Orphans and Vulnerable Children: The Importance of In-Country Care

I should have mentioned this earlier. I'm bad at self-promoting on this blog. But now in a last minute panic I've decided I need to stump for my workshops at this week's Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit VII.

A bit of background:
I am the coordinator of an advocacy campaign called the Faith to Action Initiative. We consist of several member organizations that work for children: Bethany Christian Services, Firelight Foundation, Orphan Outreach, Bright Hope, World Vision and others. I have been coordinating all aspects of outreach for the Initiative for four years. It is a job that has taken me all over Africa, to dozens of orphan care conferences in the U.S. and provided me with the opportunity to build bridges between the Christian adoption/orphan care movement and secular child protection groups like UNICEF. A challenging but incredibly rewarding job. A job that makes me think, forces me to find common denominators, and daily reminds me that meeting the needs of the world's children requires that we think far beyond the scope of individual adoptions, orphanages, or short-term mission trips.

What I'm doing this week:
The annual Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit is taking place here in Louisville this week.
The Faith to Action Initiative (meaning - member orgs/partners and I) are presenting in several workshops.
The Initiative is hosting the following

The Power of Partnership:

How to Effectively Engage the Local Church to Provide Orphan Care in Africa

(Thursday 4:00-5:00pm/hosted by the Faith to Action Initiative)

Journeys of Faith:

U.S. Churches and Their African Partners Share Inspirational

Orphan Care Stories and Lessons Learned about Partnership

(Friday 2:00-3:00pm/hosted by the Faith to Action Initiative

Why you should come to our workshops:

Amazing stories of churches supporting families and their communities to care for orphans.

Principles of practice for churches, individuals, mission teams and student groups wanting to get involved in orphan care. Lessons learned from those who have gone before you.

What to do/what not to do!

Africans. Speaking words of truth from their own communities. Africans speaking about African children. If for no other reason, you should come to the second workshop for this.

I will also be at the Faith to Action Initiative booth distributing both From Faith to Action and Journeys of Faith - resources that are a must read for anyone hoping to help orphans and vulnerable children.

More on both resources next week.

Hope to see you at the Summit!

~A

Sun- Day

85 degrees in the mountains
Clear blue skies
Special gifts
Great church service
First picnic
Cassidy still with us (and still able to enjoy a swim)
Perfect.

~A

I Didn't Prepare For...

I didn't prepare for the way a daughter would watch me, emulate me.
Sometimes I look at Ariam, not yet 22 months old, and wonder how much of her will be her nature alone and how much of her will be my (positive or negative) influence.

There was one sentence that stuck with me from our adoption training (well, hopefully more than one, but there is one that rings in my ears daily) "the most influential role model in a child's life is his/her same-sex parent."

Before the trainer had even put a period on that sentence, J looked at me and whispered "we're asking for a girl!" (Ah, my sweet reluctant husband. Little did he know how much parenting a little girl would turn his world upside down.)

Despite this...warning? preparation? information? I didn't prepare for how early this role-modeling would begin.

A few months ago, Ariam began "helping" me get ready in the bathroom each morning. She likes to open my drawer, pull out mysterious products one by one (glancing up to get my approval for each) and lay them on the toilet seat. Then she watches what I do in the mirror, selects a product she thinks matches whatever I'm using (ie. if I'm brushing on blush she uses a wrapped tampon as a "blush brush" on her own cheeks. If I'm putting on deoderant she uses my empty travel deoderant container and insists it be put on under her shirt!) This is her favorite way to pass a half an hour. She'd play this imitation game all day and often cries when it's time to put everything away and leave the bathroom. It is so sweet and endearing.

I didn't prepare for her ability to observe. Even though I know she likes this bathroom game, I was unprepared for her recent demonstration to me of the "real" use of a tampon! And her attempted wearing of my bra.

Observant little doodle!

She's 22 months. I never considered that she was watching *that* closely!

