Ben’s Blog

I haven’t posted a rant in a while. Now seems like a good time.

Every now and then (less so, now, but often enough still) I find myself in an uncomfortable conversation. I tend to duck back into the traditional fight (”let me explain to you very clearly Why.You.Are.Wrong until my face goes red and people start to look at me funny”) or flight (uncomfortable body language until I can’t stand it any more and have to shuffle away) response to confrontation. I always forget about the third option. I always forget about the bean dip.

“Pass the Bean Dip” is legend in some online parenting circles. It was written as a response to inane questions about homeschooling but has been applied to all sorts of other less-than-mainstream parenting practices and can be readily applied to all inappropriate questions in general. The overall gist being redirection, which I’ve become quite good at with the two year old (my current favorite, “Ooh look! Is that an airplane?”) but for some reason I don’t always think to apply this to adults.

I need to remember this, the wonderful place between arguing and slinking away.

We went back to the courthouse and actually got to see the judge. This was the day that Ben officially became a citizen of the good ol’ USA.

The shirt says “I was worth the wait”. We have it in two sizes.

Smile with the judge.

In front of the courthouse.

For those of you still with me on this… unless something drastic happens it looks like an end to adoptions from Guatemala. Sure there are talks of orphanages and state-run adoptions (whee. cause those are so much better for children)… I just can’t help but hope that the lawyers will work some magic. That’s a lot of unemployed, smart people.

There are articles about this everywhere, but I’m too pissed off to paste them because they’re all full of “baby stealing” horror stories and such.

More news about Guatemalan adoptions and the impending Hague deadline here. Looks like, as of right now, the Ortega Law will go into effect on Dec. 31 (but with a grandfather clause for those in the process, so that’s good).

Highlights include, our government, meddling again:

“The final version of the adoption law is the result of the tremendous pressure used by the US embassy, who told the Congressmen that those who do not vote in favor of such proposal, will be deprived of their US visas, told us our source.

The Ortega Law is an anti adoption law, designed to make adoptions as difficult and as long as possible. It opens the doors to corruption, because the cases will only move ahead if there is a financial benefit for the heartless bureaucrats who would not care less if the children die. The lack of funding and of a social welfare infrastructure to provide for the care of the children is a recipe for disaster.”

Reports already (from those in Guatemala who know about such things) that there has been an increase in abandoned babies since agencies stopped giving out referrals. No big shock there, but it sure is sad.

In case you didn’t know, November is Adoption Awareness Month… so, here’s some more awareness for you.

I promise, a post about the actual kiddo is coming soon.

Looking for Their Children’s Birth Mothers

By MAGGIE JONES

Published: October 28, 2007

A few months ago, in an office near Guatemala City, a woman known as a searcher spread out a large map across her coffee table. The map was dotted with about 250 tiny, hand-drawn circles, each one representing a place where the searcher had tracked down a birth mother who had placed a child for adoption. Sometimes she found a birth mother after knocking on a few doors in Guatemala City. In other cases, she traveled for three or four days to remote indigenous areas in Guatemala or farther afield to Nicaragua, Honduras or El Salvador….

Several really good articles out in the past few weeks about adoption. Here’s the full text of one, I’ll try to post links to the others later.

Amidst all the noise about the dark side of international adoption,
here is another perspective:

By Elizabeth Bartholet
Sunday, November 4, 2007; Page B07

Last month, Guatemala was effectively shut down as a country from
which children can be adopted into the United States. While the
shutdown is officially temporary, it is likely that even when new laws
are in place, Guatemala will follow the path taken by many South
American countries in recent years: eliminating the private agencies
and intermediaries that facilitate the placement of children who need
homes and substituting government monopoly over adoption, which will
reduce to a trickle the number of children escaping life in
institutions or on the streets.

In recent years, Guatemala has been a model for those who believe in
adoption as a vehicle for providing homeless children with permanent,
nurturing parents. It has released significant numbers of children to
international adoption, many at young ages, before they suffered the
kind of damage that results in attachment disorders and other
life-altering limitations. Ironically, these policies are why
Guatemala attracted the attention of UNICEF and other human rights
organizations that, along with our State Department, have been pushing
for adoption “reform.” These official “friends of children” have
created pressure that has led to the cessation of international
adoption in half the countries that in recent decades had been sending
the largest number of homeless children abroad. Until recent years,
the number of international adoptions into the United States had been
steadily increasing, but the numbers are dramatically down.

Why close down international adoption? The real-world alternatives for
the children at issue are life — or death — on the streets or in the
types of institutions that a half-century of research has proved
systematically destroy children’s ability to grow up capable of
functioning normally in society. By contrast, we know that adoption
works incredibly well to provide children with nurturing homes and
that it works best for those placed early in life.

Critics of international adoption argue that children have heritage
rights and “belong” in their countries of birth. But children enjoy
little in the way of heritage or other rights in institutions. The
critics argue that we should develop foster-care alternatives for
children in the countries they are from, and UNICEF’s official
position favors in-country foster care over out-of-country adoption.
But foster care does not exist as a real option in most countries that
allow children to be adopted abroad, and the generally dire economic
circumstances in these nations make it extremely unlikely that
comprehensive foster care programs will soon be developed. Nor is
there any reason to think that children would do as well in foster
care as in adoptive homes. Indeed, for decades the research in
countries that use foster care, such as the United States, has shown
that such care does not work nearly as well for children as adoption does.

