A Musing Maralee

January 20, 2014
by Maralee
5 Comments

Don’t be Color Blind

We’ve been talking a lot about race at our house since Josh is out of school for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Well, the reality is that we talk about race a lot at our house all the time without it being intentional. Sometimes we’re talking about our racial differences, or what makes the culture of a group of people unique, or even how different members of our family need to take care of their skin differently. We are a multiracial family (European, West African, Native American, Hispanic) and race isn’t something we can avoid talking about.

We are a family that sees and appreciates the different shades of beauty that exist in the world. We enjoy learning about culture and ethnicity and appreciate what different people groups have contributed to our society (especially when it comes to food. . . yum). When our kids meet somebody, they are likely to ask them about their racial background especially if that person looks like them. They are not ashamed of racial differences nor do they ignore them. (I keep fighting the urge to write a giant disclaimer about how although I can teach them to value their cultures, I can’t replicate the experience my children would have growing up in their birth cultures and that is a loss to them. But that’s a post for another day because I have too many thoughts about it. Just know that I get that.)

So I get a little concerned when I hear somebody boast about being “color blind”. I find that phrase troubling. It is great to judge people not by the “color of their skin, but by the content of their character”, but does that mean we should be color blind? When I hear that phrase, the implication to me is that we don’t want to see the color of someone’s skin because to acknowledge that they are different would be to say that they are bad. It implies a sense of shame about color. We DO see the color and we should appreciate what makes our colorful neighbors unique and special, not try to imply that we are homogenous.

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January 16, 2014
by Maralee
4 Comments

You’re wasting your worry

I love when blog readers write to me. Seriously. It’s one of my favorite things. In the last week I had two women write to me to ask me about how to prepare their hearts for the eventual pain of saying goodbye to a foster child. It was a question that struck a little too close to home as we deal with the twists and turns in our foster daughter’s case. I talked to these women about reminding yourself of the great gift you are giving this child to share your loving, stable home. I talked about obedience and calling. I talked about trusting a sovereign God. And then I sent those emails along.

But something kept bothering me.

I felt like what I was writing to them was true, but was insufficient. I mean, really— how are those platitudes going to comfort somebody when they’re struggling through the difficulty of packing up a child and sending them away? While we have not yet experienced that with the children who entered our home as foster babies, we went through it may times during our group home days. There were boys that were very precious to me (and still are!) that left our care for various reasons. If you’d asked me a month before they left how I could handle parting with them, I would have told you it would be devastating. While each loss was devastating in its own way, I also had an unexpected peace about it. That Holy Spirit comfort didn’t come a moment before I needed it and I had no way of anticipating how meaningful that would be. In all my worrying about kids leaving us and how we would process it, I could never factor in the actual comfort that would be present in that moment, so the worry about the pain was always greater than the pain actually was.

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January 15, 2014
by Maralee
2 Comments

Let go of your reputation

Listen or read. The choice is yours.

A couple weeks ago my son Josh came running to me with a complaint about his three year-old little sister. He said, “MOM, Bethany hit me!” I asked her if this was true and she answered in all seriousness, “Mom, he say I’m not cute!”

While the specifics may be different in your house, this seems like a common parenting problem. My kids are often coming to me with a concern about their reputation. Someone called them a name or accused them of being not cute or said they possessed a certain unpleasing aroma. I talk to my kids about using kind words, but I also work to help them be confident enough in who they are that the words of others don’t determine how they feel about themselves.

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January 13, 2014
by Maralee
1 Comment

So your friend has a crack baby. . .

Okay, so “crack baby” is a ridiculous term, but it gets the point across. Kids who have been exposed to drugs or alcohol prenatally may be indistinguishable from your average non exposed child and you may not even know if a friend’s foster or adopted child has those issues. But some kids really struggle and if a friend chooses to let you know the root of this struggle is prenatal drug and alcohol exposure, how do you handle it? For every family that chooses to take on this parenting challenge there is a support network of friends and family that child is welcomed (or at least we hope they’re welcomed) into. It can be tricky to figure out how to be a helpful friend in this situation, especially since many of us have had no exposure to other kids or adults who were similarly exposed. I’ve been blessed to have a really wonderful group of friends, family members, and (during our group home days) coworkers who have handled this well, so I wanted to tell you what I’ve learned from them.

Be discreet: If a friend confides in you that her child was exposed to drugs or alcohol, take it as a sign of her trust in you. Honor that. This isn’t your information to now tell your friends or even your kids. Especially your kids. This is a very private detail about this child’s history that has implications about their birth family. You can only imagine the kind of teasing or humiliation that could happen if this information became public.