So I ask you, when is it time for some privacy? Is it time for her to wait outside the bathroom door sometimes? What is the appropriate level of modesty between a mom and her same-sex toddler?
The few times I've showered with Ariam her jaw just about dropped to the tub floor. She wanted to touch, she wanted to learn more body part names. Does that mean she needs to see more or less?!

I've wondered, with children physically born to a mother, is there a certain level of shared intimacy they share that a mother and adopted child do not (can not?) have?  I didn't brea.st feed Ariam. So she's curious about my breas.ts in a way that makes me a little uncomfortable. We have never shared a body. But I don't want her to feel that her body or mine are shameful or weird. Because...well, the whole same-sex role model thing. It means I have to shoulder the bulk of teaching her about bodies and self-confidence and esteem! Lots to think about!

I prepared to teach her how to be gentle with friends and dogs, how to sing along to The Sound of Music, how to care for her hair and skin, the importance of praying before bedtime, and when to say please and thank you.

I didn't prepare for the imitation and the intimacy....

~A

The girls went to Florida

and life in Colorado will never be the same for Ariam now that she knows about boats and beaches.

Nightly ride on Auntie Glori and Uncle Ken's boat.

 Explaining the workings of the canal to Aya.

Over-enjoying the front seat. (Nobody else was allowed to join her!) Paparazzi was allowed to sit on the prow just below her highness.

 Regular rules, like no sitting on the table, thrown out the window (so as to avoid the tantrums - see posts below.)

My aunt Glori. We've always looked a bit alike!

Jumping over the waves. I swear there were waves. And I swear she was an eager participant.

Lots of fun had in Florida on a way too short trip. On our last morning, before driving to the airport, Ariam woke up and asked "Beach?" When I told her we had to go home she looked so dejected and said "awww duhn beach, awwwww duuuuuhhhn." It's been a theme every morning since, poor girl. Her first experience with the thrill of a vacation and the pain of its ending.

~A

Hair Practice Gone Bad

 This is Sheila. She's pretty. If a bit vacuous.

I borrowed Sheila from my hair stylist to practice cornrows. Don't let the photos fool you, she has at least 10 bazillion times more hair than Ariam.

Once Ariam and I got our hands on Sheila's hair we were dismayed to find that it was a. real human hair b. really dry damaged human hair c. human hair that was rapidly soaking up our expensive products d. impossible to detangle real ADULT human hair.

It was far beyond my rookie skills. And it sort of ooked me out as it shed all over my bathroom.
Let me clarify here - any shedding of any stranger-human anything in my bathroom would ook me out.

As Sheila's hair began shedding pounds of real creepy human hair all over my product covered fingers and clogged the sink drain, Ariam and I lost our enthusiasm for the project.

But not our enthusiasm for admiring ourselves in the mirror, 

or enjoying a dining room chair in the bathroom!

~A

PS. Remains to be seen if I will tackle Sheila on my own sometime before returning her. I think washing and trying to detangle was a huge mistake.

7

That is the number of tantrums this little innocent lovely had between Friday morning and Sunday evening. Three of them were epic. E.P.I.C.
All of them began with the word no, involved lots of flailing, hitting and all out hysterics, attempted time outs and time ins (yeah, I have no clue what I'm doing) and ended with a bottle, rocking, and that special hiccuping, snorting, sniffling thing we all do when faced with the end of an irrational cryfest. (Hers, not mine.)

We are considering pricking her finger to test her blood sugar when she gets going. (J has diabetes, thus a diabetes testing kit.) I have this weird feeling that she has low blood sugar and that the rage is centered around hunger but she doesn't realize it. After each one, after a full bottle, she's gone on to eat huge amounts of food.

Think pricking her finger during mid-rage would annoy her....?

Rage? Not moi!

~A

TANTRUUUM

We've glimpsed what's around the corner at age 2, but today I actually turned the corner and got a full on toddler tantrum experience.

And I'm at a total loss. I thought I knew what a tantrum looked like. It's the kid kicking on the floor of a Target toy aisle screaming that he wants an El.mo toy, right?? Or the mom hauling her 2 year old out of B.arnes and N.oble by her arm while she flails around screaming, right??

