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It’s leftover time for the turkey, and the same goes for my blogs. This is an entry I posted way back in April about cultural enrichment (in my adoption from Russia blog) and the internationally or transracially adopted child. I think it’s worth another look-see.
My son was adopted from Russia. When my husband and I were in court we promised to keep Little J connected to his culture, although at the time we weren’t completely sure what that meant. I think this is a common experience for a lot of people who adopt internationally. So common, in fact, that people have begun to make fun of it.
A while back, Sandra, our International Adoption blogger, posted this link to an facetious article/essay/spoof in The Onion about adopting a child from a Third World Country. The piece is very funny, but part of it made me cringe because I sorta, kinda, a little bit, recognized myself.
It wasn’t in the part where the writer is saying she got her fictional daughter from a Third World country and is bringing her to a “real” country, or even the part where she says her daughter is the best, most adorable child in the orphanage catalog (although I was actually told something along those lines by Little J’s orphanage workers when we went to get him). Or even where she changes little Xuan’s name to “Whitney” because she didn’t know how to pronounce “Xuan” and Whitney sounded much more American that poked me where it hurt.
But it’s the end, where she says she’ll try to integrate her child’s ethnic background into their lives by having rice a couple times a week (the child is from Vietnam) and on little Whitney’s Adoption Day they’ll have some kind of ethnic-based party, that hits so close to the bone. Reader, I am guilty of this type of thinking.
In a way, this entire blog is about remembering Russian heritage and celebrating Russian adoption…but what do my husband and I *really* do to help Little J with that? Ummm….we have a couple of matryoshka dolls around the house…I wrote a book that we read occasionally that mentions some elements of Russia (but mostly elements of orphanage life, which should never be confused with Russia in general)…and we use a couple of Russian words now and then so that he remains connected…yeah, right.
In reality, we are caught up with day to day living with Little J and don’t seem to find time to naturally inegrate anything “Russian” into his everyday life. Once a year on Adoption Day – maybe. What we’ve done so far on Adoption Day hasn’t been any kind of cultural celebration, anyway, although we have collected money for various adoption-related charities. I’ve thought about sending him to the Raleigh Russian School, Znaika, but it’s a 45-minute drive from our house and Little J’s behavior has been so erratic in organized classes in the past I can’t see driving all that way only to have him run around and scream or call the teacher “stupid” while they’re doing some kind of Vasilisa the Brave vs. Baba Yaga puppet show.
We do go to local FRUA events and belong to a Russian Adoption playgroup, but those things seem to be more about the parents connecting and the kids playing than anything cultural.
Maybe it’s because Little J is so young? Or maybe because we have had to focus so much of our time and energy on his behavior? Or maybe we’re just lazy?
What’s most ironic is that for 2 years now I’ve been collecting information from adoptive parents and various other sources about how people integrate the birth cultures of their adopted children into their everyday lives for a book I’m going to write. Maybe I’m not the one to write it.
Or maybe we’ll get better at this as Little J gets older. We have definite plans to travel back to Russia when the boys get old enough to appreciate it. I think that’s probably better than any kind of Matryoshka pinata. Once Little J can behave himself in a classroom situation (he *is* getting better at it) I will think about driving him to Raleigh once a week for Russian classes. I try to keep myself educated. We read a lot of Russian folktales. We talk about Russia a lot.
What do you do, and more importantly, why? If you do try to integrate a little bit of cultural heritage in your child’s life, does it seem to matter?
