Last July we took Alice to an Asian Festival - her first since coming to America. She had one goal that day - to find friends adopted from her orphanage. She didn't find any.
Today Alice and I went to her first event with our local Families with Children from China (FCC) group. Again, she took pen and paper to collect the contact information of any friends from her orphanage she encountered. Again, there were none. Additionally, there were no adopted children there who spoke Chinese. There were about 6 high school students from China who attend a local private high school (boarding school). Alice was able to speak Chinese with them. And there was the lady (from Beijing) living locally who was handing out her business card to families interested in a private tutor so their children can learn Chinese. She spoke with Alice in Chinese. Towards the end of the event Alice called me over because another girl about her age was trying to tell her something and the 2 girls were not understanding each other. Turns out the other girl (adopted from China) was upset that Alice took a dowel for her silk screen project that belong to someone else. Alice needed to go to another area of the room to get her own dowel. So much for making connections. Humph.
This time Alice wasn't the only one searching for connection. I was checking to see if there were families like ours, who have adopted older children through the special needs program from China. Granted I'm not great at circulating and connecting with people, but from what I observed there was one(!) boy from China (with assistive technology for hearing impairment) maybe 5 years old. He was the only other obvious special needs child from China in the room. Of course there could have been non-obvious needs present, but that's what I saw. All the other children who looked Chinese were girls and very American in their speech, dress and mannerism. And as I mentioned already, Alice did not find any other adopted children at the event who understood, let alone spoke Chinese, so clearly they were adopted much younger than she was.
At the adult session I attended about parenting adopted teenagers, the audience and presenter were all coming from a different place than I was. They were talking about children who are "American" but look different than their families. Children who are (or will be) sorting out their identities as they go through their teen years. I have a child who identifies herself as Chinese living with an American family. I am trying to help her come to grips with her "American-ness" and hopefully embrace it to some degree.
It is a rather lonely place to be. I am grateful for the virtual community I am connected to. There are other families like ours, working through this one day at a time, who understand what it's like. People who can offer advice, support, and empathy. It is one reason why I continue to write about the "issues" we face in this rather unique adoption experience. There are relatively few of us who have chosen this path and if anything I have experienced helps another family, I am happy because others have done that for me in sharing their successes and struggles.
UPDATE: Dana at Death by Great Wall has picked up the conversation with her post on Older Child Adoption: One Size Doesn't Fit All. If you haven't seen it, jump over and leave your thoughts on how you find connection.
Hugs. It is a rather lonely place to be. I wonder if in the future there will be more groups for special needs and older child adoptions -- seems like China adoption is going more that way these days. Thanks for writing this post.
ReplyDeleteI see where the DC FCC group is looking at how the change in China adoption might require a change in perspective for their group. I would expect that other FCC groups will be doing the same thing as more and more families bring home older children, most with some type of special need. I think that the families with the more significant special needs will end up finding more support from other families dealing with similar medical issues - at least in the first years when dealing with the medical takes so much of their time and most are traveling new territory there as well as.
DeleteI totally get it. Its the same in our FCC group. When we brought Lilly home 3 years ago at 5, with an obvious SN, NO ONE understood, and there was no one local who had adopted a child older than 2. So glad for my online communtiy.
ReplyDeleteEven the adoption professional completely omitted the special needs angle in her presentation - the role it may have played in their abandonment, the comments (bullying) they may have to deal with day to day and how it might impact how they define themselves - IN ADDITION to all the other adoption and transracial family issues.
DeleteI'm right in the same boat with you. There is only one other family in my area who has adopted their child from China as an older child. All the rest adopted their kids as babies. Did you know that there are Yahoo egroups for each of the orphanages in China where kids have been adopted from? I've been able to connect my girls to friends that way.
ReplyDeleteYes, I do. I've met some great people through the Beijing group and even a couple with kids Alice knows. One conveniently lives within driving distance and we hope to meet soon. Unfortunately, the girls Alice wants to find have disappeared (or aged out) and we can't contact them.
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