I've babysat through minor tantrums I guess. I remember toddlers whining and screaming when they don't get their way. I've smuggly told J "just distract, we just distract or ignore. Tantrums are no big deal."

Hmmm.

So here's what happened this morning. And I need advice from experienced mom.

Ariam was in her highchair for a mid-morning video (she watches a video while I take a shower or while I do her hair.) I had given her a pair of kid's headphones to listen to because we're practicing for a long airplane ride next week.

The headphones have been really exciting to Ariam. She loves them and is fascinated by them.

After a quick shower I heard her calling to me so I checked on her in the kitchen. Video was ending. I didn't want her watching more (we really try to limit to 1 video each day) and I didn't want her just playing with the headphones so I asked her to give them to me. She got very grabby and toddlerish. Lots of yelling "mine mine meeee!" and holding the headphones tightly. I really didn't have the patience to coax them out of her hands (probably preferable) so I pried her little fingers open and took them. Put the whole video/headphone system up high and took the tray off her highchair.

She wasn't please. That is the understatement of the year. She did not want to be taken off the highchair or told she couldn't have the headphones. I encouraged her to come help me get ready in the bathroom (she likes to pretend she's putting on makeup or cook with my drawer of hair products.)

Nothing worked. She was very angry. She stood in the kitchen crying and whining and screaming a little. So I just went on my way and finished getting ready in the bathroom.

Fast forward 15 minutes and she was a hot mess. NOTHING I tried worked. There was no amount of coaxing or encouraging I could give to pry her away from holding onto the edge of her highchair and screaming in hysterics.

It took 20 more minutes of holding her, trying to read her books (she would hit them and cry and scream), trying to put her in her crib (she was having none of that) to get her to calm down.

What finally worked was a bottle and some rocking. She was so very very insulted by the whole thing. She looked so angry and defeated and I know she couldn't even remember what she was upset about. She just wanted to hit me and scream and flail. While snot and tears and spit poured out of her and mingled all over the place.

Ick. It was all very awful and I guess a true look at a real tantrum.

So what do you do about these? Do you head them off at the first glimpse? In hindsight this was so much work that I wish I had just redirected her and helped her find a way to be happier after taking away the headphones. At the time though I was seriously patting myself on the back and planning to post on facebook something like "just used a 15 minute tantrum to blow dry my hair!" Smiley face smiley face.

In the middle of full blown tantrum do you try to hold a child even if they are hitting you and flailing? It seemed like she neither wanted to be put down OR held.

Is it ok to give a child a bottle (something you know they love and see as a reward) just to make it stop?

Wow. Seriously. I am exhausted and it is 10:46am. I rocked her until she was tired and put her down for a morning nap. She hasn't taken a morning nap in 5 months at least. I hope she'll sleep. I know I would want to if I had just screamed my lungs out for 40 minutes.

Is this our new norm????? What on earth????
~A

Public Scrutiny

The waiting room at our clinic in the Children's Hospital is always an interesting experience.

You know that special way that four year olds have of asking questions?

"um, um, um? Uhhhm, whyy...um whyyy does she? Uhm, I have a question. Um, why does SHeeee have...?"

Oh no, here we go I thought. Cue the question about whether or not she's mine. Or why her skin is brown. Or why we don't match. Or where she's "from." I've only had the question from one other four year old and my answer was embarrassingly weak. So I'm fluttering through files of possible answers in my head when this particular four year finally spits out the question.

"Why does she have pierced ears?????" (With a withering glance over to her own mother and a small touch of her finger to her lonely undecorated earlobe.)

:)

What can I say? I read posts like this one, written by adoptive mothers about their battle with unwanted questions so often. This post and it's 60+ comments cause me to think hard and often about how I can prepare for intrusive or over curious children and adults. It also makes me examine my feelings about questions we might receive in public.

But the thing is, and I don't mean to diminish the frustration of others or minimize their experiences, we really don't get unwanted questions. Or stares. I used to look for them all the time. Remember my White Mama post? My eyes darting around the mall just waiting for judgement or over-curiosity?

