When Shankar and I adopted, we had done some reading. And the emotional part that is personal to us, we had sorted out long ago. Actually, it was not a formal processing of the act....we had independently decided and kind of negotiated our way with this 'requirement' in mind, before getting married.
And then we met people, read some more and asked questions. Along the way, we met people in the US and in India who were friendly and supportive. We had some well-wishers who asked us the tough questions to ensure that we knew what we were doing. And a ton of people who told us that they wished they could but did not think they would be equal in treatment in a family built both biologically and from adoption.
To digress a bit, that last sentence is the one thing I have consistently heard from 80% of the people who have spoken to me with adoption in the conversation...be it prospective adoptive parents, friends, relatives, whoever. People give themselves real short shrift. Or they use this as their excuse. Everyone does not need to adopt. Everyone should not adopt. If everyone could take care of a child, adoption as a way of building a family would itself not be possible.
When you get married, you adopt. When you bring home a pet, you adopt. When you care for an elder in your building and go bring them their medicines, you have made a place for them in your heart. When you have a maid at home and give her less work because she is sick, you are thinking like 'family' thinks. Adoption in all the ways that matter. Are you mean to your children's friends when they come home? Are you so horrible that you are incapable of being nice to another being in your home? Then you are right, you 'should' not adopt. Please don't.
But if all you do is open your heart....you don't even have to consciously set out to love someone or bend over backwards to overlook the warts (all of which we do at sometime in EVERY relationship!), just open up your heart and do your routine thing....the child that comes home will take care of the rest. That said, I do not promote adoption...it is not a 'cause' to promote. It is a state of being a family. Just please don't say that to me again. Just by the act of being a nice person and my friend, you are capable of adoption. And it is very okay to choose not to do it! No justification required!
Okay, digression over. Some reading and association with people that helped us are:
www.sudatta.org - SuDatta is an association of incredible families, all of whom are touched by adoption. Living in Bangalore, we were quite privileged to have this organization to give us information and help us listen to the experts who speak about adoption in India.
A couple of yahoogroups - those interested can search in the yahoo groups pages with 'adoption' as the key word.
Books that spoke to us from the adoptees' perspective, told us about the process, our agency that was really friendly and like family in their approach, websites that gave us insights that we did not have or could have come up with before the fact, publishers like EMK Press which specialize in publishing adoption books and are nice enough to put up some free material on their website, the Hallmark Channel's series on adoption, even books like Chicken Soup for the Parents' Soul (there is one with a whole section on adoption), the resources we consulted were all helpful, even if one contradicted the other.
I think what the reading did for us was to bring home a more open viewpoint. The overall Indian mindset is very much still keeping within its caste/community/religion barriers (self set lines that makes it even sadder!). To read about a person's open adoption experience, whether or not your's will be one, gives you perspective of what people do in life. If you want it to, it can make you feel small. For us, it showed us what paths exist out there and how very middle of the adoption path we were. And that is fine. Because what we considered 'adoption' then was only bringing the child home and that is only the start of the journey.
Something that every adoptive parent and any responsible person needs to know is PAL or positive adoption language. This evolves with time....kind of like being politically correct, except much deeper than that. The point here is not to skirt around the facts but phrase them sensitively. You will be surprised how much one change in one word makes to a child's self image and how much it can be damaged with thoughtless usage. Like 'real' mother, or 'own' child. Everyone is real and belongs somewhere. Every one has 'birth'parents and not everyone lives with these birthparents. Everyone adopted 'was' adopted....they do not do that life changing act of becoming part of a family every day. Every day, they are children just doing their thing, whether it is whining or backtalking or grinning and giggling or both in very weird child like combinations.
PAL challenges stereotypes. We never questioned why parents are 'real' or not until we adopted. Then there is a personal angle that drives that point home. All parents are real and giving birth does not change that in any way. An open adoption is not shared parenting....so that works for some people too. A small unselfish percentage who are not encumbered by prehistoric laws....the child's need to know his/her history is met, identity is not such a mysterious puzzle anymore.
If you are a prospective parent or thinking about adoption in any way, please go out and learn about it. Books worked for me, as did talking to people and asking those niggling questions. For those who prefer talking to people, please do that....just talk to enough people and ask all the questions you need to. There is no 'too much' here when you are starting from close to scratch. And there is no substitute to this when the child comes home. At that point, there is no going back. "I did not know that" is an okay excuse for the small stuff....not the big issues in adoption.
Please learn about the 7 core issues in adoption - loss, rejection, grief, guilt/shame, identity, control and intimacy. Please read up about attachment - not to the point of paranoia or self-diagnosis but to be able to identify issues when they arise and know where to go for help/techniques. And if you are a friend, the following links have some useful points.
http://babble.com/parents-adoption-advice/
http://babble.com/mom/health-relationships/ten-things-adoptive-parents-shouldnt-say/
My personal experience has been that this journey is worth every bit of effort I have put into learning. And as a parent, I learn every day....about the process of growth and development, about how a little human becomes one hulking adult and about myself - my strengths, limits and areas of improvement. The lovely thing about parenthood is that death is the only way out....thank god. My life would have been quite empty without this experience.
Until the next one!
The Spirit of the Marathon
12 years ago
No comments:
Post a Comment