21 minute read
Welcome to the Family
Ju g g l i ng Yo u r Ma ny S e l ve s
When it seems as if you’re constantly shifting gears between parent, partner, and worker, it can be hard to feel fully present in any of those roles. But there are ways to slow down and make the transitions easier.
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by D A P H N E d e M A R N E F F E , P h . D .
S A M A N T H A F E LT she could hardly keep track of all her job descriptions—mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, employee, volunteer. But the reason she came to me for help was the emotional toll of trying to do them all in the same day, and even within the same hour. One minute she felt she needed to be snuggly with her daughter, the next, calm and confident at work, and then connected with her husband. She said, “I can’t switch gears that fast!”
Like her, many parents feel exhausted by all the mental shifts in a given day. However, we often don’t even realize when we’re switching gears—or that this may be the reason for our grumpy moods or marital spats. Samantha and her husband, Dan, had a strong relationship, but she knew she’d been getting snarky with him. “When he asked if I’d called the plumber yet, I literally blew up and said, ‘You do it for once!’ ” she told me. “I had agreed to do it, but with my daughter whining and work emails to send, Dan suddenly seemed like my worst enemy.”
“Switching gears” can mean multiple things—shunting not only between roles such as parent, employee, and spouse but also between different types of activities (watching Frozen II, dealing with an after-hours work crisis, slipping into bed with your partner)—all of which can involve transitioning from one mindset to the next. We each have different capacities for multitasking and handling unexpected situations. Samantha realized she tended to be a perfectionist, and having to juggle her responsibilities
made her feel as if she wasn’t succeeding 100 percent in all her roles. Once she acknowledged that, we were able to work together on crafting more realistic expectations for herself and others.
If you can adopt strategies for feeling less stressed by the inevitable transitions in your day and the competing demands on your attention, it will translate into more calm and kindness with your loved ones. And if your partner commits to doing the same, you’ll be on your way to smoother gear shifts as a couple and a happier home life.
Build in deep-breathing breaks.
Brandon was a loving dad who worked long days, commuted, walked the dog, and did the dishes. As soon as he f lopped on the couch, his sons wanted to wrestle or jump on the trampoline with him. “I feel guilty if I don’t want to play,” he told me. “They’ll only be little for a short time.” He enjoyed playing with his boys—he just needed a break first. My advice to parents in the same boat is to recognize the power of a short mental and physical space between activities to help you switch gears. Give yourself five or ten minutes of “breathing room” if you need it.
And when you take a break, remember to breathe. It may seem obvious, but most of us forget to do it. If you’re tense, your breathing gets shallow, which contributes to feelings of anxiety. Many people practice yoga and meditation, which focus on breathing and are hugely beneficial when it comes to finding calm. But at any time, taking a deep breath can help you rela x so you can turn toward your kids and partner with more openness and warmth.
Get better at asking for (and giving) help.
Moving from one role to another often requires a change in approach. “It’s hard to switch gears from mom to lover,” Samantha said. “My mind’s still thinking about to-dos when I’m supposed to shut it off and pay attention to Dan.” This is one of the many areas in couple life where it pays to become more comfortable asking each other for help. In fact, psychologists call it healthy dependency. We may need practical help (“Can you stir the soup on the stove?”) or help changing our emotional state. I told Samantha, “Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to focus on Dan. Start by asking for what you need.” It put her in a better mood if, during the early evening, Dan listened sympathetically while she talked about the frustrations of her day. Once they were in the bedroom, a back rub helped her unwind and feel
more relaxed with him. The more lovingly you can suggest to your partner how they can support you, the better the request is likely to be received.
Schedule a few hours off.
Sometimes the fatigue associated with switching gears is hard to distinguish from gloom about the daily grind. There’s the old saying, “A change is as good as a rest.” And it bears repeating, because restoring energy isn’t only about getting a good night ’s sleep—it ’s a lso about experiencing something new or different that truly restores your spirits. Make an agreement with your partner to schedule one weekend day when each of you can take a few hours off to switch up your routine. If you can get child care and do something as a couple, great. Even taking a walk in a different part of town, watching a new kind of movie, or looking at fresh scenery can help you reenter family life with a renewed perspective.
Relax your expectations.
We all want to be the best caretaker we can be for an ailing parent, the most attentive partner to our spouse, the most helpful parent to our child, and the most competent employee. It’s a painful reality that we can’t always do our best at everything. But we make the pain worse by engaging in negative chatter inside our mind. We may focus on someone else as the problem (“If only my mom weren’t so needy”), but just as often, we direct it at ourselves (“I’m not loving enough toward my mom”). Try to use self-compassion to interrupt that process. Allow yourself to think, “The world won’t fall apart if I don’t do everything I’m supposed to do today. I can accept doing a little less.”
