS a year when this photo was taken on Oct 27. Now it's been quite a bit longer. Moving swiftly on....)

sadly, not our house.

nor this.

whereas THIS.... okay, actually, still not our house.

Babies have not yet got the point of being on holiday.

Dolls, on the other hand.... they get that.

Also, twinkle twinkle little star is a concept that has found great favour.

as has banging on the piano

and the cat. Our little girl is having her first lesson in unrequited love.

Our little boy is not.
Unless you count his all-consuming love for The Light, which he would cuddle up to and carry around with him if he could.
Self-explanatory, really. And hang on, I wasn't supposed to be doing captions.
Cousins!!
She discovers just how much fun stereotypical gender roles can be

(and speaking of stereotypical gender roles, here is a picture of Pink in her favourite coat. Just so that you know I'm not REALLY doing immense psychological damage with their new blog names. And no, this wasn't in the original post).

They love this toy so much that we have had to confiscate it. There was too much biting.


She's telling lies. I'm this angelic, ALL the time.

so many places to kiss, so little time

post-bath foot-wrinkle

I has a nose!

You are so embarrassing that I can't bear even to look at you.

sweet, sweet television! Where have you BEEN all my life?

Does the tutu go over the paunch, or under the paunch? 'Tis the eternal question.

Can you please speak up? The reception isn't very good.

Whaddya mean, gentle hands?

Okay, Kevin says time to stop blogging now.

Dispatches From The Middle Of The Ocean

If you're in a hurry, come back when you've got a cup of tea and a bit of time to spare, because this is l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng. And honestly? I feel a bit fragile about publishing this, but I think I'm just going to click the button and try not to think too hard about putting it out there.

I'm going to level with you and tell you that right now, I find it hard to read about people's happy family adoption stories. I find myself assuming that life really is like that all the time for everyone else. It's one endless round of creative playtime, where appropriately-developing children are watched over happily by an adoring mamma. This adoring mamma spends the children's naptimes crafting Ethiopia-themed toys for them, rather than sitting around in her dressing gown and wishing she could have a G&T. I read these stories and I know that that nobody is making a hash of things like me. Right now, I even find it hard reading about the bubbling excitement of people who are preparing to travel - forgive me, please - because I know, I just know that all of these people are going to be better, happier parents than me. They won't be feeling like this, fifteen months on. How could they? They're about to be given the greatest gift of all, a child. How could they ever feel anything other than grateful for that gift? Of course, there will be hard days, but they will always feel basically content and appreciative. They won't find their fantasies suddenly shifting from fluffy blankets and babies to how much they would like to find themselves stranded, alone, on a desert island. How could they? Only an awful person would have thoughts like that.

And actually, that awful person never used to be me. When we came home with our babies, we had a tough (tough!) transition into parenthood, like most normal human beings. But after a few weeks, things started to feel normal again, and then they even started to feel good. And I liked that. Finally, I got to be a mother to these two wonderful little human beings, and it was good. Hard, but good.

Mostly, I felt like I was walking along a road that I could manage. When the hard times came, it was like the road led straight into a lake, and I found myself swimming instead of walking. Swimming takes a lot more effort, and there is nowhere to rest. The early sleep deprivation felt like one of those lakes. The hunger strike of 2010 felt like one of those lakes. They were hard, and I was tired, but there was land all around me and I knew that eventually I would get across the lake and be back on dry ground. The lakes were not fun, but they were always finite, and they felt like just a small part of a life that I could mostly manage.

This is pretty much what I thought parenting was going to be like. Then overnight, someone came and took my sweet munchkin babies away and replaced them with toddlers. I've got to say - I'm not entirely sure that it was a good trade.

