Reasons not to Adopt - Thievery and Bullying

This may be the first installment of a series. Those looking for levity and humor should probably look elsewhere. While I may throw in some sort of sarcastic backhanded and self-deprecating humor this particular series is (at least this first one) written in the rawest of moments. In today’s case I just finished off explaining to my daughter Lena how daddy has given and given and given so that she might have lots of nice things and experiences. Daddy has given to the point that he cannot afford even the $5 to have one of his church shirts pressed and that he’s even gone so far as to cut down on the amount of lunch he eats. Why did I give this little lecture? Because my oldest daughter regularly bullies and connives her brother and sisters into giving up their most treasured toys. Call it what you will but I call that theft and it crushes my heart. It crushes my heart so much that I was a sobbing wreck of a man when it was time to go to church. I told Jenn to head to church without me. So if there is a distinct lack of mirth in this little article just remember that I wrote this after picking myself up off the couch, drying my tears, and sitting down in front of the computer to type out how I *really* feel.

October 26^th 2012 we brought Lena and Sujin home for the last time. That was our “Gotcha” day (as it’s called in adoption circles) and it was full of rejoicing. For those that aren’t familiar with our long journey into adoption it all started in early 2011 and there’s a post on that somewhere in this blog. Lena was 10 and Sujin was 7 at the time we brought them home. Both Jenn and I thought we knew what we were getting into but of course we were both completely wrong. Within a few days we were both completely overwhelmed. I was “lucky” because I was working as a commander at the time and was saved from turmoil in the house because I was working insane hours. Jenn took the full brunt of the post-adoption blues. I saw a lot of the same symptoms in her that doctors ascribe to post-partum depression. We worked through those first few months but our take-away lessons were these: Sujin has attachment issues and Lena has territorial issues. This particular post is about Lena’s territorial issues.

Back in the orphanage Lena was one of the only non-Korean kids. She was a blond Caucasian girl growing up in an almost-exclusively Korean orphanage. At a minimum most of the other kids were at least half-Korean. Additionally their orphanage was located in the Korea-equivalent of the flyover states (aka Redneck country). Like most homogenous cultures Koreans are prone to a little bit of xenophobia (the Collegian inside me calls this “identifying the ‘barbarian other’”). Now factor in location (redneck country) and society (orphanage aka Lord of the Flies) and you might correctly think that Lena was the target of quite a bit of bullying. Now, academically I know that she’s got a history of being the target of bullying. I also know that it is very much human nature to use those same bullying tactics when one comes to power. On an intellectual level it is completely understandable that Lena resorted to bullying and stealing once she came into our house. If only I could live in an intellectual and academic world. Too bad I live in the real world where I have a bully who is psychologically and physically terrorizing and stealing from the other three children in the house. Forgive me if I become a little emotional over these things.

I’ve spoken to Lena about these issues before. I’ve counseled her, corrected her, shown her object lessons, shown her love, poured out an unending flow of love, gifts, and concern. I’ve also yelled, threatened, confiscated, cried, and lost my temper on a number of occasions. As a result she has slowly started to give up her evil ways. However Jenn discovered last night that Lena is still collecting tribute from her brother and sisters. She’s just doing it a little more quietly and with more discretion – using the silent treatment, threats, and intimidation to keep the other kids quiet. It has gotten to the point that the other kids have started sneaking in to Lena’s room to gather back their things. Think of Lena’s room as a mythical dragon hoard. Lena is the dragon. She’s not spending her hoard, nor is she really doing anything with it but she JEALOUSLY guards it. My kids are literally making Bilbo Baggins-esque runs into the lair of Smaug in order to retrieve their own personal Arkenstones.

So when I heard about this last night I went in to Lena’s room and as calmly as I could (I showed some remarkable restraint. No yelling, even) let her know that the gig was up. I then spent 3 hours in bed tossing, turning, and desperately trying to come up with a way to fix the problem. At about 11:30 after 2 hours in bed I decided upon “The Nuclear Option.” I prayed for a bit, asked God to give me discernment while I slept and went to bed. When I woke up this morning, convinced that the metaphorical destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was in order I wrote the following terms to Jenn for her approval.