Not us anymore. I wonder how to account for this? The fact that I can count on one hand the number of times I've been asked about Ariam's adoption, skin color, or story in the past 9 months. (Once by a small boy on the playground and a couple of times by curious Ethiopians at the airport.) Is that a realistic representation of the trans-racial adoption experience?

We do get stopped, by white and black families alike, and told how beautiful Ariam is. We've been told that she's so well-behaved, has beautiful skin and hair, has a lovely smile, or that WE are so lucky. Ethiopians tend to skip straight to asking what part of Ethiopia she is from and what her name is (and do we know what it means.) And while I guess some families might not even enjoy this type of interaction (because in some ways it is a reflection of the fact that she looks different from us) I don't mind it.

If you are reading this and are not an adoptive parent, I think the number one thing you can do with your curiosity, if you absolutely must make a comment to a family you don't know, is fuel it into an honest compliment. If the family wants to share more information with you, they may. If not, then you have not caused harm by stopping to compliment or smile.

For whatever reason, we've experienced a reprieve from invasive questions. Even from aquaintances and our church community. All of whom I'm sure feel some degree of curiosity to know MORE than what we have shared, but who are discreet enough to keep from asking overly personal questions about Ariam's story or her adoption experience. And I am thankful. It's really allowed us to become one family unit, without fear, without anxiety or feeling always on guard.

What has been your public experience with your child?
Do you get frustrated when people ask personal questions? Do you get more questions from strangers or from aquaintances?

Is everyone out there as irritated as the author of the blog I linked to? I'll admit to being rather surprised by her animosity.

She looks so grown up these days. Can I buy a pill that will keep her little?

~A

Baby Bride

~ A

Take a deep breath and count to five...or twenty?

EDIT: I have found a blogger who is capable of writing the words I would write. Like we have have an internet mind meld. Makes my job easier because I can just link to her

My flu-addled brain wrote the words below but I think that anyone interested in the topic of the current state of Ethiopian adoption should skip over to Grace and then come back here - or reverse.

Now back to your originally scheduled programming:


I've had the flu all week but have still managed to catch many of the highlights surrounding MOWA's announcement to reduce the number of letters they write each day (approving each potential adoption) from 50 to 5.

Some dingbat at V.oice of A.merica kicked off the panic, I believe, with an inflammatory headline stating "Ethiopia to cut foreign adoptions by 90%." Yes, I guess the math is there but the heart of the story is missing.

What potential adoptive parent wouldn't feel that headline cut right through the heart? This time last year - I would have!

Adoptive parents don't just, swish!, sign on with an agency and receive their child. No, there is the paperwork, the waiting, the finances, the waiting some more, the receiving of a match, the photo you fall in love with, the waiting and agonizing. Have I mentioned the waiting? Whether adopting through a traditional infant program or adopting older kids or kids with special needs, we all wait and agonize.

One of the steps J and I struggled with in our wait was the wait for MOWA (Ministry of Women's Affairs - which is now MOWCYA I believe) to write our approval letter and send it to the court. We failed court three times because MOWA had not written the letter approving our match and confirming that Ariam was available for adoption. It was awful. And yes, when you are in the process and waiting for that letter you do go to a strange "why the hell can't somebody just whip up a form letter and sign the damn thing already??!!" type of place. Been there. Have much empathy for everyone going through it.

But back to the inflammatory VOA article.
I read it and I thought - huh. Well MOWA must be under additional stress and backlog. There have been new requirements set in place by both the ET government and US Embassy requiring additional documentation before a child can be adopted. It makes sense that MOWA, already unable to get letters out for every matched family/child in a manner we consider timely, already being inundated with stories of adoption fraud, would need to regroup a bit. (Big benefit of having Ariam home is that I'm able to think much more logically. I want to recognize here, formally, that this is something very very hard to do when you are anywhere in the process prior to bringing home the child you have waited for.)

So here's my thought: MOWA isn't a person - it is a ministry. A collective group of people about whom I know very little. But you have to consider that like any other office in the world, MOWA has staff turnover, MOWA has the need for trainings, MOWA had changes in leadership. MOWA oversees all of the issues related to women, children and youth in Ethiopia. Take that in for a second! Wow!