And now, it feels like the lakes have become bigger and bigger. There's the lake of 'who was I kidding when I thought I could manage working and parenting', which is adjacent to the lake of 'I really wish that my husband could occasionally get home before 9pm' and not far from Lake 'bye bye, morning naps, and therefore bye bye, morning housework' which was definitely not on my map for this part of the journey. But these are small bodies of water compared to the chain of lakes known as 'Toddler Behaviour'. Lake 'I would prefer to sit in this dirty, stinking nappy until my bottom rots off than let you change me' is much bigger than expected, and I've been swimming through that for months and months. Lake 'biting and scratching' is not beautiful, and nor is Lake 'I demand that you give me that sharp knife / burning liquid / electrical cord right now'. We've also been trying to swim our way through Lake 'Surprise! New attachment issues!' which will have its own post. Of all of these, Lake 'Extreme unpredictability' is probably my least favourite. It's alternative name is Lake 'This might be a wonderful day or an awful day and you have no way of knowing' . I do not like it. I do not think that it has a booming tourist trade.

And the thing is - I'm in the middle of all of this and then one day I look around me and I realise that the landscape has changed. The lakes have begun to run into each other until I'm really not in a lake anymore, I'm in an ocean. There are islands in the ocean, like the island of Pink finally learning to say 'duck' and the island of their unbearable, hilarious cuteness. Some of them are big islands - two weeks ago, we had a perfect weekend where they were cherubs throughout. I do get to spend time on dry ground. But now it's the land that feels finite. Even when I'm standing, I look around me and I'm surrounded by ocean. And when I'm back in the water, I don't know when it's going to end.

Maybe that's too metaphorical. And I was prepared that things would be hard. What surprises me is that sometimes, these days are as difficult to endure as the very hardest days of it just being the two of us. Three, if you count the cat. I still, regularly, have times when I cannot stop myself thinking I do not know how I am going to survive this day.

On these days, I find it hard to like my children, and I certainly don't like myself. On these days, it seems always to be nine thirty in the morning, or four thirty in the afternoon. Mostly I feel like I can get through, but one day in a hundred I just want to jump off the top of a very tall building. Okay, one in fifty. At the moment, maybe one in ten. And the worst part - on these days, I see so many sides of myself that I would prefer would stay hidden. Angry sides. Irritable sides. Lazy sides. I see impatient, bored, cranky sides until it seems that I have turned into nothing but a dodecahedron of maternal vices.

Once I was jealous of women who planned their babies around their summer holidays. Now, I'm jealous of women who have any form of domestic help, who have husbands who come home in time to help with bedtime, who have parents close enough to babysit, who have (again, forgive me) only one child, whose two-or-more children don't turn their living room into a scene from Lord of the Flies the moment their back is turned, or, most of all, women who don't have any of that yet somehow manage to retain their sense of humour and perspective.

I knew that the hard road I walked to motherhood would not stop me finding motherhood difficult once I got there. I knew that feeling sad about childlessness would not innoculate me against finding motherhood tough. I knew that. But I suppose that all the grief I felt, all the worry, all the sadness... I thought that would innoculate me against feeling ambivalent about motherhood. I knew it would be hard, but I thought that hard meant difficult. I thought it would mean I would get to the end of the day and think That was incredibly tough. I didn't think that I would get to the end of the day and think I'm not sure that I want to do this anymore.

You'd better believe I have a lot of adoption-related guilt about admitting that I feel ambivalent about mothering right now. My kids are wonderful, adorable, insanely delicious little bundles of humanity - you know I know that, right? I love them with all my heart. And yet so often, at the moment, I wake up in the morning and my first thought is "oh no". So yes. There is lots of guilt. I can't believe that anyone else in my shoes would feel like this.

I think that adoptive parents are often a bit quieter than others about the times when we find parenting really difficult, especially when we are together, whether online or in real life. I always assumed this was because we were more fundamentally grateful for what we'd got. And maybe that's true, but I'm beginning to wonder if it is also because we are just a bit guilty or ashamed of feeling this way about something that we wanted so much. Actually, I'll lose the non-specific plural and speak for myself: I think I don't want to admit just how hard I have been finding things lately because it makes me feel guilty and ashamed.

