For those of you who have some how MISSED these gems, they include such greats as You Wouldn’t Want to Be a World War II Pilot: Air Battles You Might Not Survive (currently on our shelf), You Wouldn’t Want to Be an 18th Century Convict: A Trip to Australia You’d Rather Not Take (No offense to my Australian readers – ie. Von.), and You Wouldn’t Want to Be Mary Queen of Scots: A Ruler Who Really Lost Her Head.

Check your local library.  They’re awesome.  Especially for boys.

But anyway.  Fred and I – but especially I, ’cause I’m prone to such things as extensive geneological researching, and also spend nearly all my time with said children —  have been very conscious of the fact that giving them a thorough connection to their own roots is very important. 

And that that means doing some extra research.  Because their roots are not our roots (though they’re welcome to partake in all our Euro-straight-to-U.S.-American fun-and-games, of course!)

So we’ve read about Guatemala, TRAVELED back to Guatemala, read about the Maya, CLIMBED their pyramids, studied Spanish… I’m still looking for a socially acceptable way of asking some of the Latino men I know just what it is that they’re wearing that smells so good, so I can buy it to put on the boys (who frequently smell like sweat and “tootle”)… but I digress…

We’ve done a pretty good job of covering the Native American angle of their biological heritage.  And of presenting it as the very cool heritage that it, indeed, is (human sacrificing notwithstanding).

So I’m on to the Spanish part of their background.  Spanish from SPAIN, that is.  And to that end, I’ve been watching the PBS Home Video: Conquistadors series after we put them to bed the last few nights (available on Netflix “Watch Instantly,” for those of you who are interested!).

And, whew!

I just don’t know how I’m supposed to pleasantly tie in “and then SOME of your ancestors came in and absolutely decimated the villages of others of your ancestors, raping and pillaging as they went!”  ["raping" is going to be especially hard to explain, since the idea of "sex" is still appropriately hazy in their minds].

I know I don’t have to explain it all while they’re six years old.  We could just “leap over the Atlantic” and study Spain as a completely separate entity and leave “how the two sides mixed” to a future date?

But while I don’t want to inflict undue distress, I’m also more inclined to be honest with our kids.  They’ve learned about the Conquistadors in a separate (glossed over, some would say “Euro-centric”) manner in our school co-op.

So they’re waiting for me to make the connection.

But whoa.

There’s a lot of courage, I suppose.  Curiousity about new things.  Boldly going where no European has gone before? 

It’s funny, because some of MY OWN ancestors (English) were fairly brutal to my others (Scottish), and I’ve had no problem feeling comfortable taking sides (“You take the High Road, and I’ll take the Low Road…”) while still maintaining a sense of connectednes to all of them (just ask Fred and the boys about my tea-drinking habits).

Perhaps because it’s perfectly acceptable here in the U.S. to side with the underdog while still trying to keep in mind all sides of an issue?

But this is THEIR heritage, THEIR story, not mine.

So how do I present the “other half” in equally positive terms, despite-but-honestly-covering the atrocities that eventually resulted in their being born, just as they are – “Mestizos de Guatemala?”  Even if not today, at some point it’s gonna come up.

Advice, anyone?

They know about race, have been able to rattle off from the age of three that they’re Latino; that their ancestors and Fred’s and mine came from different places on the globe (even before they really understood what “ancestors” were); and that that’s why our skin and hair and eyes are different colors.  As we’ve studied different countries of the world, they’ve learned that people in different regions look different, eat different foods, have different customs, but also have many global similarities.

But how to “explain themselves?”  No, we haven’t covered that yet.  Haven’t had to in prior years.  People always approached Fred or me and asked about the boys.  I’ve mentioned before that I’ve gotten less and less free (particularly with strangers) as the twins have gotten older.  I’ve become more sensitive to their privacy and identities.  And the adoption itself has passed more into the “old history” category for us.  (Sometimes we forget that it’s “new” to everyone we encounter for the first time.)

