How to Raise Smart Kids

How to Raise Smart Kids

Just A Note

Today is the anniversary of the finalization of my son's adoption. Since this was something that took place before he'd be able to remember it, and since I've never much wanted to emphasize the fact that he's adopted, this special anniversary is pretty much something I keep to myself. After all this time, this year I have this blog - and so I decided to take the opportunity to post this. I guess it's my way of sort of celebrating (somehow), without suddenly making a big deal about it at this late date.

So - Happy "Down-played" Finalization Anniversary to me.

Thoughts on Advice for Mothers Who Gave Up Their Child for Adoption

There was an online site that invited people to write about the following: "Advice for Mothers Who Gave Up Their Child for Adoption". As a birth mother of two and adoptive mother of one, I didn't really feel qualified to even try to give advice to birth mothers of adoptive children. Then, though, I wondered if any of my own perspective may, in some way, offer something at all comforting to birth mothers - so I decided to try to offer advice, from my own perspective (and with sincerest awareness that I am not qualified to offer advice):

The thought of giving up a child for adoption can seem so difficult to imagine in terms of all the emotional issues associated with it, any attempt to offer advice to women who have given up their child for adoption is something I approach with considerable caution. Before I do attempt to offer any kind of advice, though, I'd like to tell a story:

My first son was with me in infancy, but the legal process surrounding his adoption took three years. I was, as far as I knew, able to have children. I just knew of this beautiful infant who needed a mother and knew I could be an excellent mother to him. In any case, when he was three, and while the legal process dragged on, I decided to go ahead and have a baby because even though the biological clock wasn't screaming its alarms it was definitely ticking a little
louder. The legal process had kind of stalled, and while the adoption was the most important thing in the world to me, I knew if I wanted to give my son the same kind of childhood a lot of little kids have, complete with siblings, I should have a baby. Besides, I had wanted to have one.

The pregnancy that occurred, however, began to show trouble; and I went through months of it threatening to end. In spite of it, though, the adoption was finally moving forward; and we finally had an appointment that would tell us whether, in fact, we would now progress to finalizing the adoption. I was scared to death because I knew if anything went wrong with moving toward finalization it would mean my then three-year-old son would be placed with strangers. I didn't allow myself to think about the loss it would be for me because all I could think about was how he didn't know any other family. I prayed like I'd never prayed before, and - awful as this sounds - I prayed that if, for some reason, I was only supposed to be the mother of one child and not both the adopted one and the one I was expecting, that God let the adoption be finalized. I figured I knew and loved my first child. I had never met the one I was carrying. I felt guilty for trying to bargain with God this way because nobody could have wanted the baby she was carrying more than I did, and I imagined my helpless unborn baby having its own mother attempt to bargain away its life in favor of another child. I know none of this had any real sense in it because chances are God wasn't making a "One Child Only" rule in my case; but I guess because I had felt so incredibly blessed to be on the way to finalizing the adoption of my beautiful boy AND to be having another child, it someone all seemed to good to be true or too much to expect of life.

When we got to the appointment with the adoption people we were told the finalization would take place, and we had nothing to worry about when it came to whether this adoption was a sure thing. Not long after that I lost the baby I was carrying, and I don't pretend it was an easy thing to go through. I recall that the doctor kept saying, "You have your little boy." I'll be honest: When you're losing the baby you're carrying it isn't really the point that you have another child waiting for you at home.

There are times I've wondered (more then than recently) whether that first pregnancy could have been some test or whether God or whoever may be "out there" knew my first child needed my undivided attention for another year or so or even whether I had been punished for attempting to bargain away my biological baby's life in my imagined predicament of being forced to choose between the two children.

I can tell you this, though: If I were in the same situation again today, and if I was worried that I was being forced by some higher power to choose, because I had lived with and loved my first child for three years but didn't even know the baby I was carrying at all. Part of me, too, believes that there are times when we are faced with stark awareness of which child needs what the most, what is most fair to which child, and even how much do we know the child we carry and/or give birth to before we get a chance to get to know him/her better.

A year and a half after the miscarriage I had that little brother for my first son, who had been asking for a baby brother. Three years later I had their baby sister. What struck me most about first looking into the faces of each baby to whom I gave birth was how each appeared so foreign to me and how he just seemed like such a little stranger, while I knew that one day I would know each of them every bit as well as I knew my first child.

I am an adoptive mother and a biological mother, and my first piece of advice would be: Never underestimate the overwhelmingly powerful love an adoptive mother can have for a child someone else gave birth to.