And even when we bare our souls, and talk about the hard parts, there's some kind of obligation to finish on an up-ending. I do it myself, all the time. Earlier today, I got really cranky at Blue because he was grabbing his bottom when it was covered in poo. Pink was grabbing my knees and shrieking and then Blue tried to wriggle away and nearly fell off the change table and the day's traumas all hit me at once and I thought 'I can't take this anymore!' and then I put my elbows on the change table and my head in my hands and I started to cry. But then he reached out and stroked my hair and made humming noises and I realised that it was all worth it. End of story, right? What I haven't mentioned is that he stroked my hair with the same hand he had used to touch his poopy butt, and within two minutes he was yelling about something else when I still hadn't recovered from the first thing. And although they can go from sunshine to storms and back again in the blink of an eye, I can't keep up. If one of them has a tantrum, they get over it immediately but I'm still reeling from it, heart pounding, ten minutes later. Spending the days with them is like trying to go ten rounds with a pair of weebles. The up-ending is never the end of the story, unless it happens as I'm shutting their door at bedtime. Sometimes the dominant emotion of the day really is ambivalence, and it's best friend, extreme adoptive guilt.

But I don't really like to admit it. In fact, my brain won't even really let me believe that I feel this way. Yesterday, I went to visit a friend. On the way back, we were walking along in the late winter sunshine. I would sing a pattern of notes, then Blue would echo it back, then I would sing another, and he would echo again. Pink was sometimes joining in, and sometimes turning around and grinning at me and I don't think that I've ever been happier in my life. And as we were walking, I was thinking about writing this, and some kind of cranial override function kicked in. Don't be ridiculous, Claudia, my brain told me. Why would you write that silly thing you've been thinking about? You don't feel ambivalent about being a mother! You love being a mother! See how much fun this is? And I argued back But ambivalent doesn't mean it's always bad, it just means I have mixed emotions. And it's not always like this. Yesterday it was awful. I remember. And then my brain said No, you don't! You're imagining it. It wasn't awful at all. Maybe it was difficult, but it wasn't awful. And I replied Hang on, I'm pretty sure it was actually awful, and I was feeling like I was going to scream until something shattered but the override function said Don't be silly, Claudia. You're so grateful to finally be a mother after waiting so long, how could you possibly have felt like that? You're imagining things. It was fine. You were fine. and by the end of the walk home, I pretty much had myself convinced that I was overreacting, that I had imagined how I felt that other time. I guess it's this sort of brain programming that convinces people that yes, they really would like another kid. *

I find myself just so very certain that I can't possibly be feeling anything substantial other than gratitude. Sometimes I act as if God and I had a one-time deal while I was waiting - God, if you can get me through this awful bit of my life then I promise, I promise I'll never bother you again. I'll never find anything else difficult, ever again, I promise. But God doesn't make deals, and if he did, he wouldn't make a deal like that. I need to learn, so many times, and in so many different ways that the God who helped me through childlessness has not changed and abandoned me now that I've got kids. I am allowed to admit - to Him, and to myself - just how much help I still need. He sets the lonely in families, but he also grants rest to the weary and right now I am reminded how much I need that rest because I feel very, very weary**.

If you're looking for an up-ending, here is the best I can come up with: there is one saving grace about this ocean that I find myself floundering it. This time in my life might be just as hard as childlessness, but it is nowhere near as isolating. Some days, I still feel profoundly miserable, but the difference is: I can say it out loud. I find it hard to admit to other adopters, as I've already said, and I do try to have a filter and not moan to childless people.*** But In my day-to-day life, it's ridiculously easy to find sympathy. I don't have to do that 'hmmm, she's older than me, been married for a while, doesn't have any kids, I wonder if maybe we might have this in common' reconnaissance that used to be necessary before sending out tentative conversational feelers. Instead, random strangers in cafes raise their eyebrows and say 'Twins!' and ask me how my day has been, and if I answer honestly, they say encouraging things in reply. In fact, the rest of the world is much kinder to me about this than I am to myself. While I'm thinking 'how can I be so ungrateful for such a wonderful gift?' other people are saying "oooh, that sounds terrible, you really deserve that coffee!" A few days ago someone asked me how old my kids were, and when I said eighteen months she shuddered and said 'oh, that's a dreadful age' and I nearly kissed her. Sometimes I think that what we want in life is not happiness so much as connection, and some days I think that the only reason I think I'll eventually get to the other side of this ocean is because of the solidarity that other people have offered me on the way.

