Just Remember

The following is an article I wrote that first appeared in the magazine Adoption Today (December 2010 issue). I also had another article pubished in the June 2010 issue. You can link to Adoption Today's website at www.adoptinfo.net. Hope you enjoy my article, it feels really weird to write something for publication since I am a dad and NOT an author! Anyway, here it is:

Just Remember…

Sometimes words of wisdom come from unexpected people. Sometimes words of wisdom are given to us and we completely miss their value in the moment they are spoken. I was the beneficiary of words of wisdom early in our adoption of a sibling group of three children from Colombia, but for a season I completely missed the depth and importance of a small phrase that began with “just remember”.

When we received Jason, Tatiana, and Luke into our family, I had been a dad for 29 years and still had 5 minor children in my home. I thought I had this fatherhood thing pretty well figured out. Boy was I wrong! As I reflect back over the past two years with these three children, I have come to realize that parenting adopted children from the third world (especially when they come into your family as older children) requires some completely different parenting skills. They come to your family after having lived through some tough life circumstances and these life experiences often represent unique challenges to us as parents. Our new children had lived though extreme poverty and multiple parental abandonments.

Shortly before leaving for Colombia, we met a young couple in our church from Colombia. This couple did not yet have any children of their own, but wanted to offer their help with our adopted children when we returned home. We were very grateful and encouraged to have their help, especially since we knew very little Spanish. We maintained a blog (eightisnotenough.blogspot.com) for our adoption and made daily entries while we were in Bogota. After being in Bogota for only a few days, our new found friend Alvaro left a comment to one of our journal entries. He told us, “Just remember, these children are going to live every moment as if there is no tomorrow, because in their lives there has been no tomorrow.”

At the point that I read these words, I thought to myself, that the comment made complete sense. We were still in the phase where the kids were bouncing off the walls, eating everything in sight, and trying to play with every toy we have – all at the same time. At that moment his comments completely described the outward actions we were observing in our new kids! But… I completely missed the significance of this statement as it related to what was going on inside their heads, especially Jason, the oldest. When we got back to our home in Kansas, I would remember these words as Jason, Tatiana and Luke would try to eat everything at the table – I knew they had known starvation in the truest sense of the word. Of course they would want to eat excessively; their life experience told them that tomorrow they might be staving again. They would play with a toy only for a moment, and then they would run to the next toy, and the next and the next; their life experience told them that what they had today would be gone tomorrow. They needed to get to every toy because they might never have another chance to play with these toys. They would constantly want to be physically close to us as their new parents; their life experience told them they had to hold on tightly because we too might abandon them. Yes, I could see that these precious children lived as if there was no tomorrow- on the outside.

I don’t know if Alvaro had intended deeper meaning in his words when he spoke them, but for me they have come to be the most profound advise were ever given. They encapsulate the essence of the challenge I faced in becoming a cross cultural adoptive parent. As I reflect backwards, I have come to realize the value of these words are not in understanding the actions of my children, but rather in their significance regarding who my children are inside- what it is that makes them tick. The real challenge is not to convince them there will be food on the table again tomorrow. The real challenge is to help them to understand that there is something called tomorrow, that they can live outside of THIS moment. After two years, we have worked through a great many things with our Colombian children. We are sure that they love and trust us. We believe that they know we love them in return.

“Just remember, these children are going to live every moment as if there is no tomorrow, because in their lives there has been no tomorrow.” What these words point to is the challenge we face as adoptive parents to help our children develop a new world view. For these kids, there is no concept of a tomorrow. They know what the definition of the word tomorrow means, but for them as a concept it has never existed. How do you help someone to make such a radical change I their perception of reality? How do you motivate them to make good choices even when nobody is looking? How do you convey to a child of adversity that they can let go of their survival instincts and desires for self gratification? How do you train a child to follow the social mores and household rules you have set while trusting you to meet their physical, emotional and spiritual needs and desires in this thing called tomorrow?

We have taught these children to understand that good choices result in good consequences. They understand that bad choices result in bad consequences. While they understand this intellectually, and have grown through a lot of good and bad choices, they seem unwilling or unable to act in the present with any regard for the future consequences of their actions. In this world view as it relates to present actions, the future does not seam to exist. It is far more important to enjoy the pleasure of the moment than to act in such a way as to ensure bigger, better and longer lasting pleasures in the future. As a Christian family, we have trusted in Proverb 22:6 which taught us to “train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” What I have learned from Alvaro’s advice is that with Jason, Luke and Tatiana, we first had to invest a great deal of time untraining things from the past before we could “train them in the way they should go”. As I have come to understand Alvaro’s advice, I can now focus my efforts as a dad on helping Jason, Tatiana and Luke to live beyond the moment. We are teaching them not to just trust us as their parents, but also to trust that there will be a bright tomorrow for them filled with opportunities they never dared to imagine or hope for in those difficult circumstances of their early life.

God bless,

Jim