Growing into Adoption

Riding a camel with mommy on A Delight's b-day.

We continue on the roller coaster of international adoption. Zig Zag’s language has continued to improve. It seems like he understands everything and I believe that makes things a lot harder. Since he is talking more and functioning more with our family, we think he understands everything we say to him. Yet I am realizing there is still so much he isn’t understanding and that is why he is doing things that are increasing my blood pressure. Obviously, I don’t like to excuse disobedience, but have found that when I question him about the action he is not understanding everything I say. In addition, Zig Zag still has so much insecurity. We have read that because of the need to form strong attachment an adopted child cannot be over spoiled during the first year of adoption. So we try to err on the side of grace and realizing there isn’t full understanding. Language takes so much work! His stories pretty much consist of ‘and den…. Um, and den…., um, and den…’ and go on for 5 minutes with maybe a vocabulary word thrown in there to help us figure out what he might be talking about. Every statement that we make he asks ‘why’, a hundred times more than the bios did as toddlers! It takes so much patience that I am finding does not come naturally to me.

As a homeschooling mom who has very little reason to ever be away from her children, we have had some tense days. Gratefully, God is growing me in this process. I have to keep up on my daily prayer for my heart, for my children and for our school day. I also have to work to keep in mind Zig Zag’s specific struggles and see with compassion instead of thinking he’s trying to aggravate me. In addition, when things are getting tense, I have found it best to laugh together. The most obvious, but so difficult to keep up on is to point out the positive before the negatives come. In order to do this, I have found my heart has to be right and I require a lot of prayer time each day. I even have a new song, “Oh Lord give me patience, give me patience, patience, patience. Oh Lord give me patience today.”

Having said all these things, we are positive God has prepared Zig Zag for our home and us for him. I was praying for him from the time that his mom would have learned she was pregnant. He has put up with our crazy travel schedule and the new demands of community (family) and losing some of his independence. And for the most part he is so very flexible in learning the ways of family. Just the other day he held a sled (from Frozen) and said, “I want to do dis tomorrow” and flew it through the air. El Padre amazingly figured out he wanted to go on a roller coaster! I am not sure he has even realized that we moved back to the Sahel :).

-- La Maestra