It's the exact opposite of what I used to experience while we were waiting, when I felt like my suffering was real but the world ignored it. In fact, this parental solidarity was probably the hardest thing I faced, while we were waiting. The reason that I, in my childlessness, felt so isolated was that everyone else seemed to be complicit in the assumption that parenthood was the hardest thing ever, the only trial worth talking about. And now, I appreciate it so much on the other side and I can see why everyone is doing it, why we all feel like we need that validation.

In other words - all those ungrateful, whiny parents who were made me miserable while we were waiting? I get it. I finally, finally, finally get it. I got it intellectually at the time, but now I get it. I'm not saying that I think it was okay to complain like that to a childless person, because it wasn't. It was thoughtless and selfish and unkind. But I think that now I can see how easy it is to be thoughtless, and selfish, and unkind when life feels like nothing but seawater, all around. (I've probably displayed all three of those already today in some direction or other, which must make me eligible for some kind of award).

In fact, I'm going to be honest and tell you - if I hadn't been through what I've been through, right now I would talk about nothing else except for how tough this is. Ever. I would have no filter. I would accost people at parties (if I went to parties). I would bore people at work (oh hang on, I do bore people at work). If I met someone without any kids, I would probably say 'hey, are you SURE you want them? It's harder than you think, HA HA HA'. In fact, it is horribly, terrifyingly, chillingly possible that I would say something to them like if you want a kid, you can take one of mine!

Excuse me while I sit here for a moment in shame.

And I don't, of course, but the part of me that wants to is big enough for the rest of me to reel in horror and think how did I become this unforgiveable hypocrite? I feel like I've betrayed my old self. If I could talk to Claudia-from-the-past, I would beg her understanding and reassure her that I haven't forgotten what life used to feel like. I would also try to gently remind her that life is not the Pain Olympics. That pain was awful. It's over. I couldn't be more thankful. But that doesn't mean that I have to hang onto it forever, or this isn't real, or that there might not be new, different oceans ahead. (And then I would run away, quickly, because I'm really not sure she would agree and I'm pretty sure she could take me in a fight).

And so I continue to swim. I don't think I'll be here forever. A few people have said that two and a half is the magic age where things suddenly get better. Then, or later, or hopefully before, I'm hoping to see the shore again. But in the meantime, here I am. Anybody know where I can buy a boat?





* who knows. Maybe one day. But I think I would need a lot more cranial override action first.

**This is not a discussion of adoption theology. I have opinions on adoption theology (quelle surprise) but this is not the post where I'm writing about them.

***unless you're reading this blog, in which case I apologise. But I kind of wish I'd had some straight talk about this stuff from someone who had been on both sides of the fence before I adopted, so maybe I'm not apologising that much. You can choose.

Complicated

When I was little, I loved music. I still love music, but back then I really loved music. And nobody ever said that it was because of the colour of my skin.

A white kid who is good at music (and lots of white kids are good at music) is never told that it's a racial characteristic. People never said to my mother 'oh well of course little Claudia loves to sing! She's white! It comes totally naturally to her!'

I think you can see where this is going.

Lately I've been thinking about complexity. I don't like the fact that sometimes, people think they know about my kids, when they don't know my kids. From what people say to me, sometimes I get the feeling that white kids are allowed to be complicated, and infinitely variable. Black kids, on the other hand, are expected to be good at music. And running.

And guess what? I think that my kids are pretty musical. And maybe it's genetic, but there's also a good chance that it's because I make sure that the three of us spend time singing and dancing together every. single. day. Probably, it's some combination of the two and there's no way of unpicking how much belongs to nature, and how much to nurture. If they do have this talent, I want to celebrate it because this talent will be part of what makes them who they are: what makes Blue, Blue, what makes Pink, Pink. Not because Blue and Pink are black.