But it’s time to arm our young chicos to speak for themselves.  Two recent incidents (fortunately both right in front of us, so we know about them!) have brought this to the fore.

Incident #1: The Chick-fil-A Mis-Match

My sister-in-law invited us to join their family for our niece’s school fund-raiser Chick-fil-A night last week, and while we were all sitting at the table, one of Mary’s little girl friends came over to say hi.  Mary introduced the boys as her cousins about whom she’d told her, and this little gal glanced at them, then back at Mary and observed, “They don’t look a thing like you.” 

Then, no doubt looking to make sense of it, she scanned around the table, “They don’t look a thing like any of you.”

She’s about 8 or so years old, and she didn’t mean anything by it except to state what she was seeing right in front of herself.  When she’s older, she’ll probably know better than to be so blunt.  But there it was. 

Incident #2: The Chinese/Mexican Neighborly Intro

Our kids were playing a few blocks away from our house one afternoon a couple weeks before Chick-fil-A, and a little boy and girl they hadn’t met before came out of their house and sat under their front tree.  This time it was my kids making first observations:

Twin:  Hi!  You look like your ancestors are from Asia.  Are you Chinese, or Japanese? 

Boy Neighbor:  We’re Korean.  What are you?  Mexican?

Twin:  No, we’re from Guatemala.  It’s next to Mexico, but south.

[A-ha-ha-ha...  Well at least everyone got that straightened out up-front!  Not sure that's quite how the other set of parents and I would've done it, but...]

But clearly, aside from what “labeling and filing” the kids already know it’s time for more discussion of race.  Like how and when it is polite to inquire.

But even more importantly – to our family - how and when the boys should explain their own heritage and why they don’t “match” us.  To be clear, we don’t believe they “should” have to every time someone seems like they’re fishing for information.  But we want to give the boys some options so they never feel completely caught off-guard or cornered.

It’s going to happen to them and to us for the rest of our lives.  No time like the present to get started!  (And as I think about it, no time like the present for Fred and for me to hear from them what they do and don’t want us to share with other adults!)

I’d love to hear from others of you who have had these conversations with your kids, or those of you from mixed-race families, or any of you who are just so socially proactive that you’re all on top of this issue!   Comments and suggestions welcome! 

I’ll post again after the boys and we have our first few talks.

In the years since, the boys have sent pictures and received pictures.  When they’re a little more sure in their writing, I’ll have them write the letters, too.  For now, I do that, but everything’s in their names.

We’re not the only family I know with this idea.  Sponsoring children, families, and communities is a great way positively to impact at least one small part of the world and and to put a visible picture before our kids of the needs that lie outside our country.  

For our kids, it just happens also to be a way to give to their own birth country.

Our experience is with World Vision, and I highly recommend them.  Their child sponsorship selection page allows your son or daughter to select a child based on gender, age, country or birthday, and even aids those seeking specifically to support those affected by HIV/AIDS in their community.  Or they can choose to be matched randomly.  Either way, arriving at a particular person’s story reminds them just why they have come.

The money we send goes to those particular children for schooling, medical care, etc. but is also used to support their communities.  We liked that there is actually the chance that a village could reach a point where it no longer needs sponsorship.  We’ve had that happen once already – with ”Otro-José.”  His community’s program phased out because they are now self-sustaining.

And my little son now proudly sponsors “Otro-Otro-José” (yes, he does seem to love his own name!). 

Another benefit with World Vision: you can visit your sponsored child if you ever find yourself traveling to his or her country.  We’re not going to try to squeeze that in to our first trip back with the twins.  Especially since Diego and Otro-Otro-José live in towns several hours apart by taxi.  But it’s definitely on our list for a future visit!  In the meantime, ‘Berto and José enjoy getting pictures, notes and artwork that their “friends in Guatemala” send them.

We want our kids to grow up with an innate sense that they can and should be doing something for others at all times.  That thing will vary (and we’ll see how many “Otros” José accumulates by the end of it all!).  But this seems like the right kind of first-thing to get them started.