Photo by Rebecca Tredway Photography

Let her vent, but don’t join her: We can be pretty angry at the birth parents who caused damage to a child we love. We may need to express that frustration. But just like with your own family members, you can say what you want to about them, but nobody else better say a word. We can feel simultaneously frustrated at them and defensive of them. They gave us a great gift in allowing us to raise their child, so having you make negative statements about them may get our hackles up. I recommend saying, “I can see why you’d be upset about that.” if your friend is expressing frustrations instead of saying, “Yeah, those people are idiots.” And if you thought people didn’t say that to us about our children’s families, you’d be wrong. We can also have moments of anger and frustration at our children and in those moments we desperately need the encouragement and support of our friends. Validate that this is hard. Remind us of why it’s worth it.

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January 12, 2014
by Maralee
0 comments

A Life in Status- January #1 & 2, 2014

Be part of the dialogue on Facebook or Twitter.

Josh just used his siblings to Tom Sawyer his way out of cleaning the bathroom. I’m not sure if I should be disappointed or proud.
#futureboss #motivationalspeaker

My New Year’s Resolution: Start drinking diet soda. That way next year I can stop drinking it and enjoy all the health benefits of quitting diet soda. I’m sure that will work. . .

I’m trying to think of it as less a roll of toilet paper that got dropped in the sink while the water was running, and more an unexpected stack of pre-moistened toilettes.

For those who like to declutter, nothing beats the instant high of taking down the Christmas stuff.

“Frozen”= the unsuccessful struggle of an introvert to convince her pushy extravert sister she really does enjoy being alone.

The frequency at which I find socks in the most bizarre places makes me wonder if maybe God is trying to get my attention via a plague of socks.
#itsworking

Bethany: Mom, Freezed is my favorite movie. . . not Freezed. . . Frozeded. . . Freezer? Frost. Frosted? What’s that movie, Mom? With that snowman and the ice lady and the reindeer?
Me: Frozen.
Bethany: Yeah. Frozen.

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January 9, 2014
by Maralee
6 Comments

When your child is prenatally exposed to drugs or alcohol

If you’ve pursued foster care or adoption, it is likely you’ve been faced with The Form. The Form may look different depending on your agency, but at some point you’re going to have to physically check off boxes indicating what kind of potential issues you are willing to deal with in your future child. In domestic infant adoption that is going to mean questions about a child’s prenatal history or family medical records. In international adoption it means questions about a child’s level of special need with an understanding that some needs may not present themselves until a child is home. In foster care it means deciding what kind of medical/emotional/behavioral/educational needs you are capable of handling along with a child’s prenatal history (if any information is know). The form we filled out prior to taking our first foster placement listed syndromes I’d never even heard of along with the more familiar. It can be agonizing to try and objectively consider those children and anticipate your ability to meet their needs.

Photo by Rebecca Tredway Photography

A major consideration for families evaluating their ability to handle the children who may come into their home is the issue of prenatal drug and alcohol exposure. We have cared for kids with both prenatal drug exposure and FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome) and I know it can be intimidating to think through the practical realities of caring for these kids. I’m not a doctor, a teacher, or a therapist, but I have become a bit of a researcher and advocate when it comes to the uniquenesses of these kids. Here are some things I’ve learned:

Everybody lies (assume the worst): Even if you decide to check the box that says you are not open to taking placement of a child who has been exposed to drugs or alcohol prenatally, that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t end up with a child who had a toxic prenatal environment. There may be a lack of honesty on the part of a birthparent or a lack of information from a child’s medical history. If an agency doesn’t know for a fact that a child was exposed, they may not want to scare people off by suggesting it, even if there’s a likelihood. There isn’t a definitive test (other than the ones performed directly after birth if there are suspicions), so sometimes you have to just assume. If a child you’re dealing with appears to have issues similar to a child who had experienced prenatal drug or alcohol exposure, it may be best to just assume that’s part of the issue even if you don’t have the information to prove it. It may help put some pieces together for you and the team working with that child.

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January 7, 2014
by Maralee
1 Comment

Speaking their (dino) language

(You can read or listen. I aim to please.)

Loving a little boy requires learning to speak his language. And for my four year-old, that language is dinosaurs. Just the other day Danny handed me a terrifying T-Rex toy and said, “Mommy, that you.” I was a little bit offended until he handed me a tiny T-Rex toy and said, “And that me.” While I saw Tyranosaurus toys as scary and not something I wanted to be compared to, my son just saw a mother-child pair and wanted me to see it, too. I guess I should have seen this coming since Danny often gives and receives love through his dinosaurs. Before leaving for preschool the other morning he brought a stegosaurus he has affectionately named “steggy” to his little sister and said, “Bethie, here my dinosaur. You keep it in your room? You see it, you remember me when I at preschool. You not miss me so much?”

(photo by Rebecca Tredway)

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January 6, 2014
by Maralee
3 Comments

The language of “attachment” parenting

I love words. I like thinking about the origin and history of words, I enjoy learning new words, and using the correct word in a particular situation is really important to me. Which may be why something bothers me that really isn’t such a big deal. I want to say that right off the bat. I’m very likely developing an odd twitch in my eye over something that wouldn’t bother nine out of ten people.

