by Jane Brown, MSW
Stomping loudly, my 9-year-old, Korean born son returned home from school one day. "Why do the kids say my real mom didn't want me, so I had to be adopted? And that I'm not American, so I can't celebrate Thanksgiving?" he scowled.
So much for our illusion that if we loved him enough, differences of race and adoption wouldn't matter. Once he entered school, our son was out in the world, exposed to societal ideas about race and adoption. His friends were learning too, so they were asking questions, making comparisons and offering comments. How do parents help a child navigate the challenges of being both adopted and a person of color in a race-conscious country such as the United States?
During the middle childhood years (approximately ages 7 through 12) the world expands far beyond the boundaries of family, and children are increasingly aware of and affected by societal views and myths. This happens at just the time when a child's cognitive development enables her to begin thinking for herself about adoption losses and really processing what that means for who she is and who she is becoming.
Adoptees grieve these losses, but since they cannot remember their birth parents, the grief is not acute. instead, it is full of ambivalence and, so, is easy to misinterpret or even miss. At various times children may think, "I want to know, but I don't want to know." or "I already have a family, so why do I think about my birth parents?" or "I love my family, but what would life have been like with my real parents?" (Notice in the last example that the child mirrors peers' language in referring to "real parents." For this reason, it is often best to acknowledge that adopted children have two sets of real parents.)
During the middle years, children often stop asking questions and sharing all of their thoughts and experiences with parents. A new ability to think about their disconnection from their birth parents, ancestral line and country and culture of origin can be overwhelming and bring new, uncomfortable feelings. At first such losses cause sadness, but sadness is not an emotion children are comfortable with for long. Most middle-years children turn the sadness into anger (a normal part of the grieving process), because it makes them feel powerful instead of powerless. Typical thoughts include: "My birth mother didn't want me, so why should 1 want to think about her?" or "Why didn't my birth parents move to another country with no rules about having babies?" or "If they'd loved me enough, they would have found a way."
Sadness, anger, worries about lovability or being good enough to keep, shame over having been born to parents who "didn't even keep their own baby," and fear of additional losses tend to lie beneath the surface. "I hate her" may be the words a child uses, but underneath lie feelings of worthlessness and great hurt. These can cause damage if left unrecognized and untouched.
Middle-years children have learned that they can conceal many feelings from adults, and they like to feel competent and solve problems on their own. They also practice magical thinking, believing that if they don't tell anyone they're having confusing feelings, perhaps the feelings will go away. They possess a kind of radar for what parents are comfortable with and would prefer them to believe, and tend to be protective about stirring up parents' feelings of loss or disappointment over family building. They sense discomfort with infertility, lack of a marital partner or other motivations for adoption and conclude that talking about birth parents may be threatening to adoptive parents.
"If I told my mom that I think about my birth mother every night before I go to sleep, she would feel sad and think I didn't love her," one child told me. "Most adoptees avoid adoption discussions and talk about birth parents, yet I thought about it constantly," said one adult adoptee. "I am so glad that I live with my mom, but wish I could know my birth parents too, and I don't know if that's okay. I get all mixed up," another young child said. Others struggle to articulate their thoughts even to themselves.
Meanwhile, children learn societal views of adoption from the outside world. A television show may portray a character's confusion about adoption while friends pity her because she bad to be adopted. The child may see a story on the news or have someone tell them about an adopted adult who reunites with his birth family and wonder what becomes of the relationship with the adoptive family. The message, unfortunately, is that adoption is a second choice for most adopting parents and a second-rate way to become part of a family. Non-adopted peers receive that message too.
Views about race, racial prejudice and racial identity also percolate through what middle-years children are seeing, hearing and experiencing. It quickly becomes clear that those who aren't white are considered different. Film and television stars are usually Caucasians of European descent, and actors of color are usually cast in stereotypical roles. By about age 7, most children are well aware of society's racial ladder and can place most groups on it. They know who has greater status and who is on the bottom rung. They have an idea about who has power and access to the best opportunities, and they have become aware of some racial stereotypes. They may see China portrayed quite negatively in the news and feel shame over this.
These influences can cause a transracially adopted, Chinese-born child who already identifies with her Caucasian parents-to wish she were white, unless she has regular, frequent, positive and direct interaction with other Chinese Americans. Helping such children forge connections with other Chinese Americans should not be considered optional. It is far more important than piano lessons, for example, and is essential to preventing self-stereotyping and to developing a healthy racial identity that incorporates the child's dual heritage.
Should a transracially adopted child begin to disassociate herself from her Chinese American identity and heritage, parents must confront the problem gently and firmly, before it goes very far. Parents who are not themselves successful in helping their child should consider seeing a sensitive and skilled adoption therapist. Caucasian parents who fear that their child might grow away from them after joining the Chinese American community only create that distance themselves. And, though Asian adoptive parents don't harbor those same fears, they still must help their child contend with the prevalent negative views about foreigners they are likely to be exposed to.