I have no idea, yet, whether they will be good at running; they are still at the drunk zombie stage of walking. If it turns out that they can run quickly, I can tell you now that will be nothing to do with me. That will be because their mother or their father could run quickly. Or, maybe it skipped a generation and it was one of the grandmothers who had this skill and passed it down. But if it happens, it's going to be something that came from their family, not from their race. I think there is such a big difference. And so I don't want anybody assuming anything about what they're going to be 'genetically' good at, unless that person knows their first family.

We humans have small brains, and we live in a big world. It's understandable that we want boxes to put our thoughts in, and use then use those boxes to put people into. But I think that one of the best ways we can show respect to other people is to allow that they are complicated. Even if our stereotypes are 'positive' stereotypes, I think stereotypes are always demeaning, because they stop us seeing a whole person and only let us see a cardboard cutout, and who wants to be a cardboard cutout? I think this goes for more than just race, although race is what is making me think about it.

I've said before that I think adoptive parents run the risk of talking about Ethiopia as if it is a theme park, and Ethiopians as if they are always a nation of beautiful, friendly, cheerful people. We certainly met beautiful, friendly, cheerful people while we were in Ethiopia. But we also met a few who were surly, a couple who were lazy and at least one who was deeply depressed. (We even met a guy who wasn't good looking. Shocking, I know). They certainly were not all singing and dancing, and I think some of them even wanted the latest consumer goods. It seemed to me that it was a country full of people just like me, really. Different from each other. And complicated.

And complicated is what I want people to expect of my Ethiopian children. Maybe, in some kind of grand cosmic joke at our expense, they will turn out to be musical and fast and that will be the sum of their talents. But maybe their youthful tunefulness will turn into tone-deaf caterwauling as they grow; maybe they will be as slow and uncoordinated on their feet as I am. More likely, they will be averagely musical, and averagely speedy, and the gifts their first parents have given them will turn out to be totally different: gifts for listening, for storytelling, for comedy, for chemistry, for climbing trees. We can't know now, and we don't need to. I want them to be able to develop into who they are, free of expectations.

I just want people to let my kids be complicated.

**********************************

One more thing: I'm going on a blog break for the next month. I need to spend my writing time on this supposed book, and if I don't say here that I'm taking a break, my resolve will crumble. See you soon!

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It Starts With An M

So my children aren't talking yet. Both Pink and Blue can burble their way through an imaginary conversation on an imaginary telephone, complete with intonation and pauses. But as for actual words? Not so much.

I try not to think about this too much. I don't like how obsessive parents can get about milestones and percentiles - c'mon, lady, I know your child's weight is a number but it's not a score - I always want to say. Children develop at their own pace, right? I air this opinion loudly and often, more loudly and more often recently, as their age increases and their vocabulary does not.

It seems that lots of us have our own issues with these milestones. I mention that my kids aren't talking and am glad to find that I'm not the only one. It's the same for someone else, and her daughter. Yeah, that girl still isn't saying a word. 'Although obviously she's saying mama, of course' her mother tells me.

And I laugh - HA HA HA - and say well yes obviously she's saying mama and then I have to do a backwards ninja somersault and scale a wall so that I can slip away unnoticed, before this person says '... so are your children saying mama yet, Claudia?' because I don't want to tell her that they. absolutely. are. not.

It seems that everyone else's children are pretty much knocking on the wall of the uterus and shouting mama to announce that it's time to go for the twenty week sonogram. Not mine. I flip flop from day to day about why I think this is. Is this a developmental thing, or an attachment thing? And which would be worse? I know they can make the sounds that make up that word. And they've been saying Dah! Dee! (just like that, in two halves) for months, when their father walks into the room.

