Reflections
Reflections – Children and the Future
Jean with two grandchildren at Morton Arboretum
My wife and I have traveled a special journey. Not always a completely successful one: that may be too much to expect. Just special. For starters, I married a schoolteacher. Whatever else one expects in such a choice, there is a high likelihood that the person loves children and loves working with children. With Jean, that was a certainty. She lights up in the presence of children. It is a gift, a special type of charisma.
After we were married for about five years and had settled in Chicago, we underwent licensing training as foster parents with the intent to adopt. In 1991, Jessica, then eight, was placed in our home. Later, her older sister Patricia, then 19, was also placed with us following a difficult mental health history. By late 1996, Kerie, then eight, was also placed with us. She had visited us once in respite care while her previous foster parents were on vacation. When the decision was made to relocate her and her siblings in new homes, she was asked about her own preferences. She reminded her case worker of her stay with us, and we were asked if we would take her. We quickly agreed. She took up residence with us just after Christmas.
We adopted both girls, in both cases after a few years in foster care. Kerie chose to change her name to Anna, signaling her desire for a new beginning, at age 11. It struck me as a clear indication that she had a mind of her own. That has been both a blessing and an obstacle, depending on the circumstances in which the tendency has expressed itself.
In 2003, in part at the urging of my literary agent, Malaga Baldi, I began a memoir about our experiences in adoptive parenting. Much of the manuscript was written in four weeks during a residency at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois. I have never made it back to Ragdale, and events conspired to keep me from giving the book the time and attention it needs to become a quality piece of writing. By the spring of 2005, I found myself in Sri Lanka as part of a team helping to assess prospects for rebuilding after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. By fall, I was heavily involved through APA in recovery assistance for Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. My career in disaster planning began to squeeze out other priorities. If I ever complete the memoir, I will need to start again from scratch. Too much has changed in the interim. Twenty years is too great a distance to operate from the same perspectives I shared in the manuscript at the time. Both girls are grown adults with children of their own and very different world views from both us and each other. We now view matters from the perspective of grandparents while serving as guardians for a 15-year-old grandson who is the son of another foster child, Patricia, the older sister of Jessica. Life gets complicated.
In the U.S. today, there are too many children with troubled family histories that lead to foster care, often with uncertain results that go with the territory. The older a child is by the time he or she enters the foster care system after some history of abuse or neglect, the more that child’s perspectives, reactions, and emotional character have been shaped by whatever trauma and neglect brought them to the system’s attention. Some impacts do not manifest themselves until adolescence or even later, while others become readily apparent very early. Depending on the circumstances, they take many forms. Some children become withdrawn and sullen as a result of emotional neglect, and only years of patient outreach by foster or adoptive parents can weaken the protective shell the child has developed. In other cases, chaotic homes produce children with a strong desire to assert control over their environment, rejecting the authority of adults because adults failed that child at an early age. One could fill a library with the books that have been written about the child psychology of foster children.
For foster and adoptive parents, who typically must work harder than most parents because of the need to overcome these deficits, there is a leap of faith that one can make a difference. There is a black box of emotional information stored in every child, and for parents who have not enjoyed the earliest years of a child’s life, imagining the details in order to understand why and how a child reacts in particular ways to particular events and developments in life is especially challenging. It is like a batter trying to guess whether a pitcher is about to deliver a fast ball, a curve ball, or a slider. One can develop instincts and insights that improve one’s average, but even the best hitters do not launch one over the fence every time. Mistakes are inevitable. The only long-term remedy is a great deal of love and patience and an open mind, a willingness to listen, not only to what is said openly and directly, but to the subtexts and body language and even what is not said or cannot be articulated.
A great deal of healing is in order for the vast majority of foster children. We must restore each child’s faith that life holds great promise. That often entails rebuilding shattered self-confidence. In other cases, the child may seem to have adequate self-confidence but needs to regain confidence in adults. That lack of a sense of being protected can lead to the most awful consequences. Many young adults are in jail today because they either lost or never acquired such a confidence in the adults in their lives. Our society has managed in recent generations to create whole neighborhoods that seem to their children nearly bereft of positive adult role models. The result is Lord of the Flies, but on the mean streets, with gang shootings in the heat of summer. One need merely read the news to confirm this fact.
I want to close with the thought that foster parents must never try to succeed alone. It Takes a Village to Raise a Child is not merely the title of a book by Hillary Clinton. She borrowed the title from an African proverb. The African wisdom is that the child’s growth is ultimately the sum product of inputs from the entire community. We have found that our children and grandchildren benefit from the network of friends and willing supporters at our church and in the community, at school, and wherever we can muster positive input to steer them into productive, positive, life-building experiences. Not everything works. But it is important that a large number of people care about whether a child succeeds. Teachers, coaches, counselors, friends, neighbors, relatives–everyone matters as long as their contributions are mature and emotionally and intellectually wise and encouraging.
At the same time, as a result of more than 30 years of experience in this realm, I have one request of parents of all types: biological, foster, adoptive, whatever. It is my observation that many people who seem most certain of what others should do and how to handle specific situations could benefit from a greater level of reasonable doubt about whether anyone has all the answers. There are obvious boundaries that some parents cross in perpetrating or tolerating verbal, physical, or emotional abuse, or in failing to meet basic needs of their children. But in many other cases, there may be much that we do not know but should before we judge. On the other hand, some quiet, humble parents do a better job than anyone knows but simply fail to present the appearance of having all the answers. Their wisdom may be greater: None of us has all the answers. There is always room to learn more. There is room every day to learn more from and through our children. I would say that, as a parent, if you are not prepared to learn, you may be missing the whole point of the adventure, for there is a new surprise virtually around every corner.
SPECIAL CONCERN
Every child has his or her own problems and concerns, as does every parent who hopes and works for the best for their children. If I have one overriding concern, however, it is the wholesale paranoid flight from the truth that seems to characterize so much of the American adult population today. When we have tens of millions of adults who cannot accept election results, despite tons of evidence of their legitimacy, simply because they cannot understand how their candidate could lose, we have a nation that is suffering from mass hallucination. When we have adults who cannot accept the verdict of a jury of twelve men and women who spend their precious time sorting through facts presented to them in court, simply because they refuse to believe that the human idol they have constructed in their own minds could possibly have committed the crimes alleged, we have a nation that is suffering from mass hallucination. How such adults are supposed to be able to teach their children to search for and come to terms with truth is a problem that troubles me greatly, not only as a Christian but as a serious human being.
That said, I also know that sometimes the children of such parents find the truth on their own, sometimes the hard way. Our prisons contain thousands of people who grew up with the notion of “heads I win, tails you lose.” When accountability comes calling, they either find a path to redemption or they wallow in anger and self-pity. But accountability comes in many more subtle packages, and the search for and openness to truth is what makes life challenging but also rewarding. Christianity, properly understood, teaches us that speaking truth to power often creates consequences not only for prophets but those who simply adhere to profound and deeply considered principles, but in the long term, the world admires a Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or a Nelson Mandela, far more than it does a Bull Connor or an apartheid warrior.
One of my own evolving roles in life has been as a researcher, committed not to proving what I already believe but to learning more and deepening my understanding of truth. That has shaped my sense of what we need to do to lead the next generation forward despite whatever frustrations may materialize along the way. It is my fervent hope that more adults in today’s world can develop some similar openness to truth and discard their bigotry, illusions, and hard-headed idolatry. Children need to grow up in an environment that overflows with love while honoring truth.