MOWA is not a ministry designed by the American people expressely set up to write letters for us.

There was a lot of frenzy online after the article came out. A lot of praying for Ethiopia. A lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth for children who may not be adopted because of this. More knee jerk reaction math was done and headings began to go the direction of "Ethiopian adoptions will now take 7 years on average."
A letter writing campaign was initiated asking adoptive parents to send in their happy stories and bright photos demonstrating successful adoption and a petition circulated.

Whew! I came up from my fever a few times to take a peek around the internet and quickly went back to bed.
Several friends have asked me what I think, given some of my professional connections in Ethiopia, and it's now or never for stating something. So take it or leave it, try not to take offense, here is what I think.

A. Children should not be raised in orphanages. I will always start with that. It's like a geometric theorem. One must always start with that.

BUT, given A....

B. International adoption is a tiny dent in what is actually a large scale child protection problem in Ethiopia. Whether we like it or not, nobody can argue that international adoption by itself is going to solve any kind of "orphan crisis." Studies are actually emerging indicating a distinct correlation between the increase in international adoption and the increase in the number of orphanages built in parts of Africa. Chew on that for a second....

C. MOWA wants to invest more time and resources into child protection and addressing the need for domestic solutions for children. They stated this very publically, to very little online applause from the adoption community.

I actually think this (not the reduction in letter writing - rather, the public committment to improvement) is the beginning of a huge step in the right direction for kids in Ethiopia.
If you take A, provide for B, and factor in C...maybe you actually come out with a solution that keeps more kids out of orphanages in the first place.

Ok, on to the rest of the list.

D. Ethiopia is not the United States of America. And Ethiopia does not have a responsibility to supply children to the world. I know, you are cringing and feeling defensive.

E. Let me ask provacative question - is the rush to petition a race and/or poverty issue? Honestly and truly? Maybe it is not for some and maybe for others it is. I don't know. The history of colonization is not a pretty one. History is littered with lighter skinned people taking control in countries they feel are "less civilized." Less able to manage themselves. Obviously not competent. While I am no fan of the Ethiopian government as a whole, I just cannot support this mass criticism and petitioning of a ministry that to all intents and purposes just announced that it is going to provide an increased focus on domestic solutions. We are all upset. We want to adopt our first Ethiopian child - or a sibling for our current Ethiopian child. We feel called. We feel righteous. We feel noble. We care. Whatever the reasoning (and I fall into ALL SORTS of those categories above) do we really have the right to impose our will?

F. I did not sign the petition or send in a flowery story with photos demonstrating the success of my adoption.

I think there is a VAST DIVIDE between our intentions, our actions, and the message received. If I can't control the message actually received then my intentions are irrelevant. The only thing I can control are my actions.


These are my thoughts.

As of this morning it appears that MOWA has decided to write 20 letters/day.
I don't believe this is an example of the collective bargaining power of the petition.
It's my understanding that this, and other improvements, to the "five letter situation" is a reflection of the good work of U.NICEF, the hard work of the embassy and the committment of a lot of child welfare professionals and others in Ethiopia. All who are concerned that children not fall through the cracks. I know that post-earthquake in Haiti, U.NICEF dug itself a bit of a grave with the adoption community. But let me assure you that in Ethiopia this is an office working incredibly hard to advocate for children to be out of orphanages and in families - whether those homes be in country (first choice) or overseas.

I think we'll see a stabilization in weeks to come. I've been too sick to try and collect all of the online links for you here but I do like The Wayfarer since it seems to always include both sides of every story and is fairly up to date with a list of who, what, when, and why. (Don't hold me to that - I've just skimmed the site today to make sure most of the news is posted.)

Now go ahead, shred me if you want to.
I didn't write any of this in anger or to divide the adoption community even further.
I just think that so often we (the collective we) in the U.S. forget that our reality and the reality on the ground, in the field, in the hard places is very different.

Collective deep breath in, collective deep breath out.

~A.