Effects on kids

Unfortunately, one of the risks of adopting a child from China is not knowing what problems might appear after the adoption process.  A lot of these issues are related to children psychology which is convenient since I am currently in a child psychology class.  We have learned about all the different attachment theories and how attachment to someone by the age of two is very important.  Some researchers believe that if you don't form an attachment to anyone, you will have trust issues for the rest of your life.  Also, forming a good attachment bond will provide emotional security for the child (Pendry). Depending on the age of the child being adopted, attachment might not happen properly resulting in problems for the child.  Lulu was almost two when my aunt got her, which is the end of the attachment period.  Fortunately, after a while my aunt was able to form a good attachment with Lu.  The attachment was so good that my aunt couldn't leave her sight, or Lulu would freak out. 

Classical conditioning is another psychology term that can relate to adoption as well.  According to thefreedictionary.com, classical conditioning is a process of behavior modification in which a subject learns to respond in a desired manner such that a neutral stimulus is repeatedly presented in association with a stimulus that elicits a natural response until the neutral stimulus alone elicits the same response(definition). For example, you were driving down a bumpy road and got car sick.  While you were in the car you ate an  apple.  Now every time that you see an apple, you get nauseous and you don't eat apples anymore.  When babies want something like food, water, or a clean diaper they cry.  Babies in orphanages learn not to cry because when they cry, nothing happens.  They have experienced classical conditioning because they have paired crying with no response over and over again until they have finally learned that crying won't get you anything.  In some orphanages and hospitals, the only time the children are being touched is when they need something done.  If a child is sick, the only time they could get attention is when they need another dose of medicine, another needle poked into their arm, or another shot.  For these poor children, they too experience classical conditioning in a different way.  These children pair touch with pain, because the only time they are being touched is when the nurses need to do another test or IV. Since these children have developed this, no matter who is touching them, they are going to automatically associate touch with pain.

One Child Policy

There is one main cause of these overpopulated orphanages and it all traces back to the one child policy.  In 1979, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping established the one child policy meaning that each couple could only have one child.  The “birthing plan” has now been in effect for over 30 years.  The goal of the one child policy was to keep China’s population below 1.3 billion by the year 2000.  China is currently home to over 1.2 billion people (adoption).  This plan has worked good to significantly reduce the number of people living in China, but it has also caused major problems.   Fines, pressure to abort a pregnancy, and even forced sterilization have been results of the one child policy.   Abortion is legal in China and is state funded but not mandatory.  Some women abort their baby on their own and even wait days before they’re due date to abort the baby.  For women who don’t want to abort their baby, there are other options, one of them being adoption.  Because of the one child policy, the orphanages are swamped with children and don’t have enough money to support them and enough workers to take care of them. Some women are try to keep it a secret that they are giving their baby up for adoption so they will leave them in public places where someone will hopefully find it.  My aunt was told that Lu "was found by the hospital".  They didn't say how she was found, but it is typical for women to abandon their baby in a box, basket, or blanket where someone will find them. 

Most rules come with exceptions, and the one child policy is one of those rules.  Families living in urban areas are only allowed one child, while families that live in rural areas are allowed to have more than one due to the extra labor needed in farming communities.  The rule also does not apply to minorities living in China (Han).

Due to the one child policy, some Chinese people are picky about which gender child they have.  Chinese parents prefer to have boys because they carry on the family name and are more likely to stick around and take care of them when they grow old.  They also like boys because they can put them to work.  Some people are even selfish enough to keep trying until they have a boy, and just abort the baby when they find out it’s a girl.  This is not good because there are way more men than women which means a lot less men getting married, reproducing, and keeping on the family tradition.



Below I posted a video about the one child policy and the effects that it has on the younger generation.

The Dying Room

Over the years, the persistent yet unconfirmed rumors have been circulating about the existence of dying rooms in some of China’s state orphanages.  The dying room is a completely dark room where children are supposedly placed if they are really sick or severely mentally handicapped.  These poor children are left in these rooms all day and all night until they eventually die.  They receive no attention from other kids or workers and they sit in their own waste.  A British documentary team went to China and secretly filmed the reality of some of the orphanages.  The documentary is called "The Dying Room" and it took them two years to film. The documentary was shown on TV in 26 different nations.  The video raised a ton of controversy, and China was still trying to deny it even though the inexcusable conditions are shown in the documentary.  A year after the film was shown, it received the Peabody Award for distinction and achievement in a documentary.  Below I have posted just a small part of “The Dying Room” documentary so you can see for yourself the condition that some of these children are living in everyday.

