Dear Family and Friends,
We have been waiting for quite a long while to be sitting here with our bags packed and ready to leave. The picture of the time line above is from our blog that we started when we first started the process to bring home our son. Well, it has been a while since we started, but the day is finally here! We are so excited to begin this next part of our journey and we are thinking about all of you and how much our lives are about to change and how fortunate we are to have such incredible family and friends. We so appreciate the support and excitement that you have all shown us as we have made our plans for a second journey to China. We are thrilled to bring our son Taj Jiang home! If you would like to, it would be wonderful to see you when we return home. We will arrive at SFO on Friday February 5th at 5:30 pm (After 28 hours of travel!).
While we know everyone is excited to see our little boy, this is also a very big trip for Norah! Giving attention to her when we return would be really appreciated. Not only is she returning to her birth country, but she will also be visiting her birth city, her orphanage and meeting her baby brother! Please give her lots of love and hugs when you see her and please keep her in your thoughts through out this trip!
Taj Jiang Stevenson Fudi Bainbridge...
We anticipate that coming home may be quite overwhelming for Taj Jiang. He may be very scared, overwhelmed, over tired, or withdrawn or he may not. While every child is different, we believe that Taj’s history may impact his behavior when he gets home. Many people think that because he is so young that he won’t be impacted as much. We are erring on the side that he may grieve tremendously for all that he will lose. He is being removed from all of his routines and familiar surroundings, sound, smells and faces. Even babies grieve and experience sadness at an event like this.
In order to help our boy feel safe and learn that we are his parents, we all be trying to create the type of environment that will help promote security during this stressful time. Taj needs to learn that we’re his parents, that Norah is his sister and that we are his family. He needs to feel nurtured and safe. He will not be used to having parents to love and care for him around the clock. When he comes home, at the recommendation of all the experienced adoption professionals, we will be implementing specific parenting approaches to help encourage a strong, emotionally healthy attachment. We have read so many books, taken hours of classes on line, attended adoption forums, listened to adoption counselors, met with social workers, spoken with families who have taken similar journeys and spent the last 10 years raising our daughter. We still feel underprepared!
We know you’ll all want to hug, hold and help him, but it is recommended that we be the only ones to do that for awhile to improve his chances of strongly attaching to us. Until we feel that our boy has attached and clearly knows we are his parents, we will need to be the ones meeting all of his needs/wants. As strange as it may seem, adopted children who act very outgoing and affectionate with strangers is not a healthy thing. It is called “indiscriminate affection” and can mean that they haven’t really attached to anyone.
Here are some things we will be doing for our child based on all the research and experience.
1. “Why aren’t you out more, and why can’t we come over and visit?”
Taj needs to understand who his parents are. He needs to bond with us and us only. The more people around, the more it might confuse him. The less we are out and about to begin with, the better. Plus, a big way to help a newly adopted child adjust to a new family is to limit stimulation. There is enough internal stimulation as well as simply being in a completely different culture with completely new caregivers AND a new language. Time will tell how much we are out and about, but as much as we can simplify our life, we will. We hope to have a big early summer celebration with all our family and friends to introduce Taj Jiang to everyone.
2. “Come here and let me hold you!”
You might be tempted to pick him up or give him a kiss. This again is an intimate experience we want reserved for our family for the time being. High fives, waving hello, big smiles, a pat on the back are all appropriate ways to interact with him. We need to keep the snuggles limited to our immediate family…only for a while!
3. “Why do you feed him when he can feed himself?”
The problem is that many kids in an orphanage learn to be independent too soon. He probably learned this early on just so the orphanage could be efficient. Feeding is a basic bonding opportunity. Infants receive nourishment from their mothers and it triggers all those ‘feel good’ hormones that are a baseline for attaching to her. When we feed our son, we are trying to engage some of those same hormones and simulate that type of experience for him. We will also try other ways to connect during meal time, like making a lot of eye contact as he’s chewing. We also need to be the ONLY source of food for him for at least 6 months. So, while it is kind for others to offer children lollipops or treats or drinks or anything….we really need him to receive those things from us as we’re laying this foundation.
4. “He can walk….why do you carry him?”
It is highly unlikely that he received enough holding as a baby. Carrying him not only helps him start to feel comfortable in that intimate position, it also helps his vestibular system develop in areas where it may be lacking. Adjusting to keep his body positioning helps him become more aware of his body. Also, I can’t stress enough that bonding and attachment is critical…another reason why we carry him every chance we get.
5. “He’s almost 3, but you treat him like a baby. Why is that?”
It is said that for every 3 months in an orphanage, a child loses one month of development. So while he is almost 3, he might not be there developmentally just yet (even though he seems brilliant to us!). We are trying to re-do a few steps in his development that he may have missed. He will be able to pass through these developmental stages more quickly, but we need to make sure he gets to pass through them. For example, we don’t know if he got rocked to sleep as a baby. He should’ve and he needed it, so we’ll make sure he gets it with us. That cycle of distress and finding comfort in us is one we’ll be practicing together for a while. Our boy never got treated as infant, and it’s critical for bonding… this is why we do it.
6. “He’s acting up, why don’t you say no or put him in time-out?”
Some of the typical parenting strategies backfire with children from high stress backgrounds. Isolating him in a time out risks communicating to him that when he makes poor choices, we will leave him. Our hope is to keep him in TIME-INS. We can sit quietly, take a break, but with him -together. As language develops, we can use our words to describe what happened and what needs to happen in the future. Discipline is going to be an ongoing learning experience. Again, although we are not new to adoption, we are new to “toddler adoption” and we don’t have it all figured out. We ask that you respect our process and understand that we have tried to prepare ourselves as much as we could.
7. We will still need your help!
We find it hard to ask, but if you would like to help us out after we return, we could use help with getting things like groceries and dinners taken care of for the first couple of weeks as we try to stay home and cocoon with our new family…
We’re so excited for this journey and so THANKFUL for each and every one of you being so supportive of us. If you would like to follow along as we make our way across China to bring Norah Wei Wei back to her birth country and meet our son… and become a family of four… here is our blog address:
See you on the other side of China! Anna, Steven, Norah and Taj
