A family for only a few months, I took my toddler daughter with me to visit a friend, an older women, a faithful woman I loved and respected. While Lydia was mesmerized with the dust in the air visible in the sun light, my friend shielded her mouth and whispered:
Are you going to tell her she’s adopted?
I giggled a little. Wait, she’s serious. That wasn’t a joke. I whispered back:
How long do you think it will take before she finds out?”
We didn’t wait until the “correct developmental stage,” when children start to notice physical differences, etc. etc. There was never a day we didn’t talk about her story with her. Bedtime stories are most often adoption stories or China stories; we’ve got nearly every one ever printed. The most watched video on my phone is the adoption movie I made for her. She knows every word of the song I used for it and can narrate every scene. She has been to known to introduce herself with the big 3: (1) name, (2) age, and (3) “I was in another mommy’s belly in China then my mommy came to China and adopted me.”
When she asked to come with me to China on my recent adventure, I wasn’t all that surprised. It was heartwarming really. Oh, my sweet little girl. She wants to go back and visit her homeland. But, then she got me.
Come on. I wanna go. I’ve never been to China before!”
What? Did she just say that? My daughter who is in her second year of Chinese school? who wears her Chinese silks for Spring Festival? Who learned how to pronounce her Chinese name better than I can? After I have made great efforts to incorporate Chinese culture and artwork into our home and rehearsed and rerehearsed her story with her? Adoption is so commonly talked about around here, some likely think we’re slightly odd.
Oh, honey, remember? You’ve spent more time in China than the rest of us combined.
She smiled and off she went, trotting away like a horsey as she does and moving on to the next thing to get herself into. As she moved on, I took pause, realizing that those adoption conversations, the ones some may think should be a finite thing, are never complete. My daughter’s need for adoption talk will never expire. My responsibility as a mother to engage her in adoption talk is never a checked off item on my mental to-do list. I get that it may not be daily; adoption doesn’t need to be every evening’s dinner conversation. But, it’s constant, enduring through every season of her life, a conversation that never actually ends but is more of a run-on sentence like these words strung together with very little punctuation—on that day, two weeks ago, when she forgot she didn’t just travel to China but she was born and lived there and on another day, in another season, if she wishes she could forget.
Let me try to answer the question again.
Yes, we have told her she was adopted, we do tell her she was adopted, and we will tell her she was adopted. It’s her life, and I wanna be the one to walk with her in it.
I love your blog… I love your words, it keeps the adoption story going in my head as we wait.
The question made me laugh. I have been asked the same question. How could anyone think we could hide it. Even if we could we would not. It is not an all pretty story but it is her story. Thanks for sharing.
It is so fun to read your words about your daughter’s adoption and the talk about it. I have 2 daughters adopted from China. My oldest is now 13 years old and my youngest is 10. For years it was a common theme in our home – the dresses, the nick nacks, the Chinese restaurants, the holidays and festivals. I loved those days and keeping that alive for them. Then, they go and grow up on you and just want to be regular kids with regular friends and this is no longer a theme or conversation that they want to really be engaged in any more. It is kind of sad but I figured I gave them the foundation and they know how they got their start in life and how our family is special. It is kind of cute because even though we live in Hershey, PA, our school district is very diverse because of the Medical Center in our town and my 13 year old loves to tell me how many Asian kids are in her classes (all but one kiddo at a table in one of her classes this year!) So, I know it is still special to her. She went to China with me when she was 7 to bring home her little sister and it was the best thing for her. She was able to see that it was a real place and not just someplace she imagined in her head or that I had just been telling her about. It seemed to answer alot of questions for her and calmed some anxieties that she had. She came home so much more relaxed and just jumped into life as a regular kid. My little one was 4 when she was adopted. SHe remembered so much for so long but much of it is remembered now only from pictures. She wants to go back to visit in the worst way and I hope someday before she grows up to be able to take her. So, it is interesting to see how this interest waxes and wanes with the developmental stages. Kind of sad for the moms when the interest dies down but knowing that we have given them a good start in understanding their story and heritage is a comfort.