Critics also condemn adoption abuses such as baby-buying. But there is
no hard evidence that payments are systematically used in any country
to induce birth parents to surrender their children. In any event, the
right response to such abuses is stepped-up enforcement of the
overlapping laws prohibiting such payments, which would rightly result
in the lawbreakers being penalized. Closing down international
adoption, however, wrongly penalizes all those homeless children who
could otherwise find nurturing adoptive homes, condemning them to
institutions or to the streets.

Policies restricting international adoption replicate the same-race
matching policies that used to exist in the United States. In the
mid-1990s, Congress passed the Multiethnic Placement Act, rejecting
the notion that children should be seen as belonging only within the
racial group into which they were born. Our lawmakers recognized the
harm children suffered by virtue of being held in foster care rather
than being adopted transracially.

Congress, the State Department and the human rights organizations that
purport to care for children should similarly reject the notion that
children in other countries must at all costs be kept in their
communities of birth. Children’s most fundamental human rights include
the right to be nurtured in their formative years by permanent parents
in real families.

Elizabeth Bartholetis a law professor and faculty director of the
Child Advocacy Program atHarvard Law School. She is the author of the
books “Family Bonds” and “Nobody’s Children.”

Another one bites the dust.

Tired of waiting to hear from the lawyer (hey, if he doesn’t want to be paid I’m not going to push the issue) I did a little more internet legwork and figured out how to apply for Ben’s new KY birth certificate myself.

That was the fastest turnaround time yet. We had that puppy back from Frankfort in 2 days! This was the last puzzle piece I needed before I could file for his Certificate of Citizenship (the holy adoption grail and main reason for all these other steps). This delightful government form had me write our address no less than seven times. That form (plus oh so many more copies of other paperwork) along with some horrible passport-quality photos and another big ol’ check to DHS just now and man am I ever glad.

After this comes back I can apply for his US passport and get his Social Security card status updated from alien to citizen. And then we are really, truly, honestly, finally done. I’m estimating 2 years of paperwork, start to finish. Whew.

Yeah, just adopt. It’s easier.

Also, I was thinking back to our vomit-filled experience in the Atlanta airport (a year ago Saturday) and realizing how far we’ve come as parents. I was terrified. Still pretty afraid to hold the baby without dropping him, not really sure what would piss him off, definitely not sure how to avoid future vomiting incidents. Why did I not go to a store in the airport and buy new, clean, clothes for the lot of us? Why did that not occur to me? We had a long wait while the plane was delayed. Plenty of time. But no, we just sat there, stinky, waiting.

Actual conversation I had today at the grocery store:

<Crazy Older Lady> (walks by, notices Ben) Guatemala!?

<me> *blink* (thinking.. Bean Dip!? are we exchanging nouns? is this a game?) Excuse me?

<COL> He from Guatemala?

<me> *sigh* He was born there, yes.

<COL> We got one too.

<me> (oh god) That’s nice. (let me get on with my shopping before the non-napping child starts throwing down, please)

<COL> Granddaughter.. (gives her name) Do you know her? She lives here.
<me>  (oh yes, I know every single Guatemalan child in town. There’s a yearly test.). No, I’m sorry, I don’t.

<COL> oh. (husband manages to drag her away, finally).

Seriously. I get that she’s excited to have a granddaughter. Excited to make a connection (however brief or meaningless) with another adoptive family. But do NOT inquire about my child as if he were a car or a purse or whatever. In fact, don’t inquire at all. Please. Especially if you can’t manage to form a complete sentence.

He might be adopted. He might have been born in Mexico or Columbia or Peru. My husband might be Hispanic.  I might just be babysitting. It’s really not any of her business.

It’s great that she has a Guatemalan grandchild but I, personally, don’t want or need to explain my family to every random stranger who takes an interest. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it annoying, especially when it’s such a fly-by. Her curiosity doesn’t trump my privacy (or Ben’s). If every single person who was curious about why I have a brown baby stopped me to ask about it, I’d never get anything done.

Later on in the trip I passed a (white) woman with two Asian kids in tow. We exchanged smiles and went on our way. And that’s how it’s done.

One year ago today, we loaded our over-packed suitcases on a plane and flew to Guatemala to meet a tiny little boy who had no idea how much we already loved him and how much his life was about to change. What a day. What a week. What a year. We’ve come such a long way.

He has changed so much since then. No longer a baby. Now a very active toddler. I celebrated the day by being weepy and constantly repeating “this time last year…”

Ben celebrated in a different way by finally gaining access to the previously unobtainable yellow box on the pantry shelf. So then I got to celebrate some more by sweeping and sweeping and mopping the kitchen.

And then I read this article  which was an appropriately-timed reminder that somewhere Ben has another mother who is probably wondering about him. Hoping he’s safe and happy and loved. Hoping she made the right decision. I hope she knows how much we love him.