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The following article is reprinted from Volume 1, number 2 of the newsletter of Families with Children from China of the San Francisco Bay Area.
So many people have asked the question, “What is it like to adopt an older child?” To help those people understand a little about it, I am going to tell the story of my beloved daughter Li, whom we adopted at the age of four and a half from an orphanage just outside Guangzhou.
About four years ago, just before the yearlong moratorium, we received a call from our China liaison agency. They said that we could go and get Li, but we had to hurry and not waste any time. This was in January, just after the holidays in China, and their call took us by surprise. We had gotten a videotape of Li the summer before and had said yes to her at that time. However, the China adoption process was not smooth, and we had been waiting since the summer without any word.
The long wait had given us plenty of time to think about the little girl we were trying to welcome into our family. We watched the video a lot. Li looked withdrawn and scared, and she looked malnourished. Her hair was thin, and she was small. Several good friends looked at the video and said they were worried that this girl would be very difficult and would perhaps put too much strain on us and our family. We could see the point they were making, but it was very clear to us that she was our daughter and that we should go and get her.
We had waited all summer and fall without word, and then out of the blue came the phone call. Since it was short notice, I had to stay here and take care of our son while Val flew to Guangzhou. Ten days later we met her at the airport for the homecoming. She was carrying Li, who was grasping on to her for all she was worth, her head buried in Val’s shoulder. She wouldn’t look up, but as I watched her she peeked out at the small crowd who had come to greet her. I saw her eyes dart from one person to the other until she saw our son Tanawan. I saw a little smile go across her face, and I knew that he would be her lifeline.
Li wouldn’t give me the time of day those first few weeks . She was Val’s daughter, and I was simply an interloper. For about two weeks she threw a tantrum about every half hour. When this occurred, and after all attempts to mediate or fix the situation failed, we would set her down on the carpet by herself until the tantrum passed. She would kick her feet until little carpet balls would form. But she quickly figured out that her tantrums were not accomplishing anything, and their frequency gradually decreased until after about two weeks she stopped throwing them.
About that time Val went back to work and Li was left with me in the afternoons. What a fuss at first, but she soon realized that I was the one getting her dinner and that I should be tolerated. As she got to know me, she gradually warmed up, and we were on our way as father and daughter.
Li’s health was not very good when she came here. Our doctor commented that she had just about every parasite known to man. Her gums were bleeding, and her hair was very thin. She had had Hepatitis B at some time, but she had both antibodies to it, and so it was no longer a problem. We gave her medicine for the parasites, and her hair grew, and she shot up twelve inches that first year. With some basic dental care her teeth became healthy. She is a beautiful young girl now.
I am still finding out who it is that has come into our family. We often ask Li about her life at the orphanage, but she has almost never wanted to talk about it. In fact in four years she has only talked to me about it twice. Once during Christmas school vacation about two years ago she said, “Daddy, I miss my friends.” I told her that she would see them next week at school and that she should invite someone over the next day to play. She said, “No, I don’t mean those friends; you know I had friends before.” I cried a little, gave her a big hug, and talked to her about it as much as I could . One other time she began telling me about the tree with the little bananas on it where she had lived before. It was so casual that I almost missed it. I asked her about the bananas and if she ever got to eat them. She said that they would not allow her to eat them. I asked her if they called her Li at the place she used to live, and she said that they didn’t call her any name as far as she could remember.
Li had developed some survival behaviors in response to her situation at the orphanage. She had learned to hoard food to keep from starving. She knew how to be very sneaky and tell lies to stay out of trouble, and she had learned to dissociate and go inside herself for protection in times of stress. Since she came here, she has learned that these behaviors are not necessary anymore. She has gotten the idea that there is plenty of food, and she has stopped hoarding it in her room. She has realized that there is plenty of love in the family and that she is not in danger now so she does not need to go inside herself for protection. She still puts on her blank face once in a while when we get mad at her or need to discipline her, but it is not so often or so desperate now.
We are finding that her orphanage behavior resurfaces in times of stress, however. We are also finding that her amazing ability to learn English and her seeming complete fluency with it are not as deep as they might have been had she begun with it as her first language. As a result, this year she has been under increasing stress because she does not feel confident in school. This lack of confidence has caused her to revert to some of her old behaviors. The school was not quick to recognize this trend. In fact we had to speak rather loudly and emphatically to get them to act at all. This week we are going to have a consultation at school (she is in second grade) and set up a battery of tests aimed at determining where she needs special help during the next few years .
Li is no harder to raise than any of our other children. (We have a son from Thailand and another daughter from China, both adopted at about two years of age.) Some of the issues are different, that’s all. Li has been here four years, and as I write it I can’t believe that it has only been that long. Li seems like she has been here forever. She has completely captured our hearts. As I think about Li’s journey here, about her courage and the joy she has brought to us all, about the way she runs to me with her face lit up to hug me and tell me she loves me, I know that we made a leap of faith and that God answered us with a gift of love.
Dick Lotspeich and his wife, Val Free, are the parents of three children. They are also the founders of Heartsent Adoptions, Inc., 6 Oak Lane, Orinda, CA 94563, (510)254-8883, fax: (510) 654-3680.