My second piece of advice is: Try to recognize that no matter how much or how little we, mothers, have that urge to protect and keep safe and do what's best for that newborn little stranger, what we feel is very different from the impossible-to-describe love we have once we bring home our baby and begin to bond with them, enjoy them, be examples that they emulate, and generally just grow close.

I don't underestimate the physical connection and intensity of emotion that is associated with giving birth, but my point is maybe it will help the mother who gave her child up for adoption to remember that the separation process took place early enough to have provided the child with a very normal and natural bonding with his/her adoptive mother. While I never denied the reality that one of my son's biological parents gave him those gorgeous, golden, ringlets; I saw - first hand - how much he was like me and my husband and his siblings. For good or ill, the child adopted from infancy becomes a very different person than he would have been had he remained with his biological mother. Maybe it would help a biological mother to think of this rather than to imagine the child the baby would have become with her and mourn the loss of that child. In many ways adoption from infancy prevents that baby from becoming his biological mother's child when it comes to personality and other characteristics, so if that biological mother imagines a child ten years later and longs for him she's longing not for the child her baby became but for a child she imagines he became, and there's no point in longing for an imagined person.

I'm not underestimating the loss involved in giving a baby to another family, and I'm certain not underestimating the loss and emptiness that must be involved in knowing that somewhere out there one's biological child is living his/her life. I know it seems like an awful thing to say that giving a child up for adoption means preventing him from becoming what he would have become and letting him, instead, become a completely different person; but it seems to me that at least that thinking may help reduce some of the sense of loss years later.

My third piece of advice (and it isn't original by any means) is: Please try to remember always what an unselfish thing it is to decide to do what one believes is best for a child rather than what we may like to do.

My fourth piece of advice is: Please, too, don't feel guilty if the reason for placing your baby for adoption was that you weren't ready to care for him or her or even if you didn't feel you had the emotional resources to be the kind of mother a child needs.

My fifth piece of advice is: Please try - when you think about the child you gave to another family - to realize how his or her life is very likely no more perfect than any other child's or teenager's is but how (from a child's point of view) being very loved and loving the only family one knows isn't bad, considering how many kids in the world don't have that.

My sixth piece of advice is: Try to realize that your biological child's adoptive mother probably very much respects your role as the person who brought this child into the world. Even if the adoptive arrangement is a closed one, the adoptive mother usually feels a responsibility to point out to a child how his or her biological parents gave him or her certain things. Adoptive mothers often feel a particular commitment to doing a good job as a mother because they may feel that since they took on the role of mother to another woman's baby they owe that baby and biological mother a particularly careful and caring effort.

My seventh piece of advice is: If/when you have a reunion with your biological child don't expect the child you've been imagining all these years to show up. The child who shows up may look like family members, but he or she will most likely be very different from what you expected.

My eighth piece of advice is: If you are the one to seek the reunion consider asking the reunion people to find out first if the child is emotionally ready or if waiting just a little longer may be less likely to throw the child for a loop. The teenage years can be tumultuous for a lot of kids, and being adopted can sometimes be an added factor in some cases. For the teenager who has had particularly tumultuous teen years, and who may be just getting on his feet at 20 or 21, it may be mind-boggling to suddenly have faces of biological family and family stories that must be processed.

My ninth piece of advice is not related specifically to placing a child for adoption but is instead general advice on loss and grief: Any time we have a big loss and/or big grief it can take a lot of time for it to become less awful; and big enough loss and grief can sometimes remain with us to some degree for the rest of our lives. One of the best ways to feel a little better is to try to find as many positive things/experiences as possible to be able to have in our minds because if we don't try to "fill the empty mental space" with some positive things that bring some joy our minds have nothing to do but let the old, negative, thoughts just kind of sit and become scars. It sounds too simplistic, but finding as many joys in life as possible can give us those nice things to have in our mind, and after a while they push the bad stuff somewhere to the background rather than foreground of our thoughts.

And the tenth piece of advice: Find peace in realizing that you had the amazing strength to be able to make a decision to do what you believed was the right thing to do for the baby; and I think more often than not adopted children are appreciative of the good life they have been given as a result of your extraordinary strength and selflessness.

Just a final note: Every year as my son's birthday approached=s I think of his biological mother - hoping she had found peace, hoping she had gotten past the grief, wishing she could know how much, no matter how much I loved and wanted my son, I wished things could have been different for her. I think of her not only around his birthday, though, (although that's when it always happens without fail) but from time to time I've thought of her over all the years between his infancy and today (he's 30 now). She's always been, to me, this person I don't know and yet someone special for whom I have so much compassion and even caring. I've never underestimated her loss, but I've never wanted my son's life to be rooted in loss either; so I've tried to present his story to him in a way that highlights the gift of her decision because the unfortunate reality in the case of adoption is that a biological mother must go through a terrible loss in order to try to give her child what every child deserves and what she cannot - for whatever reasons -provide.