Remember that family life is a work in progress.
Figuring out what works for your unique family is one of the most important things you can do for your own mental health and happiness as a couple. If you often have nothing left to give after 7 P.M., come up with work-arounds to help avoid predictable moments of gear-shifting stress. A “fend for yourself ” dinner night, for example, can teac h your older kids some kitchen skills while giving you a bit of a break. As our kids grow, certain aspects of parenting become easier, others more challenging. That’s true of marriage too. The roles and responsibilities we are switching between also change. If you can maintain an attitude of creative problem solving, you’ll ta ke more satisfaction in the evolving process of managing your many roles.
Daphne de Marneffe, Ph.D., is a psychologist and the author of Maternal Desire and The Rough Patch: Marriage and the Art of Living Together. Visit her at daphnedemarneffe.com.
Welc ome t o the Fa m i ly
Imagine a child in foster care who has lost hope that they’ll ever be loved and cared for. Then meet a few adoptive parents who opened their hearts and homes to kids who now have a bright future ahead of them.
by J E N N Y C O M I TA
T H E N U M B E R S A R E mind-blowing. Currently, there are more than 400,000 children in America’s foster-care system. About 120,000 of them are awaiting adoption because the rights of their biological parents have been irrevocably relinquished or terminated. “These are children who have been neglected or abused and are in care through no fault of their own,” says Rita Soronen, president and CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, a national charity committed to finding forever families for children in foster care. Every year, about 20,000 kids “age out” of the system, meaning they’re declared legal adults without having a family to depend on. It is one of our country’s least-talked-about and most heartbreaking problems.
Any type of adoption is just the beginning of an ongoing process in which love and joy inevitably share space with more complicated emotions, including real and meaningful loss. And, of course, every adoption is different, with its own unique triumphs and challenges. But there’s one thing all the parents interviewed for this story can agree on: In expanding their families and becoming fathers and mothers to kids who needed them, they got back much more in return.
The Graydon Family
In November 2018, Ernest and Tiffany Graydon experienced every parent’s worst nightmare: Their 6-year-old son, Evander, died after drowning in a lake near their Midwest City, Oklahoma, home. To say that the tragedy overwhelmed the family with a crushing sense of grief would be an understatement, but the events of that terrible day also left the Graydons with a sense of clarity. “We realized that life can change—or end—in an instant,” says Ernest, a sergeant in the Air Force who works in Religious Affairs. And so, the following year, the couple made the decision to turn one of their “someday goals” into an immediate priority. “Ernest and I had always wanted to adopt, but we had thought we’d wait until our biological children were older and we were more financially stable,” Tiffany says. “On Evander’s birthday, we realized the timing was never going to be perfect. We called and started the process to become foster parents that very day.”
That process, coordinated through Angels Foster Family Network and the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, ended up moving more quickly than the Graydons could have
Ernest and Tiffany with their seven children, ages 4 to 13
imagined. In August 2019, just weeks after finishing their foster-family training, they got a phone ca ll about two boys—8-year-old Messiah and 5-year-old Zion—who needed a new placement within a few days. Along with their three children, Zanman, then 10, Giuliana, then 5, and Aurora, then 2, Ernest and Tiffany welcomed the brothers into their home near Tinker Air Force Base. A few months later, when their caseworker let them know
that the boys were officially eligible for adoption, the Graydons found out that they also had two sisters. “We thought, ‘How’s that supposed to work?’ They were only asking us to adopt the boys,” Tiffany says.
During the almost four years that they’d spent in the foster-care system, Messiah and Zion had never lived with their sisters—Jada, who was 11 at the time, and Teresa, who was 7. “To the caseworkers, the idea of splitting up siblings had been normal,” Ernest says. “They were like, ‘This is pretty routine. You can just adopt the boys, and hopefully someone else will take the girls. Placing four kids for adoption together rarely happens.’ But we just didn’t feel comfortable with that, so we prayed about it and sought council from friends and family, and finally decided we had enough room in our hearts and in our home to take the girls too.” Jada and Teresa moved in, and
four months later, the Graydons were able to officially adopt all four siblings.
Although the road to becoming a family of nine was short, it still had its share of bumps. The girls joined the household in March 2020, just as COVID-19 was kicking into high gear. “Overnight, we were homeschooling seven kids,” Tiffany says. There were also family dynamics to rejigger. Both Zanman and Jada were accustomed to being the oldest sibling—and calling the shots. “They had a lot of disagreements in the beginning about who was the boss,” Tiffany says. “So Ernest and I had to take over and make it clear that, no, actually neither one of them is the boss. We are the boss!”
