Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Helping Kids
I love dreams, they say so much about what is happening in the realm of the "rule-less," that is, outside the confines of ego and day time thought.
Last night I had the following dream:
I came to a house where a family was having dinner. The maid said I could not come in and shooed me away. As I was leaving, a small boy came out of the house and gave me a drawing. He was about four years old. We admired his drawing and then he fell asleep on my lap. The mother and father found me, with their son asleep on my lap. I asked them, "is this child adopted?" The mother began crying, telling me about her years of infertility and the great sorrow she had experienced. SHe was very emotional and hard to understand. The father, distressed because his wife was distressed, couldn't say anything. I asked again, "okay, I understand and can you please tell me if this boy is adopted?" Finally, the couple told me yes, the child was adopted and that they were having so much trouble. He was very unhappy and struggling. I told them I could help.
I woke from this dream and looked at the ceiling of my room for a long time. As I have worked through the last three years of reunion and healing around being adopted, I have met so many adoptive parents and their small children. It seems there is an adopted child around every corner now. I've also become quite adept at spotting adoptive parents. I know them by posture alone. Adoptive parents have a look that is a combination of hopeful, distressed and distracted. The mothers are protected, a little defensive and on guard. The fathers look worn down, with furrowed brows and a sloped shoulders. I can tell, in an instant, that these couples are trying so hard.
I love adopted children. This welling up is immediate. I just adore them because, especially when they are young, they are so very authentic. When it comes to adoptive parents, I want to say, "hey, let me tell you what's going on with your child."
But I don't.
I, like so many people, play along as if everything is just dandy even though I know that is not true. I am a parent myself. I understand the distress that comes with raising kids. But I also know, for a fact, that I never look like an adoptive parent looks. There is a confidence in me, even as I am perplexed by my kids. Perhaps this because I have been in several different families, have been adopted twice, have been homeless and moved a zillion times. Perhaps this is because I "get" my kids at the most foundational level. I get them. I guess what I see is that adoptive parents so often don't "get" their children. Not really.
Alas!
I attended a conference in Boston and a key note address was given by a very prestigious speaker (herself the adoptive mother of two children). She is well placed, scholastically, with many letters behind her name. She is a lawyer. (I don't want to mention names.)
This speakers bottom-line, after many Power Point slides and legal case excerpts, is that the mental health issue in U.S. adoptees stems from the fact that birth families are not fully disclosing their family history of mental health (or lack of mental health). She believed, since adoptive parents are doing birth families a favor by taking on their unwanted children, the least birth families should do is be more transparent. This is pretty close to an exact quote.
As it is my understanding that adoptees in the U.S. do suffer from much high instances of mental health issues, included learning and social challenges, I was very eager to hear this speaker but I was surprised by her scholarly conclusions. I wondered, aloud, if the instances of increased mental health challenges in adoptees might be due to the biological connection that the birth mother and the baby share and how, at the point of severance of that connection, the infant experiences severe mental trauma?
The speaker agreed that yes, this brain trauma is possible but inconclusive "Although natal trauma is a possibility, we really don't want to talk about that because such a suggestion would be very upsetting to the birth mothers."
End of discussion.
This speaker is a prominent thinker in the field of adoption in America. She is, in fact, part of policy making in this country.
Upsetting birth mothers is the concern? Wouldn't birth mothers be equally distressed to hear that their children, placed for adoption with the hopes of a better home than they could provide, are suffering from mental health challenges? Wouldn't birth mothers be equally distressed to hear that adoptive parents consider adoption to be a "favor" they are doing for birth parents? And, isn't the conclusion that mental health disclosure issues are the cause of mental health issues in adoptees inconclusive as well?
And, what of the adopted children who suffer the real distress of these mental health issues? How upset would they be to learn that they have suffered severe mental trauma and that their lives could be dramatically improved, almost immediately, by the simple recognition of the trauma? I know I was pretty damn mad to learn this myself and equally eager to get to work fixing the problem in order to lead a happier life!
Is it better to lead these children (and the families that care for them) to believe their mental health challenges are just part of who they are, the legacy of genetics? Or is it better to search more deeply?
And isn't it a little too convenient to blame mental health issues in adoptees on genetics? What of the nurture factor? What of the biological factor? What of this very real issue of splitting babies and mothers at birth and expecting a baby to adapt to a new family without taking into consideration the shared hormonal connection that made up the entire gestation process?
We are just not thinking very deeply or very intelligently about these questions. The one who suffers most, due to our lack of deep thought, is the adoptee. Next, the one who suffers is the adoptive parent-due to a lack of information and confusion.
~
What if this suffering could end? What if a new dawning of intelligence were possible and we could, as a society, see the obvious and then offer modalities of healing?
What an adoptee struggles with is somewhat simple to resolve. But no healing will come without compassion, honesty and the ability to think better.
This is my dream. I hope to bring relief to adoptees, who suffer unawares, and I hope to bring understanding to adoptive parents who accept the standard thinking that says, "your kids struggle because soemthing is wrong with them." Adoptive children don't have anything "wrong" with them. What they lack is understanding and more, smart information.
Gone Home is part of that conversation that hopefully illuminates the minds and hearts of adoptive parents and helps adoptees see their own struggles in a new context.
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