The Little Blue Dress

I wrote a post over a month ago when I was having a rough patch with the little one...I never published it because I felt it was more pity-party than informative. I decided to expand now on part of what I wrote, partly to show some of the feelings that we often wrestle with and partly to show that we can step back and look at the bigger picture and try to be better.

First, here are a few paragraphs from the pity-party I had a while back:

Forgive me for a moment while I have a pity party. I'm simply including it in this forum because I don't think I'm alone in what I am feeling and I know there are potential adoptive parents (PAPs) out there that might want to have the heads-up.

There is a mourning that has come with our daughters. A mourning of sorts that I have felt but have not wanted to recognize. It does not have to do with wistfully dreaming of the days when I was only insane with two munchkins instead of four (although, sometimes, when I am buried in laundry it does pop into mind...). It is the fact that deep down, I have subconsciously expected a sort of gratefulness from the girls. We did not adopt the girls so that we could have two little idolizers running around saying "thank you" all the time, mind you. That's not what I'm saying...but after three years of heartache, pushing through mountains of paperwork, setting aside money, losing that money, borrowing more money, taking clothes and toys back to the store unloved, filling the closets multiple times and then constantly paying more and more for such things as medical tests the insurance won't cover (let's just say they're not cheap), adoption registration ($720), reports for the Ethiopian gov't ($350 each few months)...the list goes on. Anyways, it isn't about the money BUT it is a factor. Quite simply we have spent a lot of ourselves to find and bring these girls into our family. IT IS WORTH IT, EVERY PENNY! But, then along comes the experience with the little blue dress and these evil little resentments creep up. You squash it down, but you know it is still there...lurking.

I mourn for their validation of what we have gone through for them. I mourn for their gratefulness at bringing them this new life and opportunity. I mourn for their thankfulness.

It is selfish, it is petulant...but it is.

The children and I met with a social worker last Wednesday who has adopted 11 children and has 30 years experience working with adoptive families. She said something that rang very true to me and perhaps is why I am acknowledging this now. She said many adoptive parents need to realize that THEIR NEEDS OFTEN WILL NOT BE MET at first.

Their needs will not be met. They will not receive the grateful hugs and thankful behavior. In fact, they likely will receive the opposite. And that is normal.

We were talking about the difficulties experienced those first few weeks and months home, when the children seem to act so differently than expected. We aren't the only ones that have been surprised, and I truly believe we have gotten off easy in many aspects...but for the most part the adoptive Ethiopian children seem to have this strong sense of, well, entitlement...like they deserve all they have received and more. They deserve to be waited on, they should not be chastised in any way, their closets should be filled to the brim and they should have all that they desire. And yes, the streets should be paved in ice cream. If it isn't, they deserve to cry, kick, scream, hit, throw things around or act in any way they'd like.

I am not meaning to downplay the mourning and emotional upheaval that they are dealing with saying good-bye to all they know (and often loved ones as well), for that is deep and real and we all know that it is there. But there is also a lighter level that rests on top...and that is where this sense of entitlement seems to reside.

Rodas had a little blue dress. I picked it out for her before we brought them home and I LOVED that dress. It represented my hopes and wishes for a little girl. She also had a doll--a chocolate, pig-tailed, pink-pajama clad one--that I bought for both of them and sat on their bed awaiting their arrival. One day after church, Rodas was wearing the blue dress and in a tantrum over some idiotic thing (I believe it was having to use the toilet before naptime) began tearing at the appliqued flowers on the dress and saying "no like" to the dress. I asked her to stop hurting the dress and she looked me in the eye and pulled hard on it to rip the flowers off. I knew it was displaced anger, but felt it was a good time to teach her that that still doesn't make it okay. So, I removed the dress from her and told her that I was sorry she didn't like her dress, as I had painstakingly picked it out for her. I told her that it hurt me inside that she didn't treat it well. I told her that we would take it to a place where they would find a little girl who would love that pretty little blue dress. She cried, but refused to ask for it back.

The same thing happened with the doll. After continually throwing and mistreating the doll, I calmly told Rodas that if she did it again then we would have to find someone who would care for the doll the way it deserved. She, of course, rose to the challenge and the whole family drove to D.I. (like the Salvation Army) and Rodas had to hand over the little blue dress and the doll to the worker taking donations. I have to admit that her treatment of the items hurt me quite a bit emotionally. It wasn't the actual dress or doll, but instead what they represented...the years that our family has been turned upside down and inside out on this journey to adopt. I knew it was displaced anger and self-pity--just what my little toddler was doing to the little blue dress--but that didn't make it any less real.

Anyways, after she handed the dress and the doll to the man, Rodas turned and with a cry that came from deep within her, she buried her face in my legs. I picked her up and comforted her...and it was REAL. For the first time since coming home, I believe our little girl actually cried real tears from true sadness...and she let me comfort her. It was incredibly touching but so sad that it took more loss for her to come to it.

Since then she has not mentioned the dress nor the doll, but she has done a better job not displacing anger and treating her things better.

She still will not let me rock her, though.

Whenever I'm holding her and standing still, I automatically start to sway to the internal "Momma beat" that makes me move back and forth whenever a little one is in my arms. Every single time I start swaying, Rodas stops me. Immediately. Do you know how hard it is to NOT sway when holding a child? Not easy. Even more difficult is thinking about how sad of a life this child has had that she does not find comfort rocking in her mother's arms. Or perhaps it is that she knows she might find comfort there and is too scared of opening herself up to the hurt again to allow herself to feel it.

So when I read over my earlier post about the little blue dress, I felt ashamed. Not of the feelings, for despite their pettiness they are real. I am ashamed that I can write about the loss that my daughters have come from, but that I don't think I am doing enough to acknowledge it in my treatment of them. Not that they need handled with kid gloves, but that I need to dig deeper into my empathetic self and put my needs on the shelf and strive to crack open the shell around Miss Rodas and Tsegereda. They are not just an eight year old girl and a two to three year old toddler. They are hurt beyond reason. The pee on the floor and the de-flowered dresses...it's really just a little girl crying for a mother that she is not sure she can trust. We parents MUST step back from our own needs, just for a while, and figure out how to prove to our little ones that they can trust us.

And, by the way, I have begun to receive thankfulness from our oldest daughter. She now will often give me hugs and tell me thank you for dinner or for a new pair of pants. This is huge and I need to pay homage to the great strides she has made in doing so. Thank you, my girl!