So here’s my issue: I get bothered about the language of “attachment parenting” proponents. As a parent who has worked with children where attachment was an issue (in our group home, foster parenting and adoption situations), I know what a difficult situation it can be to create an attachment with a child. So it irks me a little when I read posts from parents who either imply or say outright that not doing “attachment parenting” techniques creates the potential for actual attachment issues in an otherwise normal parenting relationship. I’m not buying it.

These posts I read will talk about how a mother put her child in time-out a couple times and realized she had created this distance between them by punishing her child. She felt she had created an attachment problem. I have read mothers talk about feeling they have damaged their kids by letting them cry or feeding them on a schedule or disciplining them in nearly any way. They feel extreme guilt and worry that they’ve squelched their child’s spirit. And they frame this in the language of attachment. This language choice makes me want to offer some perspective.

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January 2, 2014
by Maralee
0 comments

Best of the Guests

Favorite Guest Posts of 2013

I’m so blessed to have a great group of friends and contributors who created some beautiful guest posts for me this year. Here is a wrap up of some of my favorites.

The Vaccine Series by Dr. Mark McColl (this will link you to my summary and at the bottom of the summary there are links to every post in this series)

“So my cards are on the table now. No shocker that I fully vaccinate my children. But just for the record I vaccinate my children because my wife, who is also a pediatrician, and I have thought through the risks and benefits of each and every vaccine. We didn’t vaccinate because of some party line put out by the CDC or the AAP. It was a choice we made, intentionally, and not without great thought and prayer. We made this decision in part due to the calculated understanding of risk and benefits of receiving the vaccinations versus remaining unvaccinated. We studied the literature. We looked at the research. We also made this decision in part due to our experience in caring for children critically sick with diseases that could have been prevented by a vaccination at the right time.” -From Dr. McColl’s post “Did I vaccinate my kids?”

Baby Holding- does the good outweigh the bad? by Melodie Kjer, former orphanage director

“When visiting children, specifically children living in orphanages overseas, we cannot treat them as if we own them, or treat them differently than you would treat my child in my back yard or your friend’s foster child. The practical reasons for this are the same, which involve not making a child afraid, respecting boundaries set by those in charge of the child, etc, but there is a more serious factor that can be very detrimental to a child’s development.”

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December 31, 2013
by Maralee
0 comments

Most Read Posts of 2013

10 of My Most Read Posts of 2013

Dear C-Section Mamas

“And at some point when the contractions didn’t stop and your baby was turned all wrong and the room filled up with medical strangers and your midwife started to look worried and you couldn’t even open your eyes because you were concentrating so hard on just surviving the pain, that’s when your mind dreamed for a moment of the sweet relief that would come if you could just let go of it all and die. The fierce desire to see the face of the Little One you’d known only in your dreams and in brief movements and flutters was the only thing that kept you tied to this earth and fighting to bring his life to your arms. It was then you realized while this is a natural process, it is not always safe. While women have been laboring and birthing babies since the dawn of time, many of them also died in that process. Mother graves beside baby graves. Women laboring in Africa today who will still be laboring tomorrow. And the next day. And soon their bodies will bring forth lifeless babies who could have been saved with a surgeon’s skilled hand. Or women in generations past who labored too long with babies in distress who were born with brain damage from the oxygen deprivation of an extended and complicated labor. This was the moment you were initiated into the sisterhood of women throughout time who have realized birth was not going to come easily or naturally for them, in spite of their best efforts.”

Why Moms Hate Saturdays

“But then you woke up. The alarm clock didn’t go off, but shockingly enough the baby still needed to get fed at about the same time it needed to get fed on weekday mornings. No one is old enough to reach the cereal bowls or competently pour milk, so you’ve got a job to do. Diapers don’t change themselves (except sometimes they DO which is even more horrific), one kid still can’t manage to take off footie pajamas without falling over, and the bedwetter doesn’t take off for weekends and holidays. Life keeps going. And it doesn’t just keep going, it keeps going EXACTLY THE SAME on Saturdays as on every other day. It is depressing.”

Day 29

“I think that’s what’s the most surprising- it isn’t the official end to the hope that’s so hard and frustrating. It’s the hope itself. It is hard to live with a heart that refuses to believe what the doctors have told you. You get angry at yourself for wanting what you can’t have. And when you finally know that dream is over (at least for the month) you get angry at yourself for the moments you actually hoped it wouldn’t happen because you didn’t feel prepared or you worried for you or that potential child’s physical safety.

Infertility doesn’t let go. It doesn’t take days off. It builds you up just to drop you down. But it’s okay. You get used to the sudden drops and hard falls. And as I look at my little family built through three adoptions and a pregnancy that defied all the odds I can see God’s timing in it all. And I’m thankful.”

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