. . . the difficult part about parenting adoptive children is putting aside the many, many, MANY things learned in "adoption" books that don't apply to my kids and remembering to do the things that I was already doing that worked. Direct, to-the-point, tough love. Honesty. Holding the kids accountable, like really accountable. Especially when one of the children is a teenager. ("OOoohhh" I hear groaning with a knowing tone all of you with kids in grades 6 and up.)
And then I realized something more . . . lastnight while reading Sandy Alexandre's "Exiled" essay in "The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States" (edited by Edwidge Danticat) . . . in describing her Haitian-American mother's shipping of her (at age 12) to Haiti to live with an aunt for an indefinite period of time (turned out to be a short two weeks) so as to cure her of adolescent American insolence (which worked -- manual labor living in a wooden home without electricity wherein everyone pulls their own weight and respects the elders):
" . . . My mother was always one step ahead of me and my siblings because she parented vigilantly and ceaselessly (and continues to do so). I am grateful that she was slicker when I was just slick. For each failed attempt at deceiving her or preempting her authority, I grew to realize and finally accept the intrinsic contrast between my role as the bumbling child and her role as the experienced parent. I am grateful that she knew the limits of her own tolerance. How else can a mother diagnose and then treat an intolearble child if she has not first defined, for herself and eventually her children, what is tolerable? I am grateful that she intervened on my behalf every time I showed signs of becoming less than the decent human being that she wanted me and my siblings to be. My mother has given me a story that I love to tell; it is a "Go to your room" story, Haitian style . . . Haitians have a term 'san manman' that literally means motherless. But 'san manman' does not necessarily mean that one doesn't have a mother, but that one behaves as though one didn't have a mother . . . If at twelve years old I could not comprehend the gravity of my crime against my mother, I could at least extrapolate, from the gravity of my punishment, that I had finally done the abominable. I needed that -- to know that I had actually been held accountable, to know that I was wrong . . . But above all, I needed to know that at least this much was true -- that I was not 'san manman,' either literally or figuratively."
And the epiphany left me motionless, staring thoughtfully at the bedroom wall across the way. Of course. The many times the kids' birthmom admonished them over the phone to behave, to listen to their new mom, to work hard at school . . . were not polite reminders from across the water. Not merely a show of kindness to me. Rather, a deliberate act of gritty solidarity -- that she and I would not, should not, tolerate any nonsense. These statements were unsolicited, as my report to her was always a simple, prepared statement in Kreyol that the kids were doing well, behaving well, and healthy. We both, however, have the same sense of parenting. Tuck your tail. Mind your p's and q's. Put forth effort, real work ethic. And treat others kindly, with gratitude, and be helpful.
In my family, we thought of it as German industriousness and working class pragmatism, humility. My Indian, Hindu friend, Vava, learned not to cross her elders from the time she wore the tiniest bangles and wee little saris. And so it is, too, with Haitian manmans, I believe, that they see to it that everyone has a duty to family -- even when in the extended family blanc a country away. And teenagers of any origin need a knot yanked into the tail to remind them of this. Now, eight months into becoming thoroughly acquainted, the adolescent can rest assured that her manman blanc stands arm-in-arm with the manman of Ayiti and has always been a bit slicker than her children.
And then I realized something more . . . lastnight while reading Sandy Alexandre's "Exiled" essay in "The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States" (edited by Edwidge Danticat) . . . in describing her Haitian-American mother's shipping of her (at age 12) to Haiti to live with an aunt for an indefinite period of time (turned out to be a short two weeks) so as to cure her of adolescent American insolence (which worked -- manual labor living in a wooden home without electricity wherein everyone pulls their own weight and respects the elders):
" . . . My mother was always one step ahead of me and my siblings because she parented vigilantly and ceaselessly (and continues to do so). I am grateful that she was slicker when I was just slick. For each failed attempt at deceiving her or preempting her authority, I grew to realize and finally accept the intrinsic contrast between my role as the bumbling child and her role as the experienced parent. I am grateful that she knew the limits of her own tolerance. How else can a mother diagnose and then treat an intolearble child if she has not first defined, for herself and eventually her children, what is tolerable? I am grateful that she intervened on my behalf every time I showed signs of becoming less than the decent human being that she wanted me and my siblings to be. My mother has given me a story that I love to tell; it is a "Go to your room" story, Haitian style . . . Haitians have a term 'san manman' that literally means motherless. But 'san manman' does not necessarily mean that one doesn't have a mother, but that one behaves as though one didn't have a mother . . . If at twelve years old I could not comprehend the gravity of my crime against my mother, I could at least extrapolate, from the gravity of my punishment, that I had finally done the abominable. I needed that -- to know that I had actually been held accountable, to know that I was wrong . . . But above all, I needed to know that at least this much was true -- that I was not 'san manman,' either literally or figuratively."
And the epiphany left me motionless, staring thoughtfully at the bedroom wall across the way. Of course. The many times the kids' birthmom admonished them over the phone to behave, to listen to their new mom, to work hard at school . . . were not polite reminders from across the water. Not merely a show of kindness to me. Rather, a deliberate act of gritty solidarity -- that she and I would not, should not, tolerate any nonsense. These statements were unsolicited, as my report to her was always a simple, prepared statement in Kreyol that the kids were doing well, behaving well, and healthy. We both, however, have the same sense of parenting. Tuck your tail. Mind your p's and q's. Put forth effort, real work ethic. And treat others kindly, with gratitude, and be helpful.
In my family, we thought of it as German industriousness and working class pragmatism, humility. My Indian, Hindu friend, Vava, learned not to cross her elders from the time she wore the tiniest bangles and wee little saris. And so it is, too, with Haitian manmans, I believe, that they see to it that everyone has a duty to family -- even when in the extended family blanc a country away. And teenagers of any origin need a knot yanked into the tail to remind them of this. Now, eight months into becoming thoroughly acquainted, the adolescent can rest assured that her manman blanc stands arm-in-arm with the manman of Ayiti and has always been a bit slicker than her children.
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