In the interests of accuracy I should probably point out that they also occasionally say Dah! Dee! to the cat. And J assures me that he has heard them say mamamamamama when they are crying. I've heard them do this too - and it is as likely to be directed at J as at me. They never use it as a label, just as a random word when they are really upset. J reports back to me after one particularly bad episode and says 'I'm pretty sure they just think that mama means pain'. 'I'll show you some pain, sunshine' I say, but then I start to cry because they are eighteen months old and why won't they say my name?

As Christine has said before me, I want to tie a ribbon on this and make some kind of point, but I don't have one. Just throwing this one out there.

When The Problem Is Me

I've been thinking about racism again lately. More specifically, I've been thinking about what I wrote six months or so ago. If you haven't read that, I'm going to summarise it for you, to save you some time: basically, other people are idiots and sometimes they say dumb things about my kids.

So far, so good. But I talked to my sister about it afterwards, and in the way that only a sister can, she told me I'd better watch myself and my own attitude. She was right, of course - she usually is. In the months since, I've had a few conversations with people that have really challenged me. I keep finding myself thinking: okay, these conversations are undoubtedly tough, and people certainly say some crazy things. Even the smallest bit of racism is ugly, and I hate that we have to learn to deal with it. But what about my attitude in these conversations and afterwards? My kids are watching me, and soon they will be able to understand more and more. What should my priorities be as I negotiate these issues? What do I want my children to learn from these interactions?

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. James 1 : 19

I want my children to learn that we should be slow to anger. Not to never become angry, but not to become angry too soon. Would they learn this from my interactions with people about race? Sometimes I am angry because someone has said something inexcusable, something they should not have said, something that makes my eyes widen and makes me long to put my hands over my children's ears. But honestly? Sometimes I am too quick to anger because my life is dull, and feeling self-righteously angry at the possibly-racist-stranger I met just makes the day a bit more interesting. Sometimes dissecting a family member's words for the wrong kind of nuances just gives me something to talk about in the car on the way home.

I don't think I'm the only one.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 1 Corinthians 13:6

And sometimes, I wonder if I am overly anxious to dissect and identify racism because it helps me bond to people - either my children, or other adoptive families. It puts those of us who are trying to be actively anti-racist on one side of a line, and everybody else, from the uninterested and the ignorant through to the downright racist, on the other side. Actively trying to combat racism is a good thing, unquestionably. But how would I feel if the fight was over? Would I be happy, or would I miss having something to see as a common enemy?

I guess the question to ask here is: If nobody ever said a racist thing, ever again, would I feel nothing but uncontaminated joy? Or do I secretly value the way it gives me a chance to see the world as us-and-them? I must not be rejoicing in evil. I do want my kids to know that I am always, always on their side. But I should be careful not to create sides where it's not necessary, and I should be glad if the need for 'sides' was gone.

I think that this sounds easier than it is.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Matthew 7: 3-5

And being clued up about race (in my little white-girl way) can give me an excuse to feel superior to my white-girl friends. Suddenly, it seems that their eyes are full of sawdust (racist sawdust! I guess you probably wash that out using racist soap) and I just wish they would get rid of it. And yes, of course they should, but I'm sitting here with my own vision clouded by those feelings of superiority. And I'm also conveniently ignoring that there are probably issues that are important to them that I'm no expert on: disability rights, access to education.... ummmmmm, other stuff, too, that I can't remember because it's not important to me.

Which is the point, I guess.

I know and I care about anti-racism. It's important to me, and this is a good thing. But it doesn't make me a better person than whoever it is I'm talking to. If I slip into thinking that it does, I'm just a hypocrite.

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you Matthew 7:12

And I need to face the fact that I am a white girl. I'm carrying around a great big armload of white privilege, whether I want to or not. I'm part of a transracial family, but I don't actually know what it's like to go to school, apply for a job or date as a non-white person. So no matter how much I try to understand, and say the right thing, I'm going to mess up when I talk about this stuff. I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to say things that offend my black friends, and I'm probably going to end up saying things that will offend my black children, much as I hope that will never happen. And how do I want others to deal with me, when I mess up?

I hope they will forgive me. So I need to learn to forgive, too.

