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When 4-year-old Zoe Drigot picks up a pencil or crayon to write, she
not only practices her ABCs like her fellow preschoolers but crafts
Chinese characters as well. On a recent Wednesday evening before her Chinese language class begins, Zoe shapes the ancient characters for "mountain," "sun," "one" and "two" on a white board and asks her teacher, Shufen Li, for feedback. ADVERTISEMENT Zoe was 11 months old and living in an orphanage in Guangdong province in China when Mary Rapisardo and John Drigot, who were living in Minnesota, adopted her. Rapisardo and Drigot, now Fort Collins residents, were overjoyed with the new addition to their family, but as the plane took off from China to bring them back to the United States, they also felt a profound sense of loss. "I remember the sadness of leaving China. It was bittersweet. Zoe had become part of our family, but I also realized what a loss it was to leave her homeland," Rapisardo said. The Chinese language classes the couple has attended with Zoe once a week for the past six months are, in part, an attempt to mend that sense of loss and to connect Zoe with the language and culture into which she was born. Zoe is one of more than a quarter-million foreign-born children adopted by U.S. citizens in the past three decades. And the number of international adoptions has grown tremendously in the past decade and a half - by more than 130 percent from 1991 to 2003. In 2003, more than 21,000 foreign children were adopted by U.S. citizens. As more families adopt children internationally, more adoptive parents are making efforts to help their children maintain a connection with the culture of their homeland. Some adoptive families celebrate holidays, attend language classes, socialize with immigrants from their children's home country or attend cultural heritage camps. Some international adoptees even communicate with birth parents or visit the home country. But as the children are integrated into American society, it takes time, money and a deep commitment on the part of the parents to keep these cultural connections. Learning the language Though they've been learning Chinese for only six months, the four Chinese girls and their mostly European-American parents in Zoe's class are able to fill the room with a Chinese song that accompanies a game called "diu shou juan," which resembles "A-Tisket A-Tasket." Chinese is a tonal language, with different intonations of the same syllables signifying different words, so getting the right pronunciation takes dedication. "Our expectation is not that we learn to speak Chinese fluently but to help (Zoe) to learn Chinese," Drigot said. "Sometimes you do feel awkward," admitted Christy Giacomini after the game ended. Giacomini and her husband, David, adopted their 3-year-old, Ella, from China when she was 9 months old. "You are trying to give her a culture that you don't have, and you worry that it's too superficial. But you try to give her some confidence so that she will feel somewhat at home when she goes off to college or high school and meets Chinese families. At least some of it will be familiar to her." In September, Drigot and Rapisardo and the Giacominis founded the Chinese Friendship Club, a local group of families with children of Chinese descent, most of whom are adopted. The group's mission is to foster friendship among the children and find support when dealing with issues of adoption and race. The club also celebrates Chinese heritage and traditions. "Just seeing other families like hers is important," Rapisardo said. Some families with Asian adoptees also spend time with Asian immigrants to the area through organizations at Colorado State University such as the Asian/Pacific American Student Services, which runs a mentoring program for children of Asian descent. Another option for cultural education for international adoptive families is Colorado Heritage Camps, in which adoptees and their families spend a three-day weekend exploring the heritage of their birth countries and spending time with other adoptees from that country. There are camps for children of Cambodian, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, African-American, Filipino, Latin American and East Indian heritage. "They learn about the country - its customs, dancing, food and festivals," said Barbara Noble, a Fort Collins resident who is on the board of directors for the organization. "There are also workshops for parents - cultural workshops and adoption workshops. "They get to be with a bunch of kids who look just like them, and they aren't standing out in a crowd," said Noble, who adopted two girls from China. "They have similar issues, similar thoughts." Identity issues A lot of experts now agree that connecting a child to his or her birth culture might ease some of the feelings of loss that many international adoptees feel and help them integrate their cultural heritage and ethnic background with a sense of being American, said Poling Chan, a Fort Collins licensed clinical social worker who works with adoptive families. "I think we all have some longing to know where we come from," said Chan, a native of Hong Kong. "There are longer-term loss issues that come with being far away from your homeland, far away from your ancestors. ... One way to integrate the process is to learn about the culture and learn the language." But there are some who challenge that view. "Some people say, 'I have a European heritage, but I was never immersed in it. Why must adoptive families spend so much time and energy doing this?' " "One of the answers to this is that if you live in the dominant culture, every day your culture is being honored," she said. But if your ethnicity and cultural background are not dominant, you start to feel the fact that you are different more acutely, Chan said. Cultural or language activities that the family does whole-heartedly and consistently - rather than just once a year - are likely the most helpful to the international adoptee, she said. Trends regarding staying connected to an adoptee's home culture have changed in recent decades. It was less common for Asians adopted by Caucasian couples in the 1950s, '60s and '70s to have much contact with their home country's culture. "We are blessed with having (adult) Korean and Vietnamese adoptees who can talk about how important it was to see themselves reflected in the world," Rapisardo said. "There is just a lot of sadness and a lot of anger. We talked to a lot of adults who say they don't feel like they are Korean at all. People say, 'I wish my parents would have pushed me more.' Now as adults, they are reconnecting with who they are." Lindy Curry, of Denver, was adopted from Korea in 1957 when she was 4 years old. She said she did not have much contact with Korean people or Korean culture growing up in rural Oregon, but she is raising her daughter, who was also adopted from Korea, differently. Curry said she was less than enthusiastic when her parents brought her on occasion to events for Korean adoptees. "I wanted to be as American as possible. I didn't talk about Korea." Now, Curry and her husband attend Korean language classes with their 11-year-old daughter, Shannon, and get together regularly with other Korean adoptees. But like Curry was in her youth, Shannon is reluctant. "I do think they need to be exposed to it," she said. "We don't know until Shannon gets into her 20s and out on her own how all of this cultural stuff is going to play out." Challenges Parents of children adopted internationally are coached to expect their children to resist cultural activities at some point in their lives, especially during early adolescence, when they are eager to fit in. "There will probably come a time for Zoe when this is not fun anymore," Rapisardo said. "She'll probably spend some years just being an American kid. Overall, we want her to have a strong sense of self." Some parents experience more resistance than others. Fort Collins residents Nick and Leslie Striegel have three biological children and have adopted five children, one domestically, one from India, two from Colombia, and - just three weeks ago - a 4-year-old girl from Liberia, whom they've named Savannah. Before they adopted their son John in 1990 when he was thought to be about 12, he had been living on the streets in India. After they brought him to Fargo, N.D., where they were living at the time, Nick tried to arrange for John to spend time with an Indian friend who spoke Tamil, John's native language. "John didn't want anything to do with it," Nick Striegel said. "There was a part of his life, part of his experience with his birth parents that was very negative. ... When he came here, he saw it as a one-way train out of India." "They just wanted to fit in and be a part of American culture," Nick Striegel said about his older adopted children. It's possible to call too much attention to adoptees' ethnicity or culture, Leslie Striegel said. "You have to be open to connecting to their culture without pushing it upon them," she said. "I think you have to follow the lead of the children." "With Savannah, we will try again." For the Striegels and many adoptive families, learning a different culture or language does not feel like a burden so much as a blessing. "It's always an adventure raising kids, but there is an intangible thing that a child from anther country and ethnicity brings," Nick Striegel said. "It enriches the family in lots of ways." "Adoption is a hard road. But international adoption has an immense richness to it," Rapisardo agreed. "You have to be prepared to embrace and be open to being a multicultural and multiracial family." Source: www.coloradoan.com Dec. 09, 05 |
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