Even though Jada was only 11, she felt responsible for her younger sister and brothers in a way that no child should. “We had to convince her to relax and be a little girl, and to let us tend to her siblings, so she didn’t have to worry,” Tiffany explains. “It took a little while for her to believe us and trust us. The fact that the boys had been with us longer helped because they were able to say to her, ‘These are good people. They’ve been good to us and they’ll be good to you.’ ”
Then, in July 2020, just a week after the adoption was finalized, Ernest was deployed to the Middle East for six months. “It was just me with all the kids,” Tiffany says. “It was a time when we really had to rely on our community and friends to help us. We have no biological family nearby, but we have people who feel like family, and it was amazing, the degree to which they stepped in and helped.”
Ernest is back now, and the Graydons are busy building a new community at Whiteman Air Force Base, in Missouri, where they were transferred this past summer. “Our adopted kids have brought a lot of love into our lives,” Ernest says. “It’s amazing how well they’ve adapted.” Tiffany adds, “They have given me a real sense of perspective. When you see how resilient children are and how they don’t let their cha llenges keep them down, it’s so inspiring. They have this view of the world that anything is possible, and being around them makes me feel that way too.”
National Adoption Day Is November 20
This annual event focuses attention on the thousands of children in foster care who need a permanent family.
Since 2000, a coalition of national partners and the Freddie Mac Foundation has encouraged courts to finalize and celebrate adoptions from foster care on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. To date, more than 75,000 children have been adopted on these days. The event was inspired by former presiding judge Michael Nash, of Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Court, one of the busiest courts in the nation. Because there was such a backlog of cases, he would open the court on Saturdays to finalize adoptions. This year, National Adoption Day events may be virtual or hybrid. For more information, go to nationaladoptionday.org.
They recently moved to a new home at Whiteman Air Force Base, in Missouri.
The
Graydon family
The Porter Family
Brian, Tonya, and Kimberly clicked early on and now love “just hanging out,” Tonya says.
The first time Kimberly and Brian Porter, of Burlington, North Carolina, met with a team of adoption professionals to see whether they’d be a good fit to parent an 11-year-old girl named Tonya, their social worker made a prediction. “She told us later that she’d said to the others, ‘Before long, Tonya’s going to have that man wrapped right around her little finger,’ ” Brian says with a laugh. She was right. Five years into fatherhood, he thinks his daughter hangs the moon. “Adopting Tonya is the best thing we’ve ever done,” he says. “Being her parent is such an awesome feeling that I have a hard time putting it into words. I’ve never been more proud of anything.”
For a long time, it seemed unlikely that Tonya’s story would have such a happy ending. After experiencing abuse and neglect from her biological family, she spent six years bouncing between relatives and foster placements. Her last foster family wasn’t prepared to adopt her. “I didn’t know if I would ever have parents who loved and wanted me as much as I wanted them,” the now 16-year-old says.
The Porters, who met at work, had talked about having children eventually. “But having a baby kind of terrified both of us,” Kimberly says. “We thought someday we’d adopt, but it took us quite a while to get serious about it.”
They finally decided to take the plunge in 2015, about seven years after they were married. “All of a sudden, adopting was on my mind,” Brian says. “We were at LongHorn Steakhouse for lunch on a Saturday, and I was just picking at my food. Kim was like, ‘What are you thinking about? What’s wrong with you?’ She knew something big was up because I wasn’t eating. And I said, ‘I think it’s time to adopt.’ ”
They attended an information session at the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina, an adoption agency, and came away with a newfound sense of purpose. “We initially thought we’d want a 4- or 5-year-old,” Kimberly says. “But after hearing how many kids get aged out of the system, we decided to go for an older child because they have less of a chance of getting adopted. It became our mission.”
The Porters started the process of getting certified to foster and adopt, which involved a 30-hour class and home visits from social workers. Soon after they were approved, they heard about Tonya, and everyone thought they might be a good match.
Getting to know one another was almost like dating. After their second meeting, at an amusement park, it was clear they had a real connection. “We saw her in the back of the car with her social worker, waving goodbye, and she looked so sad to be leaving,” Kimberly remembers. “I knew that she was meant to be my daughter,” Brian says.
Today, the family’s tight bond is apparent. They love watching sports, going to the movies, and “just hanging out,” Tonya says. Kimberly and Brian hope to adopt more kids soon. “After we adopted Tonya, I said I wanted seven kids,” Kimberly says. “That’s probably too many, but there are so many kids out there—especially older kids—who deserve a fair shake. Once you realize that, it’s impossible not to want to do something about it.”
Terri hadn’t planned to adopt—but then couldn’t imagine a life without this trio in it.
