Not surprisingly, the girls wanted to tweet, too! And, boy, did they take seriously the idea of tweeting the hard parts of adoption:
Maya, age 6, says, "#adoption is hard because I have bad dreams and I can't stop them. Do you have bad dreams? I was adopted from China."Zoe's tweet didn't surprise me overmuch, but she was quite a bit more positive than usual that she could actually find her birth parents.
Zoe, age 9, says, "#adoption is hard because I want to find out about my birth parents in China.. When I grow up I'm going to find them."
Maya has been having bad dreams lately, but she's never connected them to being adopted before. Mostly the dreams have been about monsters, without many specifics. Definitely something to talk more about.
The Twitter folks who follow #adoption tend to be a bit on the rainbows-and-unicorns side, so I wonder what they'll make of these 140-character windows into the other side from a child's perspective. . . .
I hope Zoe does find her birth mum one day, and it's not rainbows and unicorns to say so.
ReplyDeleteThe girls' tweets will probably help people to think: "This is why adoption could be hard"...
Cool! I am glad they are finding their voices and you are showing them varying ways to express them.
ReplyDeleteOn the issue of bad dreams. . . I think there is usually a reason. It may have something to do with adoption and maybe not. My daughter was having bad dreams a few weeks ago, and I couldn't figure out why. Then I remembered a comment she made during bath time a couple nights ago. She said she was afraid to go to Asia (we are planning a trip there in 2011). We talked about why. I think it has something to do with the fact that she came from there, and maybe isn't sure what kind of expectations we have of her on this trip. I jokingly told her a few weeks ago that since she is learning Chinese, we hoped she would be able to translate for us when we're in China. I thought she knew I was kidding, but I think she really took that to heart and was having anxiety about it. That same night she wanted to start making a list of what to pack for the trip still 1 and a half years away! After a lot of reassurances, I think she feels less anxious about us going to China and realizes that we don't expect her to know Chinese perfectly by then. Since we talked about it the bad dreams are going away.
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