A Question About Adoptive Parents and An Expectation of Gratitude from Children

A few days ago someone, who happens to be a birth mother of a child placed for adoption, asked if adoptive parents expect their child to be grateful to have been adopted.

I can't speak for other adoptive, but the answer, for me, is that I've never expected my son (who happens to be an adopted child) to have been any more grateful to me than I would hope my other two children may be. As far as gratitude goes, we've all heard that oft-repeated line, "I didn't ask to be born" (which could extend to "I didn't ask you to adopt me").

While, of course, I suppose I think my children (adopted or not) should have the kind of gratitude I have for having had good, loving, parents; I certainly have never expected any of them to have gratitude beyond that.

When we've been fortunate enough to have had kind, loving, parents it is only reasonable and normal to have a certain amount of appreciation. With regard to one of my children's being adopted and any gratitude, I expect no more from him or other adopted people than I would expect from any children who grow up with their biological parents.

With all three of my children, I am the one who has the gratitude for having been so blessed.

What It Takes To Be A Parent

Being a parent requires maturity. Parents are a child's first ambassador to the world. They have the power to present a picture of the world to their child. When parents view the world through the eyes, or a heart, that is too immature to see a realistic picture, they cannot present an accurate picture to their child.

Being a parent requires being emotionally well adjusted - or at least being willing and able to find a way to work around any of one's own emotional issues, for the good of the child.

A parent must be strong - strong enough to make the difficult decisions, strong enough to deal with all of the worries of being a parent, strong enough to make the child feel sure that he is safe, and strong enough to do what is right, rather than what is easy.

A parent needs to have a good memory. Having a good memory lets parents remember how it feels to be a child. It gives a parent insight into why a child may do something he shouldn't do. Remembering what it was like to be a child helps parents realize that, most of the time, a child who has done something wrong feels pretty rotten about himself already. A good memory also comes in handy when that other sneaker gets lost each and every morning, when everyone is running late.

Sometimes a parent needs to be able to forget. (Sure, you may not have been in the in-crowd in high school, and sure it may have been because your mother wouldn't let you wear anything but "dud" clothes; but don't turn your six-year-old into a copy of that famous, troubled, pop star. Don't be on her back about staying super thin. Let go of the pain of looking like a dud and be thankful you weren't swept away by an In-Crowd that, as a group, may have peaked in their teens.)

A parent must have patience, but more importantly, be able to find patience when they don't have any left.

Being a good role model is important for parents. How can any parent believe they have the right to set a standard of behavior for their child, if they, themselves (adults), are not able to uphold that standard.

A parent needs to be emotionally secure enough not to worry about what is cool. Worrying about what's cool is for teenagers. Parents cannot let cool dictate their decisions, behavior, or beliefs.

A parent doesn't need to, and shouldn't, act "over the hill," but s/he shouldn't be afraid to act like an adult. In other words, a parent shouldn't buy a death-trap, two-seater, car and cram the baby wherever s/he fits, just because the parent doesn't want to feel like he's driving his father's sedan.

Being a parent requires a lot of common sense. The world is full of advice for parents. Some of it is good. Some is junk. Even experts change their ideas about things from one generation from another (sometimes more quickly). A parent needs the common sense to think for himself, know when he needs to listen to someone, and know when he should listen only to himself. Common sense comes in handy for things like knowing that letting a child stay up late one special night isn't the end of the world. Common sense helps parents understand that a birthday cake and some chips a few times a year is not the ruination of otherwise good eating habits.

A parent needs to be able to put the child's needs first, without resentment. In fact, a parent kind of needs to be able to feel happy about putting the child's needs first. That doesn't mean a parent shouldn't take care of himself. Children need parents who are healthy. Taking care of one's appearance is a way to be the good example a child needs. The kind of putting the child's needs first parents need is that kind that lets them stay up, dead-tired, if the child needs them to. It is waiting to eat until the child has eaten. It is doing without a trip to the gym because a child has a baseball game. It can mean sometimes not saying what one feels like saying, and instead saying what is best for the child to hear.

Although a parent can live with this, having good organizational abilities makes life a lot easier.

A parent needs to have a sense of humor and be willing to try to make the child laugh several times a day.

