Tough Weekend

I've been thinking a lot about how to write about some issues that came up this past Friday and Saturday. Because this is a public blog AND because Alice will read it eventually, I am mindful of the privacy of the people involved.

Two weeks ago we completed Alice's IEP for school. It spells out the accommodations they will make for her, allowing her extra time if her fine motor skills cause her to take longer and more importantly, adjustments for her language situation. There are adjustments because she is a new English language learner, but she has extra adjustments on top of that because she also has some oral motor skill issues which make it difficult for people to understand her when she speaks. Her IEP specifically addresses goals to improve her articulation and also, understanding of English.

Last week she had her first test which involved a considerable amount of content specific terminology. Alice (and possibly most of the class) scored poorly on the test. The test was given a second time (I had no prior notice of the retest) and Alice again scored poorly. Near the end of the school day last Friday I was asked if I thought it would be good for Alice to participate in a 3rd attempt at the test (with the other low scoring students) today during her lunch period.

Her SLP (speech and language pathologist) met with us after school Friday for the first time. She reviewed the test and agreed with me that even though Alice was given a "modified" test, the modifications were not appropriate for her language situation. She said she would work with the teachers on better modifications.

Alice and I talked about the test on the way home. She assumed she would lose privileges over the weekend for her poor score. She even started crying as we arrived home. This is a child who hasn't cried since we met her in the orphanage. She always scored near 100% in school in China and was devastated by the low score on her test. It broke my heart. She has been getting near 100% on all her school work so far in 6th grade, so this was a shock to her and us. Even though I tried to temper my response, my email back to the teachers hurt some feelings and possibly caused ill-will. Not the way I want to start the school year. Everyone is still learning how unique Alice's situation is and making adjustments. I have to remember to be thankful for how much they have already done and their desire to see her succeed. I will not stop advocating for her, but I do need to work with them at this early stage.

While still recovering from that we had a second issue come out this weekend, possibly much more serious. Alice spent her 1 hour of China phone time Saturday morning talking to her best friend, her favorite teacher and one of the orphanage nannies. She said she shared her low score with her friend and her teacher (who happens to teach the subject she got the low score in). The teacher encouraged her and said she did a good job (which she most definitely did given that the language on the test was well above her ability less than 7 months here). The friend told her that if she had been living in the US for 6 months she would have gotten a 98% on the test. Clearly she has no idea what she's talking about, but Alice believes her. The more we talked about this the more we learned about this best friend. (I'll refer to her as BFF - best friend forever - but plan to make sure that changes.)

Turns out that BFF has told Alice at some point that she is Alice's boss. She expects Alice to do what she says, and it seems that Alice will comply without argument. We had seen hints of this before. Alice wanted to mail the Chinese story books the school gave her as a going away gift to BFF. We asked why, because the teachers assured Alice there were more copies of the books when she expressed concern about taking them. Her reply was that BFF wants them and told her to mail them to her. We of course said no.

Another time Alice was disappointed she didn't get to talk to some of her friends during her phone time because she ran out of time. We asked why she talked to BFF for 75+% of her time if she wanted to talk to other people. Reply: because BFF said she has to call her first and won't let her talk to others until she's had her time. We reminded Alice that she is the one making the phone calls and we are the ones paying for them and she should call her other friends first if BFF is taking too much of her time. She said BFF would be mad at her. Too bad.

I talked with her about BFF not being a good friend if she treats Alice like that. Alice said BFF told her that she is her best friend. I asked about BFF's other friends. Alice says the others aren't her best friend because they have disagreements/arguments with BFF. Apparently Alice doesn't disagree with BFF, which makes her an ideal friend for such a bossy little girl. When asked what would BFF do if Alice disagreed with her, Alice said BFF would stop being her friend. Hmmm. Not the kind of friend we feel Alice should have.

What I think is that being one of a very small number of kids at the regular school without parents, Alice found a "protector" to be her friend, even though this girl is 2 years younger than her. Alice has learned survival techniques that now need to be unlearned if she is going to have healthy, safe friendships in the future.

In the meantime, we have to figure what to do about contact with BFF. Alice doesn't have friends here yet, because of language barriers. We could cut off contact with BFF, but we don't want Alice to feel punished for telling us about her conversations, especially after she said she forgot that BFF said their conversations were not to be shared with others (yikes! another issue).

We allowed ourselves to start thinking that the obvious issues (language, culture, school) were the only ones Alice had ahead of her. This weekend was a rude reminder that there are still invisible issues that are just as important, maybe even more important than the visible ones. Alice needs to learn to believe in herself, in her own abilities, to trust us as her parents to be her protectors now and to learn that real friendship is about respect and caring not control.

Update: I've added a link to this entry on Death by Great Wall, a blog by Dana with "stories of older child adoption & family life." The path of adopting the older child is being followed by more families, but we are still a minority in our communities and even in the adoption community. It is helpful to connect with others, learning from and encouraging each other.