I got a note from Sprout’s teacher on Friday saying Sprout had a rough week. She refused to do her work unless an adult helped her (she is in a 12:1:1 classroom so that help is thankfully available). She was sometimes uncooperative. And the work she did do was not her best.
Let me start by saying I adore Sprout’s teacher. She’s amazeballs. She taught Sunny first, and this is Sprout’s second year in her classroom, so we know this teacher well and have infinite respect for her and her methods of handling both teaching and trauma-caused behaviors. Truly. She is da bomb diggety of special ed teachers!
I wrote back that I wasn’t sure what was going on, but that I was aware Sprout is having some trouble with a kid on the bus, and I’d follow up on that issue for starters in case that was what was bothering her.
It took me all weekend to work the truth gently out of little Sprout. And the answer, when it came, broke my heart:
She misses her first family terribly right now and doesn’t understand why she was treated differently than her siblings, and wants to know what her life would be like if she lived with them. They live with a relative, who is getting permanent guardianship of them.
The truth is that the relative who has her siblings didn’t step up to take Sprout when she was removed from her Mama’s care. He wasn’t able to. He was living halfway across the country and struggling to manage his own family at the time. I suspect he was also frustrated with Sprout’s Mama and maybe thought having one less child in her care would help her care for the remaining four kids. We all hoped that.
At the time when Sprout was removed, Sprout was desperately ill and on death’s door. If we didn’t get her to eat and drink immediately, she’d be hospitalized and intubated with a feeding tube because she was so sick. We were given 24 hours to get her to take in pediasure in a volume greater than her output, or we had to take her to the ER. We weighed diapers and measured pediasure in syringes, injecting tiny tastes of it into her mouth every 20 minutes around the clock. She pulled through – thank whatever God or Gods are out there – but it was touch and go.
At that moment in time, her siblings were older and healthier and the judge only removed the desperately sick baby from the house and let the remaining four kids stay.
It took two and a half more years before everyone gave up on Mama and decided she could not adequately care for those four siblings. They weren’t going to school, they weren’t getting medical care, and two of them have the same rare genetic disorder Sprout has that causes dwarfism, heart defects, joint problems, vision problems, etc. Medical care was crucial.
By then, the relative lived near Mama again, and was far more stable and able to take on three of the four kids, including one with disabilities. We took the fourth kid, Sunny, for an additional 2 years before the relative was ready to take her on, too. Once the relative told us he could take her, we gave Sunny the choice whether to stay with us or go live with her relative, and she chose to go. We made sure it happened.
By then, though, Sprout had been adopted by us. She had lived with us for the only years she remembers (she was 1 when she came to us). She still needs lots of medical care, and her relative was not prepared to provide for yet another kid with high medical needs.
Did the agency and courts screw things up? Holy hell yes. All the kids should have been removed when Sprout was removed. The conditions they were living in were not safe or appropriate. But the system is so damn broken it didn’t happen for years. So Sprout wound up separated from her four siblings at least until she’s 18 years old. Then she can decide to go live with her first family or not.
What does all this mean for Sprout?
First of all, a hell of a lot of heartache. She misses her siblings terribly, and her Mama too, and even her aunties and uncles and especially her cousins. She’s got the best damn cousins ever.
Sprout is only 6 years old and is wrestling with issues lots of adults can’t handle. She wonders why she’s separated from her family and can’t yet grasp the explanations that are appropriate for her at this age. Hell, I’m not sure *I* grasp the why in this case. It should not have gone down as it did. She lives with constant heartache for relatives she can’t see often enough (they live 2 hours away). She lives with FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) for the lives they live. She asked me if she can go live with them when she turns 18, and of course I said yes. But damn. 18 is a long way away, and is 12 more years of feeling like she is missing out.
Will Sprout get better medical care with us? Yes, she sees the premier orthopedic surgeon in the world for pediatric dwarfism. Will she get a better education with us? Oh HELL YES. Will she have “better life opportunities” with us? Yep, by all commercial definitions. She has all the clothes and toys and games and STUFF her heart could desire.
But is it enough? I sure as hell don’t know. We love her to pieces and dote on her and give her opportunities to travel the world. She’s been to Paris and Lyon and lots of cities in the U.S. She’s been to Euro Disney. I’m determined to get her to London soon, where my sister, brother-in-law, and niece live.
Things are the way they are, for better or for worse. Sprout has forgotten all the Burmese language she ever knew and she mourns that loss. I’m hoping to find her a Burmese language teacher but haven’t been able to yet because of how far we live from the Burmese immigrant population of our city. We intend to move closer within the next year but until then she’s sad about it. We feed her Burmese food often, but it isn’t as good as her family’s cooking. She’s Asian in a predominantly white school district – again something we hope to change soon but not soon enough. And she’s a little person growing up in a family of average height people and not with her sisters who also have dwarfism.
In short, we are trying and will do our best, but we will never really be enough to make up for the colossal losses she has experienced and will continue to experience throughout her life because of this adoption.
We can’t undo what has been done and would never want to. But that’s really the heart of the problem. The situation is as it is, and one little girl is struggling mightily to find a way to be “okay” with her circumstances.
What can we do? We told Sprout’s teacher what is going on and asked her to extend her usual mix of grace and firmness. We told Sprout’s therapist, who was delighted Sprout was telling me what’s on her heart and mind, because that’s progress for Sprout. And now they will talk about adoption in therapy. And we tell Sprout how sorry we are that she is sad, that we understand why she is sad, and that it’s okay to feel sad. We scheduled a visit with her family this coming Saturday, too. She needs their actual hugs, not virtual ones.
We will work to do better on her school district (it’s great academically but way too white and conservative), and her proximity to Burmese resources by finishing the work on our house and moving as soon as we can. It’s been hard getting a contractor in to finish our bathroom but we do have it lined up so it feels like we are moving forward.
Beyond that? All we can do is validate Sprout’s feelings and hold her close while she is sad.
Anyone who says adoption isn’t traumatic is full of it. The loss is tremendous and lifelong. And I’m helplessly watching it unfold in the human being I hold most dear.
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