Warning: This video has some disturbing images

Chinese Orphanage Conditions

Every Chinese orphanage is different.  Some are bright and well kept up while others are very dark and dirty.  I have heard many different stories about Chinese orphanages, some of them good and some of them devastating.  Sadly, most of them are devastating and it makes you sick to think about it. My Aunt Jane wasn’t taken to an orphanage when she got Laynie, but her best friend Ellen was when she adopted her little girl, Rachel.  I interviewed Ellen and asked her questions about the conditions of Rachel’s orphanage and if they were better than what she expected.  “Rachel's orphanage was very very modern and decorated with Little Tykes toys, had a TV and a foam mat on the floor along with walkers and very up to date safe toys.  At her orphanage it was a large municipal Children's home that had either 600 or 800 children of all ages including a clinic hooked on to the orphanage that had physical therapy for disabled children, etc ... Rachel was in an orphanage that had a program called Half the Sky that sponsored children and gave an update to the families that sponsored them monthly. The program trained "nannies" so they bonded and had a regular room so as the children knew them. They learned to hold them with eye contact, snuggle time, etc... Rachel's room had 10 babies in little wooden cribs with blankets.  The orphanage was way better than my husband, Mark and I expected. There were 5 babies from our orphanage and 3 from another one. The other families said how poor an orphanage theirs was with no blankets in wooden slated beds, no toys, very very poor and dirty. They thought ours looked like the Hilton in comparison” (Wylie, Interview).  I was very happy to hear about how great their orphanage was, but sad to hear about the orphanage with no blankets and wooden beds.  It’s so strange how you can have one orphanage be so good, and have an orphanage down the street from it that is so bad.  The first few days with Rachel were quiet, and she slowly learned to trust Ellen and Mark.  “We went to visit the orphanage on day 5 after getting her. Hind sight I wish we had not taken her to visit with us.  She was 18 months and I think in her little mind, when I leaned in to take a photo of her by the bed that had been hers, she cried the most pathetic heart wrenching cry as I think she truly thought we were bringing her back.  She clung on and would not go to any of the workers either, which made me happy. They talked to her and she just nestled in, as I had her in a front sling. When we left and boarded the bus to head back to our hotel she was smiley and laughing almost like she was relieved to be leaving.  I do wish we knew what was going thru her little mind at 18 months” (Wylie, Interview).  I often wondered what was going on in Laynie’s mind after she was adopted too.  Even though Rachel’s orphanage conditions were good and she knew the nannies, she was relieved to be leaving with Ellen and Mark because in only three days she realized how much more attention and love she was getting from them that she didn’t receive in the orphanage.

Min Meng Lu - After the Adoption

Once my aunt Jane and Lu left China, things started getting better since she wasn’t seeing so many familiar Chinese faces.  The plane ride home was very long, but they managed to get through it alright.  That whole side of the family drove up to Chicago to meet them when their plane arrived.  My sister and I couldn’t sleep the night before knowing that we would finally get to see our new cousin for the first time after three years of waiting.  Lu was very shy with everyone at first and clung to my aunt.  You couldn’t look at her for too long, or laugh at what she did because she would get mad and cry.  She hated attention and we often had to hide our laughter.  Once we got back, Lu was comfortable with my aunt but she always wanted to be with men or me.  She loved my grandpa and my dad, and she loved me because I looked around the same age as her foster sister.

Lu picked up on English pretty fast, but we still used Chinese words with her sometimes.  She was fully potty trained when my aunt got her, but because of all the stress and communication problems, it started to go downhill.  There were other issues that occurred once they got home, the biggest one being night terrors.  Lu would wake up almost every night screaming and crying and yelling things in Chinese.  It was scary and sad to watch her have a night terror, but the child doesn’t remember having it at all.  Night terrors are cause by psychological trauma which she experienced being taken away from her foster family in China.  Another thing that we found odd was that Lu wanted nothing to do with Chinese people; it was almost like she was mad at them.  We would go to a Chinese restaurant and she wouldn’t even look at them, and she would turn her head away if they tried to talk to her.  One lady asked her in Chinese “Do you speak Chinese?” and she surprisingly answered “Yes, but I don’t want to” in Chinese.  Sometimes she would be talking and say something in Chinese and freeze.  She would put her head down and get really shy, because she didn’t want to speak Chinese but it slipped out sometimes (Harrell, Interview). 

Today Alayna Lyn Meng Lu Harrell (her American name) is eight years old and in 3rd grade.  She is smart, full of energy, and very loving.  She doesn’t remember anything about being in China, even though she did when she was younger.  She loves hearing stories about how she acted when she was little so we often tell her. 

