FIVE DAYS AND COUNTING

Well, Francie (now in kindergarten and adopted from Haiti at age two) made it until her fifth day of kindergarten before the teacher sent a note home about her behavior! Pretty darn successful, I'd say.

Yeah, she's loud. She talks a lot, even during Circle Time, which doesn't go over real well with teachers. But considering that we had to pull her out of Parents' Day Out at church when she was two because she was biting the other kids, I'd say she's come a long way.

Some adoption experts would say that institutional situations cause Francie to be stressed. Being in a group of other kids, with one adult in charge, with us not there, might be causing a reaction in her little five-year-old brain; something that tells her she's back at the orphanage, and that we'll never come back for her. Her bright, cheerful kindergarten classroom is a long way from the bleak concrete bunker at the orphanage, but there are similarities.

Some people think kids carry the emotional orphanage baggage with them for a long time, buried beneath the surface--that what happened to them as babies or toddlers will affect their behavior for years, in ways they don't even understand. Some people think that the kids will, and should, just buck up and get over it, now that they have enough food and a safe place to sleep. I dunno.

When we were in Haiti, there was an adoptive mom there who'd spent a lot of time at the orphanage. She had a child in Francie's room. This mom told me that Francie was "the second most active child in the room."

I think Francie's just a loud, active kid. She has the ability to sit and look at books or color, quietly, for half an hour or more--when she wants to, and IF there are no other kids around. Other kids seem to stimulate her to become wild.

I think she's fine. I think this even more since our adoption support group meeting last weekend. A mom there has a four-year-old girl from Russia. The little girl has been diagnosed as autistic, and doesn't even speak. The family got her at age thirteen months. I used to think that getting a child young was a guarantee that he/she would adapt just fine, but now I know better. It seems to be related to the quality of care they got as a baby. Apparently you can destroy a kid for life if you take lousy enough care of him for the first year, amazingly enough.

Anyway, this little girl had surgery as a baby in Russia, and had to lie in a cast at the hospital for months--where, presumably, no one did much cuddling with her because she was in a cast.

Then she went to an orphanage. The family saw her at age six or seven months, and knew there was something wrong then--but they were not allowed to bring her home until age thirteen months. The mom said that the baby had gotten worse in that time. Sometime between six and thirteen months, her little baby brain made the decision to block out the world.

So, I'm glad Francie's noisy. It won't kill the kindergarten teacher, and the alternative could be so much sadder.