Back to Ask the Experts Page Back to NYSCCC Home PageAn adoptive parent writes:
My husband and I adopted our son from Peru when he was 7 weeks old. He is now 17. He has a younger brother that we adopted from Brazil. We have always lived in an urban area and our son has had many opportunities to attend school and interact socially with African Americans and some Latinos. We are middle class and live in a mixed middle class/professional neighborhood. Our son seems to have embraced a ghetto lifestyle, which has included drug use, arrest, rehab (twice), probation, school failure. He recently dropped out of school six months before he was due to graduate. Last weekend two of his friends were shot. My son seems to have rejected many things that our family values. He has refused to discuss any issues with therapists or counselors, individually or with the whole family. His anger and depression (?) are tearing us apart. I fear for his safety and worry that he will never be content. We worry that his actions are a way to assert that he is not "white." Can you offer any hope? Any suggestions?
John Raible Answers:
This is one of the tougher questions I've been asked to address. Let me admit up front that, unfortunately, I have no easy answers. From personal experience as a parent, I can certainly sympathize with your dilemma, and my heart goes out to you and all the members of your family.
When I went through similar situations with my sons, it was interesting to note that several of my friends of color were dealing with the same concerns with their own teenaged sons--most of whom were NOT adopted. I came to the conclusion that many black and Latino youth who have been raised middle-class feel a need to identify strongly with what we as adults might label the negative aspects of black and Latino culture. Yet, is it any wonder when they are bombarded by stereotypes in the media, from gangsta rap music videos to popular film and cable TV shows and magazines and video games, many of which glorify thug life and romanticized views of ghetto life?
In hindsight, I wish I had been able to connect my boys early on to slightly older role models, for example, college students who had successfully navigated high school and set personal goals that included a college education. By talking to young men similar to themselves, maybe they would have found another way to affirm their identities while avoiding the pitfalls of negative choices. Naturally, it would have been most helpful if they knew these older youth long before they hit the teen years. This is one of the reasons I advocate that families move to mixed neighborhoods where such interactions and friendships may develop more naturally.
Going through those late teen years with my sons, for me, was the toughest part of parenting. It was nothing short of heartbreaking. Trying to find therapists that my sons would agree to see, and who also had some awareness of adoption issues and cultural issues--and not just addiction/recovery issues--was exceedingly difficult. This is one of the reasons I continue to speak to audiences of professionals in child welfare and adoption. Apparently, many therapists receive NO training in adoption issues, and consider themselves lucky if their training included multicultural awareness.
From an adoptee's perspective, of course, testing an adoptive parent's commitment must be jumbled up in all the dynamics at play in their lives. Others have written about how adoptees may feel like they can never amount to much if they believe they came from nothing, for example, if they've internalized negative views of their birth families. One way to counteract this tendency is to find things to vocally appreciate about our children's birth families at various points during their growing up years. As for testing, I had to make a distinction between the choices my sons were making as teenagers (and the disapproval I felt and voiced) and making sure that they understood that I was still their dad, NO MATTER WHAT. I have taken comfort in hearing that they heard and accepted that message. Each has told me, in his own way, that he knows I still love him, and is grateful that I adopted him, even if they haven't yet figured out how to put together a less complicated (and to my way of thinking, negative) lifestyle for themselves.
I sometimes wish that I could have taken my sons back to their communities of origin. I am more and more convinced that returning home is a powerful incentive for healing, based on the testimony of many Korean and Vietnamese adult adoptees. I did encourage each of my sons to search for their birth families, but they would have nothing to do with that. As an adoptee, I understood their split loyalty issues-- that to search actively for birth family might threaten their sense of connection to their adoptive families, no matter how many times they were told that their adoptive parents wouldn't mind their searching! What I wish now is that I had taken a more proactive approach, even a radical one. After all, our children are going through radical steps of their own as they attempt to make sense of an unusual and confusing life narrative. For starters, I wish I had had the financial ability to take each of them across the country to the places where they had been born, and then to different cities where they had been in foster care. I strongly believe that such a retracing of our life journey's steps is healing to adoptees. It's something I find myself doing as an adult adoptee.
I also think adoptive parents can, and in some cases, SHOULD, do the searching, and not simply encourage adoptees to take on that momentous task. I know this runs against the advice from many, who say that the adoptee should be in the driver's seat when searching. But to be frank, I wish my parents had searched, so I wouldn't have to! Parents can gather information, collect photos, letters, agency files, names, and addresses, and in most cases with much less emotional toil. Piecing together a search package can be a wonderful gift to our adoptees, who may feel ambivalent about searching, but who eventually will be glad to have the information, although perhaps not until well into adulthood.
So, the only thing I can suggest for you at this point is this: Why not take your son back to Peru? Imagine the impact on him of realizing your willingness to make such a commitment of time and resources to HIS needs to rewrite his life narrative. Even if he cannot visit the exact same orphanage where you found him, visiting another orphanage can make concrete where he came from and what might have happened to him had you he NOT been adopted. And if he doesn't want to return with both of you, maybe one of you bows out. And if he still refuses, maybe there is another trusted adult you all can agree on to accompany him on his voyage. Yes, this may sound impractical and present all sorts of what if questions, but as I said, our boys are dealing with radical circumstances, (through no fault of their own, I might add) and their current status calls for radical action on our part. I mean, your son did not ask to be adopted and taken half way around the world and into a racist, classist culture that marginalizes people who look like him! A visit to Peru might be the single most profound gift you can give your son, at this point--and could turn his life around in many ways. Please consider this as a serious option. And let me know what you decide to do. Good luck!
A few more thoughts on the return to Peru option:
This has to be presented to your son sensitively. It should not be viewed as a vacation, as a punishment, or as a threat. It is best thought of as a therapeutic intervention, one that you are presenting for him to consider, not one that you are forcing on him.
You might have a series of family discussions that cover the following questions: How can this trip potentially help an adoptee's need to understand where he comes from? What would be the advantages of traveling to Peru as a family unit versus traveling alone or with a family friend or more distant relative? What does each of us expect from the trip? That is, what do we hope to see, do, and learn? Why are we presenting this option now, at this time? How is the trip option different from rehab, jail, the military, boot camp, Job Corps, or any other option we may have considered up to this point?
The point is to make clear that this particular international, transracial adoptee experience calls for a radically different intervention than any other option can provide. This trip addresses transracial adoptee issues, and the others simply don't. If you are clear on the various reasons to pursue this, the potential benefits to different family members, and even possible consequences, and if you as a family can TALK about all of them, you are well on your way to getting through these hard times.
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02/16/06