I've posted a link to the Chinese Children Adoption International website.  They have a really good time line that shows you the adoption process and how long everything takes.  Click here!

The pictures my aunt sent us from China

Pictures that the orphanage gave my aunt

She loves being silly

Aunt and Uncle's wedding

Christmas tree searching

Laynie - 8 years old

In Kentucky for our family reunion

Laynie and her cousins

Min Meng Lu - In China

My aunt took her best friend, Lori and her cousin, Deb to China with her.  Lori brought experience and Deb brought a video camera to film the whole trip.  Deb made a documentary for her thesis and gave a copy to my aunt.  I would love to post the documentary on my blog because it shows you first hand the experience that my aunt had, but due to personal reasons I cannot.  The three of them traveled around China for three long days with their group before they received their babies.  In the documentary, you can see that everyone is experiencing hundreds of different emotions as they are riding in the bus to go see their babies for the first time.  When they got to the orphanage, everyone waited anxiously.  They started bringing the babies out one by one.  When they turned the corner with LuLu, my aunt knew it was her and gasped for air.  The orphanage workers just handed off the babies like they were a football.  You could tell that they do this very often and it doesn’t mean much to them to just ship off a baby to someone.  When they threw her into my Aunt’s arms, Lu started crying and grabbing anyone that she could find. 

Lu was in an orphanage in Guangxi for the first 5-6 months of her life, and then she was put into foster care and lived with an older lady and her daughter who was 25.  She lived with them from 6 months of age up until my aunt got her.  We were relieved to hear that she had been in foster care because we assumed it was better than living in the orphanage, but little did we know the problems it would bring.  They are supposed to take her out of foster care a while before my aunt got her, but they took her out the day of.  LuLu was 10 days away from being two years old, and she was old enough to realize that my aunt wasn’t her mom.  She knew nothing different than her foster mom and sister, so she thought that they were her real mom and sister and she even referred to them as that.

While watching the documentary, it is very clear that my aunt had the hardest time out of everyone.  Lu was almost two years old, and the other kids weren’t even close.  She was speaking Chinese pretty fluently while the other kids only knew how to say mommy and daddy.  She was very much aware of what was going on and that the white people all around her were very scary.  They were in China a total of 13 days, and the 10 days she had Lu were rough.  Lu wanted nothing to do with my aunt and she would go up to random strangers on the street and say “take me” in Chinese.  She wanted strangers before she wanted my aunt.  They experienced many sleepless nights listening to Lu scream words in Chinese.  We later found out that she was screaming for her foster sister and saying “help”.  She thought that my aunt was taking her from her family and she just didn’t understand (Harrell, Interview).

Here is a map of China with the Guangxi province(where Lu was from) circled

Min Meng Lu - Before the Adoption

On Christmas Eve in 2002, my aunt Jane gave all of my family members a box.  We opened the boxes all together and each of them had an ornament in it and everyone’s had something written on it in Chinese.  Mine said cousin, my dad’s said uncle, my mom’s said aunt, and my grandpa’s said grandpa all in Chinese with the English word underneath it.  It was silent in the room because my aunt wasn’t married and why was the writing in Chinese? She then explained, while crying, that she was adopting a little girl from China.  That night we stayed up till one o’clock in the morning asking my aunt as many questions as we could think of, but at the time she didn’t know that much. 

For the next year and a half, my aunt was swamped with paperwork including her financial status, work information, house information, income, debt, budget, background, medical history, and the list goes on.  Along with all the paperwork, she had to have three reference letters saying why she would be a good candidate for adoption.  She had to get her house inspected to make sure that everything was in good shape and that the house was baby safe. 

I will never forget the day that I first saw her picture.  My aunt had received it from the orphanage and rushed it over to my sister and me at school.  We all stood there staring at the picture for a long time, not even saying a word.  We had finally seen our new addition to the family. Her name was Min Meng Lu, but people in China called her LuLu for affection (Harrell, Interview).  The time that we would get to see her for the first time was coming up close and we could not wait.

This is the very first picture we received of Lu

Introduction to Chinese Adoption

To the average person who hasn’t been exposed to Chinese adoption, it might seem easy, fun, and painless.  When people make this assumption, filling out paperwork for months and months must seem easy to them.  Staying up all night with a child who is hungry but won’t eat anything must be fun for them.  Watching your little girl get ripped away from her foster parents the same day you adopt her and her hating you for it must be painless to them.  Adoptive parents go through a lot, and the orphans go through even more.  From this blog, I hope people will see the truth behind Chinese adoption, and appreciate the adoptive parents and children for what they go through.