Still close to and dependent upon parents, middle years children are, nonetheless, increasingly interested in and affected by the standards of their peers. They want to fit in, and peers are quick to let them know how well they do, or don't. Adoption, race, religion and being part of a nontraditional family are all part of that assessment.
Although peers may not intend for their questions to be hurtful or to set the adopted child apart, that's often the effect. This amplifies the child's inner struggle to figure out where she has come from and why, where she belongs and how she fits into her two separate families and cultures. More private, reticent children may have a rougher time feeling that they belong and are accepted, although all young adoptees seem to struggle with this. Parents' suggestions that such issues don't matter seem ludicrous to a child who is on the front lines in a classroom or neighborhood setting.
The more ways a child is different from her peers, the more she struggles with feelings of isolation and the more likely she is to avoid thinking about and resolving issues of adoption and race. It's very tough to be the only anything among one's friends. Feelings can become quite intense, and if the child is not helped to express them, and if the feelings are not acknowledged and validated, behavior almost always suffers. A child can either act out or act in, so parents need to be concerned not only about aggression, bullying, stealing, lying and unexplained academic difficulties, but also about the child who isolates herself socially, withdraws or daydreams excessively, cries easily or is depressed, acts as if she is always the victim or is passive-aggressive, extremely anxious, fearful or a perfectionist. Parents ought to be concerned about the child who starts to avoid all things Chinese and seems to identify herself as white.
Wise parents anticipate that their child will have a great many thoughts and feelings about growing up adopted. They do not wait for the child to come to them with questions, but instead initiate matter-of-fact discussions regularly. without ducking the tough issues. These include racial prejudice, perceived rejection by birth parents, ambivalence about Chinese heritage, adoption differences and the big one for F.C.C parents: abandonment and what it means in the context of culture. They reach for and gently acknowledge feelings, with the awareness that the child probably has many intense, confusing feelings, even if she doesn't readily express them. They raise discussions after incidents that are likely to bring feelings to the surface, such as, when the child doesn't get invited to a party and feels left out, is called a racial name, gets teased about being adopted or experiences a new loss. Equally important, they initiate such conversations when all seems to be going well-for this is when a child is able to take in more information and process it more easily.
Wise parents maintain involvement with an adoption support group, even if the child protests. Adult adoptees tell us such connections are invaluable, that our children need relationships with other Chinese born adoptees.
Wise parents don't wrap their child in a bubble, but instead arm her for what she faces in the outside world. They make certain their child has opportunities to learn how to deflect questions and untoward comments or fight back against stereotyping and racial prejudice-before the need arises.
It is especially important to prepare a child who is entering elementary school, where she will be among older children who may be far ahead of her in their thinking about adoption and race. Finding the courage to start such conversations will be easier if parents remember that a young child won't yet have negative or ambivalent feelings about race and adoption. When we tell our child, for example, that most people are not adopted as she is, or that others determine that she is Chinese by looking at her facial characteristics, this is just information she receives matter-of-factly, along with all the other new things she is learning about how the world works.
At age 4 to 6, a child can also receive information about her adoption history without its being emotionally loaded. We can, for example, say that it is possible she has a sister or sisters who stayed with their birth parents. This will, eventually, stir some sadness when she thinks about what those relationships might have been like, but early on, it is just information that she is gathering, storing and will begin to process only gradually. Only as she observes other sibling relationships and realizes that they are quite special will she feel a sense of loss.
With that in mind, wise parents give as much information as they can as early as possible, then make sure they are there to listen, talk, comfort and correct mistaken ideas as the meaning begins to unfold over time. In this way, parents convey to their child that it is not only okay to talk about these issues, but expected. When a parent withholds information that a child could understand at a young age, they send the message that there is something awful that the child must be protected from and suppress conversations that should be open and ongoing.
Wise parents also look ahead. Adolescence looms in the not-so-distant future for middle-years children. If parents want to prevent adolescence from becoming a turbulent time marred by lots of acting out, acting in and interpersonal and inner conflict, they must help their child process thoughts and feelings about adoption and race during the middle childhood years.
As parents, we must trust in our ability to take risks and open up sensitive dialogue with our children. It is all right to feel a little unsure about what we're doing or a little inadequate for the job. We all struggle with this. There is help available if we get stuck, however. Useful resources include adoption therapists and educators, adult adoptees, parents of color who themselves have had to develop racial identity in a less-than-perfect social climate, experienced parents whose children are a little older and books about raising adopted children.
We also need to remember that we don't have to get the job done right now. We do have a lifetime, and mistakes are a necessary and even a useful part of the process. Parents should trust themselves and trust in their child's ability to learn from trying experiences or temporary inner battles. These can become opportunities for growth, rather than trauma, if we allow the child to work through them. Parents who find the courage to continue to talk with their child give her the best chance for a terrific future.
Jane Brown, MSW, is the creator of Adoption Playsbops, a series of workshops that help children explore both growing up adopted and their evolving racial identity. She is a longtime adoption social worker and educator. She and her husband, Marty, are parents to eight children, five of whom joined their family through adoption. Her youngest was born in China. She can be contacted at janebrown77@eartblink.net.
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