A parent needs to understand that most children go through some version of the same phases as they grow. One child may worry about lightning at seven, while another doesn't think about it until he's eight. A different child (the rarer one) may never fear lightning. In general, most children share developmental stages, even if some reach them earlier or later than other children do.

A parent needs to be very quick about washing sticky little hands. If parents aren't quick the baby wipes or wet paper towels they will find they live in a world of maple syrup, lollipop goo, and encrusted spit-up.

Sometimes a parent needs to know how to keep from crying even when he really feels like crying.

A parent needs to know how to expect respect from a child BUT ALSO how to show that the child the same kind of respect that all people deserve.

Knowing how to make children feel safe and secure, and being skilled at helping put the scary things in perspective, are skills a parent needs.

A good, solid, maternal or paternal instinct is important. The world is full of parents who show no signs of maternal or paternal instinct. These instincts are what help create a strong attachment. There are too many people who did not have proper attachment to at least one parent.

In the movie, "Forrest Gump," Forrest made the remark, "I may not be a smart man, but I know how to love." Parents don't have to be particularly smart people either, but each and every parent really does need a good, solid, understanding of what it means to love.

The Lesson of the Dreams

The day we were in court to finalize the adoption, I was talking with the social worker as we waited in the hall. I was, of course, excited to have finally gotten to the day of finalizing the adoption; but I needed to talk to the social worker about something that had been bothering me. I began to ask her a question about the birth parents. I don't recall my words, but my question or comment was related to my trying to put myself in the place of the birth mother. There were things I needed to know, as I got ready to enter the judge's chambers.

When she realized that my questions and comment were about to be based on my trying to put myself in the birth mother's place, the social worker interrupted me fairly quickly. She said, "Lisa, there is no way you can imagine yourself in her place because 'these people' are so different. There's just no way you can put yourself in their place, and you can't be thinking that way." I had known my son's birth parents were troubled people who were very different than my family was, but I couldn't help but think of them as we prepared to sign the papers.

It was probably the social worker's comment that day, combined with a few odd incidents that went on when my son was small, that led to the recurring dreams I began to have. I'm not someone who usually has recurring dreams, but somewhere along the way I started to have the same dream every couple of months: I'd be looking out my living room window, and I'd see four shadowy figures on the lawn, under the trees. I couldn't make out whether they were women or men. They were dressed in black and wore hats. They all looked the same. It was one of those dreams that was disturbing, even though there was no terror in it. In the dreams I would be wondering why these disturbing figures stood silently on my lawn, at dawn or dusk, looking into my living room window. I wasn't really afraid of them. I just kept wondering what they were going to do. I wished they would come tell me why they were there - or else leave.

Since I was too busy to be thinking about dreams in those days, I just accepted that the disturbing dream occurred every so often. My son was eight when we moved to a different house. We had lived there for a few months before I had the dream, but the next time the shadowy figures showed up in a dream they weren't on the front lawn. In the new dream I was really terrified because, although I didn't see them, I knew they were in the basement.

This dream had terror that the previous ones had not. In it I locked the basement door, hoping they couldn't get into the house. The dream seemed to go on forever, and in it I was just in awful way. Suddenly, in this terrifying dream in which I knew the figures had gotten into my house, I realized they were walking up the basement stairs and that the lock would not keep them out. After I locked the door I kept thinking, "What are you going to do now? How long can you leave them trapped in the basement? You can't call the police. Are they there forever?" (In the dream, the basement apparently had no exit.)

I was also aware of thinking how they could see what was going on and would not find anything that made them unhappy or angry. Sometimes, though, it just felt as if they were there - not interested in anything but standing there.

Even though the basement stairs were closed in I could still see them filing, one by one, up the stairs. The first figure simply opened the door, came through it, and walked silently out my front door. The others followed.

I wasn't able (or brave enough) to leave the house, and I think I was aware that my children were asleep in their rooms. Because I knew I had no choice but to stay there and see what these figures would do, I backed up against the farthest wall possible. Suddenly, even though I had my three children by then, I was only holding my eldest son, as I watched the figures file past us and leave the house. In the dream, he was standing near me, and I was guarding him with my two arms. He was just there - not afraid or not aware of what was going on. It was clear that I was the only one who knew there was reason to be afraid in the dream.

As the last shadowy figure walked out the front door and closed it behind him, I was incredibly relieved. Then I felt kind of foolish for being so afraid of these repeat visitors to my dreams. There was never a dream in which any of these strange figures would tell me why that had loomed outside my home, how they got into the basement, or what it was they wanted. It turned out that once these dream figures had finally scared the heck out of me by being in the basement, walked up the stairs, showed me that there was no keeping them locked in the basement, and left; it suddenly became clear to me who/what they represented.

