Stephanie made an interesting point in the comments yesterday. And I wholeheartedly agree. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that the point doesn't stop there.
Those of you who have kids know that kids come with issues. Racially different or not, adopted or not, kids will bring challenges into your life. It is the nature of raising kids. Life as you know it has changed forever. It's not just about you anymore.
Truthfully, I think the adoption and transracial issues might be the easiest for us to tackle with our kids as they grow. We know NOW that we will face these issues, and we can be proactive about creating a plan for handling them.
According to the seminar we attended (and I have no idea where they got this statistic, so I'm taking them at their word), adopted kids are statistically happier, better adjusted type people (as a group) than their non-adopted peers. They attributed this to "intentional parenting". I like that term! It means that we are taking measures from the beginning to help our children handle issues that we know they will face simply because of who they are and who we are as a family. Most issues are ones that we (parents) have never had to face, so we have to educate ourselves and be proactive. And that, alone, already sets us apart from many American families today.
Moving on. We are leading another one of these this weekend. We don't normally volunteer for two weekends a year, but we scheduled things funny this year, leaving this weekend to fall at the end of Spring break, so those volunteer couples with school-age kids are all out of town doing other fun things. So there you go.
Olivia will be staying with her Aunt, Uncle and cousin Trey. She would be totally excited if I told her about this. But I don't want to spend the next 24 hours listening to her constantly ask "Where Trey Go?" and "Go see Trey?" And she will remember to ask...trust me!
I'm a little concerned about how she's going to sleep. I've been rocking her to sleep or laying next to her in her big girl bed until she falls asleep every single night and naptime since last weekend. And it's not like I haven't tried laying her down in her crib awake like I've done EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR THE PAST SIX MONTHS. She just won't stay. Even if she's groggy or half-asleep, she'll immediately pop up and start trying to climb out of the crib. I've considered the crib tent, but seriously people, I think she'd tear it up in a minute. She's very strong and very determined. Mesh and velcro? No match for this child!
Of course, her Aunt is a childcare genius. If anyone can get Olivia to go to sleep, she can. I hope.
Now I'm off to get some things done while the child still sleeps.
2 comments:
Sleep is one of those things - you think when you finally get them sleeping through the night as an infant the sleep thing is over, but it's not. It's always coming and going. I hope it swings back around soon for you, though.
And I completely agree with what you are saying about intentional parenting. The statistic on adopted kids was interesting.
Hehe, maybe the trip away from home will reset her sleeping and she'll come back a beautiful sleeper again.
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