What Will They Think I'm Doing to One of Their Kids?

by Pam Connell | More from this Blogger

28 Nov 2007 11:57 PM

Yesterday I wrote about whether when people see me with my kids, they think of my interactions with them as a reflection on adoption. Sometimes I would like to be a bit less conspicuous.

There is another situation which brings on an even more intense feeling of being conspicuous. That is when I am around people from my daughters' country.

There are times when I have sat quite demurely patting my child's back while she screams and kicks the sidewalk at our city's central plaza. It took her a full half hour to realize she wasn't going to get what she wanted. Other times, I have successfully ignored her or steered her to her room to show that I will listen patiently when she is done with the manipulative screaming.

The only time it bothered me was when it was at a cultural festival. I felt that lots of people were looking at us, not knowing the history of the tantrum, wondering why I didn't pick her up.

I have been told by an American who lived in my daughters' country that she found parents very strict with older children, but almost totally permissive up to age four. In other cultures in our church, I have seen children up to age seven being treated almost as babies, allowed to lie down on the church pew with Cheerios and a blanket. In my own limited experience, I did formerly have a neighbor family from the girls' country where the older kids were great and the toddler was the terror of the neighborhood. I do not mean to imply that everyone from a certain culture is the same, of course, only that certain things may be more common. So I worry that I will be thought of as harsh at those times when I do think it right to let my daughter cry rather than give in.

This is another of those times when I feel hypocritical. I'm nervous when it's time to actually put into practice things thought I was eager to do, like to talking about the girls' birth and foster mothers. I want them to be around others of their culture.

But I just can't shake the fear of being judged. I know many people don't like the idea of privileged Americans adopting their children. I worry that they will see me as proof. I worry that I will violate some cultural norm and offend them. I worry that they will feel sorry for my child.

Of course I know that this is projecting my own insecurities on others. Why do I feel so vulnerable around people from the girls' first country? Do I feel that I owe them something for having entrusted me with this beautiful child? Do I want to prove my intercultural competence? My parenting judgment? Am I afraid that I will contribute to negative opinion about international adoption? Worse, will we, caught on a bad day or in a public tantrum, contribute to the fear some have in that country that children available for adoption are somehow "bad blood" and too risky to adopt?

This is the first time I've really tried to spell out my fears to myself. I know in other areas of my life, probing the reasons for my feelings gives them less power over me, even if a few of the reasons for my anxiety are actually valid.

Maybe now I can begin to address them. Then I can decide whether more or less interaction is right for my daughters at this time, without worrying what people think of me as a parent or adoption as an institution.

Please see these related blogs:

"Exporting" Children?

Ease Your Child's Transition: Learn Cultural Child Care Practices

Learn more about Pam Connell

Pam Connell is a mother of three by both birth and adoption. She has worked in education, child care, social services, ministry and journalism.

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