“I think it’s so great that you adopted them.”  ["THEM," meanwhile, are standing right next to me.]

And as I’m thinking “Oh, no!  Shh!” she continues about how great it is that Fred and I have brought the boys here and are “giving them such a great chance in life that they didn’t have before.  And that you really love them like your own.”

And while my brain was firing red flags every which way, my mouth just wouldn’t work.

However, I plan to be ready with a reply next time because…

A)  They aren’t LIKE our own… they ARE our own.

B)  Anyone who knows our kids knows they’re usually like this freakish conglomerate of well-behavedness… They are some of the easiest kids to parent I’ve ever heard of.  Plus they’re smart, funny, sweet with little kids and babies, affectionate, and full of joy and excitement  … so no, there’s nothing amazing about what Fred and I are doing at all!  Or have done.  We wanted to adopt kids.  And we did.  So we’re just living from that point forward.  And quite blessed in that life, I might add!

C)  We  don’t really know what their life would have been like, had they been able to remain with their first mom.  Yes, it might’ve been really hard.  On the other hand, God sure seems to love them and watch out for their protection (and I don’t mean “by having us adopt them,” I mean in every-day life things).  So maybe they’d be doing just fine there.  We don’t know.  So let’s not speculate.  And certainly not while they’re right there because…

D)  We don’t want them to feel like we’re heroes who swooped in and rescued them.  Or to think that we want them to think that.  We followed what we believed was God’s call on our hearts to adopt.  Now that we’ve taken on the responsibility of parenting them, shouldn’t we be doing our best, just like every other parent should be?  Adoptive parent and bio-parent alike?

I fear that behind the “compliments” lies an undercurrent of belief that somehow what Fred and I and other adoptive parents have is second-best.  A “Plan B” that falls after trying to have biological children.  A rebound after disappointment.  [I hope - perhaps naively? - that it's not because they're Latino.]  I’m sure people assume that we adopted the twins because of infertility.  We didn’t.  We meant to adopt.  Adoption is in both our families.

We’re just also ridiculously fortunate that our kids came to trust us and love us back so quickly, considering how many reasons they had to be guarded.

… What I would’ve said.  

Next time.  Just wait.

God bless ‘em for figuring it out on the same day. Less tears that way…

Less than 1 week later, they’re racing around our court circle.

Why am I here again?

Oh yeah… to hold the video camera. That’s right…

 For what I had heard was Jose reading ‘Berto Goldilocks and the Three Bears… the actual story from the book – really reading!  And when he got stuck on a word, ‘Berto would hop out of his bed, help him with it, then run back and jump into bed again and listen for more.

 And there it was:

1. Jose reading for fun for the first time of which I’m aware.

2. ‘Berto letting Jose take the lead for a (very rare) change.

3.  Cooperation and brotherly love (that had not exactly been the tone all evening).

4.  And plus they’re just so darned cute modeling what we do for them!

And that, dear handful of readers, is why I’m at home, homeschooling, spending all this time with the little men.  We drive each other bonkers sometimes, but every once in a while I get a glimpse of what it is I’m hoping to foster.  An education, yes, but more importantly deep friendship between the boys and strong characters they’ll take into adulthood. 

Even got a “Good Job, Mama” from Fred!

Ahh, I’ll now return to my evening of basking in the glow of a tiny success. 

They moved with her 4 times and finally leaned against a wall in the garage.

There they stood, untouched.

Until this week, a silly little tomboy-dream came true…

 The best part was, they were really good – stopping and returning balls like they’d been doing it forever.  Just like their Mama did in high school.

Fred and I didn’t realize at the time how much of a blessing it was that we felt called to adopt first (and had no idea we’d probably be adopting “only!”).  Because by adopting, we knew we were in unfamiliar territory.  So being the nerds we both are, we scrambled around and got as much information as we could about what it would mean to rear children.  We spent time with all our already-parents friends, attended a few seminars, read numerous books… Oh, and I got a masters degree that involved 2 years of child therapy.  So yes, we were armed when the boys finally came home.

