I was matched up with Alison Gresik from Canada. She and her husband have two children adopted from China. Lia is 5 1/2 and Nico will be celebrating his 4th birthday next week. They have just embarked on a great adventure - they sold their house and are spending the next few years traveling and living abroad. They are currently residing in Malaysia. I am excited to keep up with their travels and to continue reading about all of their adventures through their blog. Below are the questions that I had for Alison.
How did you and your husband decide to adopt internationally? What drew you to China?
There's a certain romance around adopting internationally that we weren't immune to. Hearing stories of unwanted girl children in China really tugs on one's heartstrings. Several friends adopted Chinese children, so we got to know about the program that way. There was a large, reputable agency in our hometown that had facilitated many adoptions from China and elsewhere, so we felt there would be a good adoptive community around us. And at that time, the China program was still placing many children, so it seemed like there was a need for families.
I think we were also attracted to creating a family that had ties to another country. We liked the idea of traveling to adopt our kids and we were open to living overseas in the future.
We knew that interracial adoption wouldn't be an easy road for us or our kids, but we were up for the challenge and how we would grow from it.
Knowing what we know now about corruption, trafficking and coercion in international adoption, I'm not sure whether we would have made the same choice. Our romantic illusions have definitely been stripped away. There is clearly much more need for adoptable children than for adoptive families in the China program now. That's partly why we switched to the Special Needs stream when we adopted our second child, Nico.
What advice would you give to waiting adoptive parents?
I think one mistake I made was in getting myself very worked up about the future. I read a lot of blogs by adoptees, first mothers, and adoptive parents, and started to worry: What if my daughter gets angry about her adoption? What if we can't find her birth family? What if she was stolen from her parents? I spent a lot of psychic energy on stuff that I had no control over at that time.
So my advice would be ~ don't get anxious about something that hasn't happened. Waiting is a good time to get educated about adoption issues, make connections with other adoptive families, and talk with your partner about how you want to parent. But if you find yourself going crazy with oh no and what ifs, ease up on yourself. You want to prepare but not tie yourself up in knots. For better or worse, you've made a choice for a particular path, and you might as well commit to it fully, whatever it brings.
Your kids are well on their way to being seasoned world travelers. What advice do you have about traveling with kids?
The more you do it, the easier it gets for everyone. We had no choice but to do long overseas flights with our kids to bring them home from China, and once you've done 24 hours of travel with an infant or a toddler followed by jet lag, everything else seems like a piece of cake.
Every child has a different tolerance for the stresses of travel, so we tried to take our lead from what they were comfortable with while still getting them acclimatized to car trips and sleeping in strange beds and eating different food. I think it helps that they associate travel with fun and lots of Mommy/Daddy attention. I actually believe I'm a better parent when we're traveling, because I'm focused on being present with the kids and showing them a good time.
Preparation helps a lot ~ having food and toys and changes of clothing. We also talk about our past trips, look at maps and photos, and dream about where we'll go in the future. When Shawn and I have a positive, excited outlook, the kids pick up on that.
In what ways have you (or do you plan) to build a sense of racial and/or cultural identity in your kids?
Here's a little of what we've done so far:
Spend time in China: We brought Lia on our second adoption trip, and then returned to Beijing for 3 months while Shawn was on parental leave.
Learn Mandarin: Lia had Chinese lessons in Ottawa, and we sent her to a Chinese kindergarten in Beijing, and now she gets some Mandarin at school in Malaysia. Ideally we would like to have both kids in a Mandarin immersion program. Language will be such an important link to their birth family and culture. Shawn and I are learning a little by osmosis! We would love to do some intense language study at some point.
Seek racial diversity in our community: We chose an Ottawa kindergarten that was more diverse than others so that Lia wouldn't be the only student of colour in her class. One reason we moved to Malaysia this year was because there's a mix of ethnicities, including Malays, Chinese, Indians, and westerners.
Talk about racial differences: We discuss skin colour, hair colour, eye shape, and other racial identifiers (Lia calls her skin "golden" and ours "peachy orange"). We talk about the difference between ethnicity and citizenship. We name the different countries that our friends come from.
How does Lia explain her adoption or being adopted to others?
You'd be surprised at how rarely it comes up. Perhaps it's because the kids are young and their friends just accept what our family looks like without questioning it. But I didn't hear any stories from Lia or her kindergarten teacher about adoption being discussed in the classroom. And I've only ever heard a few comments on the playground. Lia mostly ignores them and I end up explaining to kids that Lia was born in China and now we're her parents.
Have you had to deal with intrusive questions or comments from others? Do you have any good comebacks :)
Yep, we've had our share! The worst was a health practitioner who kept exclaiming, "How did you get a boy from China?" while the kids were in the room. Yeah, right, like I'm going to explain to you that my son was abandoned because of his cleft palate, unlike my daughter who was abandoned because she's a girl? I just pretended I didn't understand his question until he stopped asking.
My go-to comeback to intrusive questions is "Why do you ask?" Usually people have some personal connection to adoption, which is why they are curious. If they're just being nosy, that comeback brings them up short.
What was the hardest part about going from a family of three to a family of four? What was the biggest joy?
We felt it was really important for our kids to have a sibling who shared their ethnicity and adoptive experience, so they wouldn't feel alone in the family. Shawn and I really cherish our relationships with our brothers and sisters, and we wanted that for our children too.
Lia struggled with giving up her place as the only child. She was almost three when we adopted Nico, and it kicked off a difficult period of tantrums and disrupted sleep. She would also get angry with Nico and grab his toys or hit him. She was jealous of the extra attention he got, especially around his surgeries. One way that we dealt with this was by doing "special time" with her, one-on-one time with a parent where she got to be in charge.
The biggest joy of having two kids is seeing their relationship blossom. The first night we put Nico to bed in his crib, Lia decided that she wanted to go to sleep at the same time, and crawled into her bed voluntarily, which never happens! I remember going in after they were both asleep and being so happy to see them as a pair, a partnership, separate from Shawn and me. I think Nico's transition was made easier because of Lia ~ he loved watching her and being around her. Now they get along really well, play elaborate imaginative games, and giggle and dance with each other. That makes it all worth it.
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Thanks so much Alison - I enjoyed working with you and reading your answers. There may be some follow up questions down the road :) Best wishes to you and your family -- and HAPPY BIRTHDAY NICO!!
You can read the questions that Alison had for me on her blog Many Lives.
1 comments:
Finally had a chance to read your interview! Great questions (from you) and advice from Alison:) I always enjoy stories of those adoptive parents who have "made it to the other side."
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