1. Lena is evicted. She gets her clothes – that is it.
2. Everything in Lena’s room will be redistributed to the other kids
3. Lena will NOT be allowed upstairs to play in the other kids’ rooms
4. Lena will sleep on an air mattress in the living room. She will put up and take down her “room” every night and morning.
5. Lena will not be allowed to play with the other kids while unsupervised. Homework is the alternative
6. This will last 1-2 months. 3 weeks is the BARE minimum

For those who attended Basic Training in the late 90’s and had a thief in their company you might remember that private going through something similar to this. I’m not going to lie and tell you that basic training wasn’t my inspiration for “The Nuclear Option”. This, of course, precipitated into a talk between me and Jenn. For anyone who has ever witnessed a “talk” between my wife and I you know that things can get loud, quickly, if one of us happens to be emotionally charged. See the first paragraph one more time real quick and you’ll see that I was the very definition of “emotionally charged”.

My wonderful wife reminded me that this is a long process – that Lena has almost 11 years of bad habits to work through and that the nuclear option was NOT an option. I reminded my wonderful wife that we had three other children to worry about and that while one child worked through her issues the other three were living in fear and that continuing along the path that we had been was NOT an option. Now, quickly I want you to replace the word “reminded” from the last two sentences with the words “screamed” “hollered” “loudly exclaimed” “raised my voice while pounding on the bathroom counter” or another more emotionally charged phrase, crank your argument volume-meter to the Spinal Tap setting on your internal amp and read it again. Welcome to the Galstad’s. We aren’t too good to not have a knock-down drag-out before church.

So after going downstairs and expressing my extreme frustration to Lena – I’m also not too great of a dad to not cry in front of my kids – I retreated to the basement and now I’m sitting in front of the computer, typing this out while trying to come up with a way to teach my daughter what I learned from Jesus.

You see the whole Genesis behind the adoption was Jesus. Anyone who has asked me what caused me to adopt has gotten the quiet explanation of “It’s a Jesus thing. He adopted me so I figured I’d do the same thing.” So now I somehow need to show my daughter that just as I have accepted Jesus’ love and shower that love on her that she can do the same thing. She can now take my kindness and be kind. She can now take my love and love others. She can now take all the help that I give her and help others. She can now take all the wisdom (or attempted wisdom) I give her and try to answer the hard questions of others. There is no more need for her to steal from her brother and sisters because all she has to do is ask for it from me and I’ll GLADLY give it to her. And so I sit here and wrestle with the best way to teach those things and unless I’m trying to teach the justice of Old Testament God (which I’m not) then “The Nuclear Option” is not an option.

So this is where I am right now. Still in the basement, still trying to come up with the best way to raise my children and correct a problem. It will take enormous amounts of patience and love – patience and love that I DO NOT possess. And this is why this post is entitled “Reasons not to Adopt.” You do not currently have the patience and love to do it. You don’t have the boundless reserves of grace, self-control, peace, or any of the other fruits of the Spirit to do it. Sure, you might think you do. You might think like I did that “God will provide what I need because I’m doing His will.” I am here to tell you that God just might not – even if it is His will that you adopt. Jesus loves me, this I know, but He very well might give me a hard row to hoe. So right now I am daily falling on my knees and asking for more wisdom, more grace, more humility, more love, more patience and more joy. Because right now I am completely overwhelmed and completely dependent upon the mercy of a loving God. So unless you want to suddenly find yourself out of your depth and on your face begging for mercy from God then I suggest you don’t adopt. It’s not the message you usually get from adoptive parents. 

The long and windy road to Adoption - The first step is expectation management

It's been about 9 months since I last posted and I know at least one person out there has asked me if I was still doing the blog. The answer up until a few days ago as, "Not really." I had lost interest in writing things about Korea. I have been very busy with work and my free time on the weekends has been spent either playing with the kids, golfing, or hanging out with friends (written in decreasing order of regularity). Blogging has been very low on the to-do list. Plus, it turns out that I am not that funny, or original, and many of the topics I have thought about covering have been beaten to death by the internet at large. (Engrish anyone?). So I've let the masses speak for me and spent a lot of time chasing Sora and Deuce around the greater Korean Peninsula. Until now.