And not that we didn’t still struggle – of course we did! – but, wow, was it a tremendous help that we had already thought about the different scenarios we might encounter.  That we had already seen two-year-olds in complete-meltdown-mode.  That we knew our training and discipline philosophy (at least the framework).

Because once we had the boys, there was little time for anything other than getting to know their personalities and getting us all adjusted to living together as a family.  Very little philosophizing went on.

And today, looking back – and also looking forward to when the next kids arrive – I am so thankful for the “boot camp” we went through as a newly-married couple.  I was grumbling to a friend this afternoon about how one of our guys keeps having accidents, but when I got my postcard I was reminded that if that’s my biggest problem in child-rearing right now, I’m pretty blessed!  And it’s not because Fred and I are just “so good at parenting.”  We have had (and still have) a lot of great role-models and advisers to help us set healthy patterns or switch gears when we’ve needed to try something new.

I’m sure we’ve long-since saved the time spent up-front.  And the peace around our house is invaluable.  So “Thanks!” to those of you who read this blog and have helped us along the way!  I really appreciate you!

And we knew we’d be hitting the ground running, since there were two of them and both squarely in the “terrible twos” phase.  (Turned out their twos were delightful; the threes were more challenging, but still not that bad… brag, brag, our kids are awesome.) 

Something that stuck with me in the midst of all that – and in my career at the time, since I was a manager of two departments at work – was the idea of developing a short list of core values we wanted to pass on to our kids.

Successful businesses all do it.  Many people do something similar every New Years (whether or not they keep up with them in the months to follow).  So why wouldn’t we, as parents, want at least one fixed target, something we could measure, when it came to rearing our kids?

There are lots of things we want to teach them, do teach them, should teach them, and will end up teaching them inadvertantly or in spite of ourselves.  But we borrowed the idea from others we respected to narrow down to “at the very least, we think this is important.”

And so, nearly three years ago, I worked up a list of six values Fred and I want to pass along to the boys (and our future kids, as well).  To avoid the New Years’ Resolution Syndrome, I made sure to pick values he and I actually value and either practice as second nature in our own lives or else feel strongly we should practice and are therefore actively working to grow in those areas.  Because if we’re doing them, the boys will believe in them.  If we’re not, they won’t.  Pretty simple.

Two of them come straight from Fred’s character: Generosity and Integrity.  He is very generous with money and taught me to be more charitably-minded with our finances; and he is more-than-normally careful that what he speaks is the truth.  Great traits; I hope our kids inherit them.  From my own background, I have come to value seeking wisdom in a situation (rather than just reacting to what’s going on), trusting God to work even when I don’t see Him (and thus not panicking), and also approaching other people with a baseline of trust and only revoking it if they truly can’t be trusted (rather than coming into a relationship with a stance of mistrust, which I admit I have done at times in the past).  It’s the extravert-optomist in me that wants Wisdom and Trust for my kids, I’m sure.  So they went on the list as well.

Service is there because Fred and I believe our family has been given a lot and should therefore help others whenever we can.  And Respectfulness rounded out our list after we witnessed the results of kids not learning that trait.  As we were preparing for our actual kids, we realized that it was going to be important to us that they felt respected by us, that they returned that respect since we are their authority-figures during this season of their lives, and that our sons grow up to be respectful of others around them.  Seems like one key path to “success” in life.

And so now that I have our school room, I have posted all six family values on the wall.  A visual reminder to me every day, as much as it is for them.

I included a Bible verse with each one, since I want all of us to remember (Fred and I as parents, too!) that there is a higher purpose we’re serving than just our own reputations as we practice these values in our family.  And because I have one visual son, I included a few pictures, two of which are of the two of them demonstrating the very values we hope they’ll carry into adulthood.