The Nakamura Family
As the owner of a preschool in Port Orchard, Washington, Terri Nakamura was used to bonding with children, giving them the skills they needed to succeed, and then launching them out into the world. Eight years ago, when she signed up to be a foster parent, she envisioned doing just that for the kids who’d spend time under her roof. “My ultimate goal was always to try to reunify kids with their parents or, if that wasn’t possible, to help find them the perfect adoptive home,” says the single mom of three grown biological children. “I’d already raised my kids. I never intended to adopt.” But in 2015, a trio of siblings—Michael, 5; Roman, 4; and Liliana, 3—came into her life, and it became clear that the universe had other plans.
“I had the kids with me for four years,” says Terri, who was working with her local foster-care adoption agency to search for an ideal forever family for them. But the three siblings had very little chance of being adopted together. “The agency had a stack of files of adoptive parents who said, ‘I just want her or just two of them,’ and it was so hard for me to see that,” Terri says. Another stumbling block to finding a “forever family” for the children: They’re members of a Native American tribe, which makes the adoption process more complicated. In 1978, after it came to light that American Indian children were being removed from their homes and communities at a much higher rate than non-Native children and placed with white families, essentially erasing their rich heritage, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act, which seeks to keep Native children with Native families whenever possible.
The kids had also experienced trauma in their biological home, resulting in behavior that many prospective families weren’t equipped to deal with. Terri had managed long tantrums, at least one child jumping out of a car and running off, school suspensions, and—after advocacy on her part—an ADHD diagnosis that finally brought much-needed help.
Ultimately, the greatest obstacle to finding a new home for Michael, Roman, and Liliana was that they were so happy with Terri. “At one point, two of them went to live in a prospective adoptive home, and they had a really hard time being there,” Terri says. “They missed being here, and I missed them. So I starting thinking, ‘Why are they going to live with someone else? I love them. We’ve spent all this time together as a family.’ I couldn’t see life without them.”
In June 2020, after getting approval from the children’s triba l council, they made it official with a Zoom court appearance to which they wore matching T-shirts they’d designed to represent the kids’ tribal background and the heritage of Hawaii, where Terri was born and raised. COVID has prevented them from celebrating their new status on a grand scale, but they have big plans for the future. “I’m going to take them to Hawaii so they can experience my history, and then the next trip will be to Alaska, where their tribe has its roots,” Terri says. “And after that, of course, we have to go to Disneyland.”
Questions for Families Thinking About Adoption From Foster Care
Before prospective parents commit, there are key issues to consider. Foster-care adoption—or adopting a child out of the foster system—may not be a good fit for every household. On the f lip side, it’s also important that would-be families don’t rule themselves out before they start the process. The notion that you have to be a young, straight married couple who owns a home in order to adopt is, happily, a thing of the past, says Rita Soronen, of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.
Are you open to an older child?
“There are fewer infants available, and they tend to be adopted much more quickly or to be part of a sibling group,” says Soronen. “The average age of a child in foster care waiting to be adopted is about 8.”
Is everyone on board?
“It’s important that your family supports and understands what you’re doing,” Soronen says. This applies to members of your household, extended family, and even close friends. Will your own parents consider a child you adopt to be their grandchild? Will your biological children be able to accept the child as their sibling? Are you open to staying connected to the child’s extended biological family? If you are considering a transracial adoption, will you help that child, throughout their life, understand and be connected to their heritage?
Are you equipped to deal with the aftereffects of trauma?
“Children land in the foster-care system because of abuse or neglect in one form or another,” Soronen says. Adoptive parents need to be prepared to educate themselves about trauma the kids have experienced and the possible mental, emotional, and physical impacts, and be committed to getting their child the help they might need.
Are you ready to navigate red tape?
“Foster-care adoption entails stepping into a complex and sometimes frustrating government system,” Soronen says. “In some instances, navigating that system can be fairly easy, and in other instances it’s more complicated.” Adoptive families need the time, patience, and emotional bandwidth to roll with a sometimes bumpy or drawn-out process. “However, if you want to adopt from foster care, you can specify that you don’t want to be matched with a child who has the potential of being reunified with their biological parents,” says Soronen. “It’s important to know that every state and often each county within a state operates its foster-care and foster-to-adopt programs differently. You need to check with your local government to fully understand what is required.”
Are you financially prepared?
While adopting from foster care is essentially free, keep in mind that how much post-adoption assistance you will receive for education and medical- and emotional-care services varies from state to state. “For example, if you adopt a 15-year-old, you haven’t been saving for 15 years for college, as you might have done with a biological child or an infant adoption,” Soronen says. “Make sure to investigate adoption tax credits as well as employer-adoption and foster-care benefits and resources in your area to help with education costs or other possible expenses.”
If we’re interested, what’s the first step?
You can adopt via a local private agency, which will contract through your state, or you can go through your state agency directly. The Child Welfare Information Gateway (childwelfare.gov) is a good place to start, and there is also a helpful adoption guide at davethomasfoundation.org.
