Today we were home from school (oh joy!) There were parent teacher meetings going on, but we were not involved because yesterday both my ten year old and I were very sick, and are both still recovering today. Of course she is feeling much better before I, and having her home two days in a row is giving me a big dose of her “tweenage” attitude, or so I first believed.

I was sort of hoping that my oldest would help me with her younger siblings, so I could attempt to feel better myself, but unfortunately she had other ideas (as you can see from the photo, well ok, that was staged.) In fact I spent more time trying to keep her out of the commotions that her brother and sister were trying my patience with today, than anything else. Once they were both down for an afternoon nap, she did calm down a bit herself and we talked about what was going on.

Earlier in the afternoon, when our packet from EMK press arrived with the books and items for our library reading (in honor of National Adoption Day), she had looked over the book, and was feeling some intense stuff about a part of the story. We sat down and decided to talk about that. In one portion of the story, the child expresses sadness about not being able to know who her birthparents are, and the adoptive parents comfort her. Danika told me that made her feel sad too, and reminded her of her own adoption story somewhat.

While Danika does know who her birthparents are, and she has met her birthmom once, she told me that in light of all our recent visits with so many birthfamily members of the other kids, she was feeling reminded of the contact she is lacking in her own adoption. Both the other kids have had more recent contact with their birthmoms, as well as visits in October with extended birthfamily. Her five year old sister even had a first sleep over with her birth great grandma. I suppose seeing all that is going on with them, and all so close together, had left her feeling even more out of the loop than normal. I did remind her that we had seen her own birth grandma and half brother briefly last weekend, although we all acknowledged we needed to make time for a better visit.

I had to admit that sometimes I forget as my daughter gets older, she is developing her own perceptions of her adoption story. I know we worked hard early on to build relationships with her birthfamily, but over time the contact has not been as frequent. I am glad that we had the talk we did today. My “tweenager” reminded me that being on the back burner is not fun, and that although she is older than her brother and sister, she still has the same need for our work and commitment to contact with her own birthfamily.

I promised to get on that, just as soon as I started feeling better ( I had pneumonia & the flu simultaneously!)

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Photo: © 2007 Deb Donatti