Look one post up and you'll see a VERY long write-up about me coming to grips with my/God's desire to adopt. This weekend my wonderful wife finally got me to put my money where my mouth is regarding that conversation/post from a few months back. You see, Jenn is a very astute observer and since we've been married for 11 years she knows that as much as I may WANT to do something it takes a little push or pull or kick in the ass to get me to do it. It's Newton's first law of relationships and she understands it quite well. "A husband at rest will remain at rest until the good wife makes him do what he should be doing on his own." I love her so much.

So what Jenn has been doing for the last couple months is figuring out how we, as foreigners, can adopt a Korean child. What she's discovered is that due to recent law changes it's become VERY difficult to adopt locally. With concerns of human trafficking at an all-time high Korean lawmakers have made foreign direct adoption from orphanages a very difficult proposition. We can go through a big agency like Holt but that means a bunch of trips back to the States in order to adopt a child from within the country we live... that's stupid. Another option which we have considered is contacting a mother-in-need prior to the birth of her baby and adopting her child almost immediately after she gives birth. While this is the most expeditious way, it also means we will have a newborn on our hands and if the child is put up for adoption newborns get snatched up very quickly. The 3rd option is finding a child from an orphanage that meets a couple of pre-conditions:

1. Birth parents are available for contact.

2. Birth parents are willing to give up child

The problem is that a lot of Korean parents are not willing to give up their children for adoption. Children are placed in orphanages as a measure of safe-keeping with the hope that someday the birth parents will be able to bring them back home. For a birth-parent to give up their child for adoption it is an admission of abject failure and, as in many cases, is a bitter pill to swallow. In other cases parents that are no longer able to be contacted by the orphanage are not able to give up custody of their children. Without legal granting of custody a child cannot be adopted.

Despite the challenges the third option works well for us for a few reasons. Older children are generally less likely to be adopted. I am looking to adopt an older child for that reason. When we adopt we want to have full contact information for the birth parents. I am not into taking away the option for my/our child to meet up with their birth family later in life. Finally Jenn and I are into full-disclosure adoption. That means that there will be no 16th birthday card that reads: Surprise! You're adopted! I want our adopted child to grow up knowing that we picked them, we encourage them to meet their birth parents, and they are indeed adopted.

And so this Saturday my wife said to me, "I've made an appointment with the orphanage and we're meeting there after lunch. No golfing today." We met two young girls and Jenn had a long discussion with the administrator of the orphanage. (A little side note. This is the only orphanage administrator that has actually been helpful to Jenn. All the others just told her "It's impossible but if you would like to volunteer we're happy to have you.") I took a liking to the younger girl but Jenn reminded me that I had told her that I was looking to adopt an older child... she remembers EVERYTHING I say.... So this morning Jenn called the orphanage and set up a "date" between our kids and the older girl. Her name is Sujin and apparently we've raised our children to be gracious, patient, and kind. Jenn and the kids took Sujin to the water park and then over to our house to watch movies and play. It turns out that Sujin had never been to a pool before (lots of crying) and is deathly afraid of cats (we have an enormous teddy bear of cat who apparently looks like he eats young Korean girls). Even after all that Sujin enjoyed her time with us and my kids are looking forward to spending more time with her.

In the meantime I (err... my wife) will be busy contacting the adoption lawyer, maintaining contact with the orphanage, researching the internet and Korean adoption documents, and generally helping me actually achieve my goal of adopting a child here. I sooooo married up.

Now I am busy working the expectation management piece of this ordeal. The administrator at the orphanage stressed the importance of keeping your word and not making promises without being able to keep them. (a page straight from the Counter-Insurgency and Transition Team Manuals... who says Military Theory has no application in domestic situations). I sat down with the kids on three separate occasions and stressed the importance of not talking about the future and treating Sujin just like one of their other local friends. And then I posted pictures of Sujin with my kids on the internet and spoke at length with some friends of mine about my hope that this all works out. Expectation Management does not just apply to the adoptee.