This particular picture was taken when the boys were three.  Heriberto had figured out how to put on his own shoes, and José wasn’t there yet.  I told them we were going to go to the park after I finished whatever I was doing, and when I came to check on them a few minutes later, ‘Berto was putting José’s shoes on and explaining to him how to do it, step by step, in mixed Spanish and English.  Such a sweet moment; I’m glad my camera was nearby.

Sometimes, especially early on, just the logistics of making sure the boys felt secure and attached to us overshadowed some of these “higher level” thoughts in my mind.  Looking back, I’m again impressed with some of the early seeds of “Men of Good Character” they showed from their start here in the U.S.  My job is to continue to encourage that, teach that, correct when necessary.  And I find it a whole lot easier (and conducive to a more positive atmosphere at home) when we’ve already gone over what to do, what is great about the way they are, how we want to treat others and be treated.  Usually, they know when they’ve done something hurtful or wrong, so it doesn’t take a lot of words or a strong reaction from me or from Fred to correct them.  And I like that because I know what the opposite feels like from a kids’ perspective.

I’d love to hear how others of you pick what’s important to you to teach your kids – and how you do it – so if you have thoughts, please comment! 

For the last nearly-three years, we’ve let that slide for the sake of building our relationship with our son, fostering secure attachment, majoring in the majors, and all that.  But we’ve reached a point now at which we’re asking our little man to muscle through something new (or something he usually refuses) at least one night a week.  At all other times, our rule is generally that you may stop eating whenever you’d like; you just don’t get snacks between meals unless you’ve finished the prior meal.

Now while our little son (who shall remain nameless but whose cover is pretty much blown in the picture below) has a remarkably good attitude about this new change in our mealtime policy, it truly is hard for him to eat certain things.  Primary among his nemises: vegetables.  Any veggies, really.  The only one he feels safe with is raw baby carrots.  Just raw, not cooked.

But since man cannot live on raw baby carrots alone (without turning orangy-yellow), and because we can’t count on every other family catering to his highly-selective food preferences when we’re in their homes, we’re working on broadening his diet.  Like - gasp – mixed veggie acceptance.  Regular mixed veggies.  With a little bit of butter and some salt (he’s scared of pepper, too…sigh).

The other night, he sat there for a half an hour beyond when the rest of us had finished dinner and moved on to the next activity.  I came in to check his progress with the 4 tablespoons or so of mixed veggies he had been given and had, of course, saved for last.  THIS was the “progress” he’d made:

His expression in the first picture typifies his feelings toward the offending vegetables.  Even after eating a few bites and those being ok, he remains ever fearful that the next bite will contain the dreaded “gross fings” he’s trying to avoid.

But he did do an excellent job of demonstrating his organizational skills, I think!

After praising the latter, I sat there with him and cheered him on, every bite, till he finished.

Then came tonight.  Tonight (Thursday) is “Family Night” in our house.  And we’d been planning all day to have a rousing four-way Wii-Sports match after dinner.  Chicken and mixed vegetables dinner.  Both familiar concepts.  Followed by a very popular video game (not to mention Papa’s and Mama’s undivided attention) – a great incentive for this little extravert.

I finished, Fred finished, the other son finished.  The son to whom this post is dedicated ate all his chicken and a few individual veggies (like one piece of corn at a time) and then balked.  We encouraged; he sat there; we reminded him that the game was next; he made glacial progress; so we moved to the next room to begin the game, telling him we’d stop and add him in as soon as he finished.

20 minute time lapse.

In wanders our long-lost veggie-hater, and he tells us he has finished his dinner.  We are excited and all go in to see.  (In the past, he is proud to show us his accomplishment, and we all [twin brother included] do a happy dance to celebrate, then give him a treat as a reward for doing something so hard for him).  This time, there is no celebration, no reward.

For what we find is a generous scattering of mixed vegetables sprinkled all over the floor underneath and around his chair.

Ah, well.  We knew we weren’t rearing a future President (they’re not native-born - no reflection on their otherwise bright prospects!).  But now we really know he’s NOT a reincarnation of the Father of our Country!