I think I started a fight

A cyberfight. Actually, I didn't really start it, but I stepped into it big-time. A friend of mine posted a comment on a third person's blog about that person's choice of words. She was writing about how she was considering joining the special needs program, and said something about how the boys adopted through this program are "the least of the least." My friend, being the parent of a boy adopted through the special needs program, found this terminology offensive, and said so in a comment on the third person's blog.

This person retaliated by insulting my friend in a subsequent post. She assumed that my friend must be an inexperienced parent to say what she did. Well, as another parent of a child adopted through the special needs program, I was also offended by her initial choice of words, and doubly offended when she insulted my friend, so I stepped in to say so. Unfortunately, I made my comment anonymously. I have since corrected that mistake, and now this blogger knows exactly who I am.

She called me politically correct for objecting to her use of "least of the least" and "china doll." Did you all know that "china doll" means prostitute? I would certainly never call my daughter or any other Asian girl a "china doll." Even if it didn't have that derogatory meaning, I still wouldn't use it. To call a child a doll objectifies her. It implies that she is something you keep to play with and dress up in pretty clothes. It makes her something less than you are, a plaything rather than a person. Avoiding the use of potentially hurtful names and labels is not political correctness, it's kindness.

A second problem I had with this blogger's post was her motivation for considering the special needs program. Since China's traditional program to adopt children with no known medical needs has slowed down so much, many more families have turned to the special needs program. I know that a lot of people are thinking about it because they don't want to wait five or more years for a child. I don't blame them for looking for a way around that wait. It's horrible that China is putting families in that position. And I wouldn't be totally honest if I said the wait played no role in our decision. But I said it played a role, not that it made us decide.

The ever-growing wait gave us the time to think about the special needs program. If we had only faced a 6-8 month wait, like we thought we had when we went into our adoption, I don't think we ever would have seriously considered the waiting child program. But given the time to think about it, to learn about the various health conditions these children have, we decided that we could do it. It took us some time. We were LID on August 1, 2006. Around Halloween, we printed out the medical conditions checklist and started talking about it. We did a lot of research, checked off some special needs, then reconsidered them. By Christmas, we were fairly confident about what needs we could handle and which ones we couldn't. We called our insurance carrier to verify what would be covered, talked at length with our social worker, then turned in our checklist.

At the heart of our decision to adopt a child with special needs was this belief: we can, so we should. We are lucky to have B, a perfectly healthy and vibrant child. We have group health insurance that will cover pre-existing conditions (not without a fight, it turned out, but that's another story). We can afford the co-pays and co-insurance to treat certain medical conditions. We have a supportive extended family and good friends we can lean on when times are tough. I have an employer that has a generous maternity leave policy, giving me enough time off work to help a child through medical treatment. In short, there were no good reasons why we should NOT adopt a child with special needs.

And it's true that these children have little chance of being adopted in China. If families in other countries don't open their hearts and homes to these children, they will grow up in institutions, and most will not receive the medical care they need. I think that's what this blogger was trying to say with her unfortunate choice of words.

But adopting a child with special needs is not easy. In addition to the developmental delays with speech and motor skills that most children adopted as toddlers from an orphanage environment display, our Z has a medical condition that will last a lifetime. She is lucky in that it is not life-threatening and will not limit her in very many ways, but it will never go away. For now, she looks a little bit different than other kids. If that bothers her when she is older, we can have cosmetic surgery to correct the way it looks, but it will never go away. It has involved a lot of doctor's visits, and two operating room visits under general anesthesia. Our medical bills have been rather hefty this year. And all of this will last a lifetime. (If it seems like I'm being rather mysterious here, I apologize. I made a choice way back when I first started blogging that I would protect certain core aspects of my family's privacy. This includes discussing the very personal details of just what Z's medical condition is. That is for her to share when she chooses to, not for me to share with the world at large.)

So what I'm saying is, don't take it lightly. Don't adopt a special needs child because you feel sorry for the child. Don't do it just to get around the wait. But if the wait opens your eyes to the program and some serious research and soul-searching leads you to believe you can do it, then by all means, go for it. And please, for the love of whatever diety you believe in, don't call those kids "the least of the least."

PS - I'm not sure whether to be flattered or offended to read that you think I could be the Rumor Queen, but I most definitely am not. Sorry to disappoint you.