My son was, as I said, eight years old. I think, in my mind, I had reached a point where I felt that he was old enough that the presence of any real-life "shadowy figures" in his life/background would no longer hold the potential of making him confused. When he was little, there had been a few incidents that had made me have concerns about someone's trying to find him and take him. Only one of those incidents was real cause for concern, and that had occurred before he had been placed with me. The others were peculiar incidents, but necessarily related to members of his birth family.

So, I had had that concern when he was very young. More upper-most in mind, though, were my concerns about how much I would tell him when, how much he could deal with at what age, and whether his world would be turned upside if he learned too much too early.

After that final dream, the "message" was so plain to see: Once the shadowy figures got into the house (which was apparently some elevation of "their" attempt to make their presence known) and showed me they could not be locked in the basement, "they" had apparently accomplished their aim. "They" showed me, too, that even if they came up out of the basement they had no intent of doing anything but leaving me and my son to live our lives in peace together.

I'll never know if the figures in the dream actually represented the birth family or my own worries; or if my mind just put the logical, shadowy, mysterious, image to the whole adoption picture because that's what made the most sense. I just know the dreams stopped when he was eight and after we had moved.

Although my son had been placed as an infant, it took three years to actually finalize the adoption. Living under the threat of having something go wrong and having him placed with strangers he didn't know had been quite an ordeal. Anyone who has an almost three-year-old child, and knows how attached a child that age is, can imagine the anxiety I had had when I imagined his being moved for some reason. I was well aware of the damage that occur when young children are taken from the only family they know.

With three years of such fear for him; and then the few extra years of knowing that even if I handled things correctly the child I so treasured and adored could suffer emotional consequences if we were moved; it isn't any surprise that I would have recurring dreams.

All I know is that it was that final dream that made me realize that a difficult truth need not be buried, and would not hurt either my son or me. In fact, what the shadowy figures in my dream let me know was that, while I hadn't been able to keep them away, they had been the ones to choose to leave.

After years of reminding myself that my son was going to be adopted whether or not I was the one to adopt him; and after years of reminding myself that the birth parents would not have kept their parental rights regardless of who adopted my son; I found peace in realizing that I had had no hand in any loss they suffered. That's, I guess, when I realized that there were no shadows looming over my being my son's mother any more than there were shadows looming over my relationship with the two children I had myself.

The Rights of the Adopted Child

When it comes to adopted children it seems fairly obvious to me that they have a right to know they have been adopted right from the beginning. It also seems obvious that the grown adopted children should have the right to meet and know their biological parents if they wish, and that their right to that should take precedence over the biological mother's "right to privacy". After all, "what is best for the child" is supposed to be what all mothers use when deciding what to do nor not do.

There are some rights, though, that adopted children should have that are often forgotten:

The right to be wanted is one that is often the reason children are placed for adoption.

The right to know that being adopted doesn't have to mean being different from the other kids is one right on which many people need to do some work. The right to feel "like everyone else" is a right some people think cannot be bestowed on adopted people. I don't believe feeling like everyone else is impossible for adopted children when adults present things correctly.

The right to understand the very significant ways nurturing in the first three years of life can affect a child's personality and brain development is one right many people forget that adopted children should have.

The right to be viewed by other people as no different from anyone else is a right that requires some work on the part of people who can have trouble "getting past it" once they learn someone has been adopted.

The right to the very normal thing of having one mother and one father at one time throughout the formative years.

The right to being shielded from some ugly realities that may exist in the adopted child's birth circumstances and the right to having any such ugly realities put in a perspective that helps the child understand better should not be overlooked.

The right to have the fact of his being adopted forgotten by people like adoptive relatives, teachers, neighbors and friends' parents is a right many adopted children don't have.

The right to be told how so many people who were not adopted children may know very little about their grandparents or other family members beyond their immediate family.

The right to be referred to by people outside their family (adoptive family) as "their son" and not "their adopted son".

The right to having parents point out any ways they see in which he happens to be similar to them in personality, abilities, or even - although its coincidence - any physical characteristics. I'm not suggesting parents of children who are very different in appearance must stretch the truth about physical traits. I'm saying that when any similar traits do exist adopted children can enjoy hearing the same kind of comparisons that biological children do. Nobody needs to bring up the genetic realities. Adopted children should just have the right to hear what non-adopted kids hear.

The right not to have the fact that they're adopted be the main focus of their life and existence, and this leads to the right to be a person in their own right.