I feel cautious, as a white adoptive mother, saying that forgiveness is the right attitude to have when people say what they shouldn't about race. Firstly, because this is an issue that affects my children. Insult me and I'll do my best to have a sense of humour about it. But like all parents - insult my kids, and you wake the beast. And secondly, I'm cautious about claiming that right. I reject the idea that race is just 'something else that kids have to deal with' - that our kids need to accept racial teasing in the way that other kids get teased about their weight, or freckles, or having a funny voice. I don't think this is right at all - I think racism is much more serious than any of these other things, and we should treat it as such. But there is a danger, I think, for those of us who are white parents to black children. There is a danger that we won't expect them to live graciously, because we haven't had to do it ourselves. There is a danger that we will let our own white guilt convince us that we even have some kind of responsibility to encourage and nurture bitterness in our children here, where we wouldn't consider doing this in any other area of life. There is a danger that we will abdicate our responsibility to teach them how to deal graciously with insults and spite.

But despite the colour of my skin, they are my kids, and so I cannot abdicate this responsibility.

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven" Matthew 18:21-22

And so I want them to learn to forgive. There's a very big difference between forgiving wrong and denying wrong. Denying wrong says 'oh honey, that's not important!' or 'let's not think about that' or 'I'm sure that's not what she meant' when actually, that's exactly what she did mean and you both know it. Denying that a wrong was done tells our kids that their feelings aren't important, that this issue isn't important, that we care more about smooth surfaces than what's going on underneath. Denying wrong says 'I wish you wouldn't get hung up on race'.

That's not what I'm talking about.

On the other hand, forgiving a wrong doesn't say racism is excusable. It starts with acknowledging that wrong was done. But it doesn't finish there. It says you did wrong... but I forgive you.

Ideally, forgiveness isn't something that you do in a vacuum. In the best cases, it involves talking to the person who has wronged you, explaining why you were hurt, and then listening to them give you a heartfelt apology. Um, yeah, that doesn't always happen. But it's never ever going to happen unless I take the initiative and start the conversation. "Uncle Nigel," I might say, "It bothered me how you said ____________. I hate to think of my children hearing comments like that. Can we talk about this?" I've been trying to do more of this - rather than holding an angry grudge, going in private to the person who has made the insane comment and asking to start a conversation.

It's definitely not foolproof. I've shed a lot of tears, and I'm just a beginner. Sometimes people surprise me with their humility; others shake their heads and write me off as the person who is always on about race. And then I have a choice: I can hold a grudge, or I can forgive them anyway*. I can fester and rage and enjoy sitting on my high horse, or I can forgive them anyway. I can pretend that I never do or say anything wrong, or I can forgive them anyway.

My working definition of forgiveness is that it is the opposite of holding a grudge. Forgiving them doesn't say they aren't wrong, it just says I'm not going to let resentment own me.

Racism is important. It's serious. But dealing with racism is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for turning into a bonehead, and I shouldn't teach my children by example that it is. When Jesus said we need to learn to forgive again and again and again and again, he didn't say 'unless you're part of a transracial adoptive family or an ethnic minority, because I hear that's a really tough gig'. The seventy times seven applies to us too, even when things would be easier if it didn't.

And so I do want my children to learn that I am always on their side. I also want them to learn that their parents take racial prejudice seriously. But I've been realising that race is one issue where I've been letting myself have a bit of a blind spot about the other lessons that my actions and reactions might be teaching. If I get angry, hold grudges, act like a hypocrite - what they will learn from me is that this is okay, and it's not.
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I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their characters
Dr King

My children weren't born to me, and I can take no credit for their beautiful brown skin. I pray that as they grow up, the content of their characters will be just as beautiful.

And so I suppose I have to start with my own.


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*I'm not talking about a person who is full of hate. There are definitely people whose company we have to protect our kids from. I'm talking about the more ordinary, ignorant, wrong-but-not-deliberately-malicious end of things - that's the end we see by far the most. And this whole thing is a spectrum, of course - sometimes it takes more wisdom than I've got to know where we are on the spectrum at a given point.