What an emotional documentary. On a personal note, those black and white cushions, the doctor at the medical exam, the White Swan, the views of the Pearl River…. they all brought back some memories of my own.

The initial meeting between Faith and her new mom, that was hard. Adoption can be a beautiful thing, but it’s hard, at first. Even with an infant, it was hard. With a two year old it was excruciatingly difficult. With an eight year old? Wow. And remember, we (the viewers) had the benefit of knowing what was being said to Faith during that initial meeting, but Donna did not know what was being said in Cantonese.

The mom changing her hair color from the pictures to the meeting, that appears to have been a pretty big mistake. Faith had an idea of what her new mom would look like, based on the pictures, and then she showed up looking different. It would have been difficult no matter what, but showing up with a different look certainly didn’t help that initial meeting any.

But, it’s easy to watch and say you’d have done something different. I’d have brought food with me to the initial meeting – M&M’s for an eight year old, perhaps, since they travel pretty well. It was Cheerios for my babies, but I don’t think they’d work quite the same for an older child. Some kind of ice breaker, a token of goodwill of some sort, I think that would have helped. It was painful to watch, I can’t imagine how Faith felt.

I died laughing at the foster mom thinking Faith would be cold without all of those layers on. I was very glad that the two families got to spend time together, and that Faith was allowed to get some closure with them before leaving China. Did you note that the foster mom commented at how much weight Faith had lost since leaving the family and going back to the orphanage? And that the orphanage took the photos of her foster family away? I know that the authorities think it’s good to remove the child from the foster family for a while before they join their new family, but I really wish they would learn a little bit about attachment, and try to understand how damaging that practice is in the long run. Not to mention the fact that the kids don’t get the nutrition they need in the cash strapped orphanages.

I loved the flashcards with the phonetics on the back, and I saw Faith looking at the phonetics for help. I can relate, as I need to see Chinese words written before I can pronounce them right, just hearing them isn’t enough for me. And I thought it was great that they started with food words – eight year olds are big on food. I wanted there to be some positive reinforcement with them though – a promise for a walk in the park if she tried hard, and perhaps a special treat if she got a certain number of them right. Some kind of incentive. I totally understood the need to help her learn to communicate so fast, she wasn’t going to feel like she was a part of her new family until she could communicate with them, and for attachment purposes she needed to feel she was a part of them as quickly as possible. I got that. Didn’t make it any easier to watch her trying to learn, but I understood the need to get her to learn as quickly as she was capable of learning.

In our case, RK and I learned a whole lot of Chinese on our own. I would love to see families adopting older children have a vocabulary of at least 150 or so words – hungry, thirsty, scared, sleepy, safe, hurt, blanket, shoes, shirt, pants, water, milk, like, cold, hot, wash, brush, hair, teeth, want, need, understand, allowed, etc. I’m not talking fluency here, no need for grammar and measure words… once the child learned that her new parents couldn’t understand sentences but could understand a few words at a time, broken apart and spoken slowly, they would do it if it meant they could be understood. And then the family could repeat the Chinese word back and give the English equivalent, a nice way to help the child begin learning their new language. Most families do not have a translator following them around with a camera. And, it just seems to me that the child might be more willing to learn English if they see you making an attempt to meet them in the middle, with you learning some of their language.

I also understand that the filmmaker’s goal was in showing how an internationally adopted older child would integrate the language and culture, and not in showing the attachment stuff, so I believe we are only shown the language and culture parts of what happened. I have to believe there were attachment activities going on as well, and that we just weren’t shown those things. I doubt they did flash cards all day, that’s just the part we were shown since language acquisition was one of the main points of the documentary. I’m sure there was playing and cuddles and fun with food as well.

And then, once they were home. Wow. Having a child in the house who can’t communicate with the rest of the family… trying to referee when everyone can’t understand each other… I wouldn’t know where to start with some of it. It’s hard enough when everyone speaks the same language and knows each other really well.

Faith definitely tested boundaries and tried to see what she could get away with. Finding the balance between pushing her and supporting her, no one could be perfect with that. The books in the parking lot, that was hard to watch. I don’t know whether Faith could hold the books or not. I saw her holding other things with no apparent problems – was that her testing to see what she could get away with? I don’t know. I also do not know exactly how I would deal with an eight year old child who stood in the parking lot and refused to move, and then tried to blackmail me into carrying her books if I wanted her to move. Some of the things Faith was doing were the things we deal with when our kids are two or three years old – having to go through all of that with an 8 year old is probably normal when adopting an older child, they don’t know where their boundaries are until they bounce up against them to test them out… but it would still be frustrating. How do you foster attachment and enforce rules for a child who is actively testing those rules and probably taking advantage of the fact that her new family is trying to be nice to help her feel welcome?

Yes, I know, we’re the parents and we’re supposed to hold it together. Our children didn’t ask to be taken to another country with people who look different and speak another language. We brought them here and it’s our job to help them learn to live here… but there were times I had to step back and let RK handle things while I regrouped and found my own sanity again – and that was with an infant the first time and with a two year old the second time. Sometimes counting to ten isn’t enough to give you the perspective you need to handle something calmly.

On a lighter note, how many times have TT and I had the markers vs crayons discussion? Some things are universal, I guess.

At three to six months plus being home, I would have probably doled out more consequences for some of the attitude that was expressed. The consequence would not have been being sent to her room, though. And, again, we are seeing such a small window of time – who is to say whether she acted worse or better when the camera was there?

I was very glad to see that the parents were dealing with the race issues that came up, and that when they realized they needed help, they reached out to get it. I was also pleased that the filmmaker included the part where the counselor tried to explain the difference in race and culture — I see so many people who don’t get that. Even when I tried to bring up race a few weeks ago so many of the commenters veered off to talking about culture. Both are important, but don’t make the mistake of confusing the two. Faith’s parents realize they need role models for their daughters. They also realized that watching movies about China and going to FCC events isn’t going to give their girls what they need in order to deal with being Chinese in America. Realizing there is a problem is the first step to fixing it. There aren’t easy fixes, at least none that I’ve found. But they live in a community where there are resources, and they are reaching out to try to help their girls. Kudos.

Based on the filmmaker’s interview that I showed the other day (third video down), I got the feeling that she’s still working through her own feelings about being of Chinese heritage and living in America. Or, perhaps it just took her a while to do that, and creating this documentary was one of the ways she has of expressing her own journey towards being comfortable in her skin. She wasn’t adopted, but she didn’t grow up in a diverse area, and that appears to have caused some issues for her.

I believe that Faith will go through periods in her life where she feels more American, and periods in her life where she feels more Chinese. I hope she one day finds a balance, and that she can own all of who she is. I have the same hope for my girls.

Does anyone know if Faith’s foster sister was adopted?

GlitterGirl and I will watch Wo Ai Ni Mommy together this weekend, and then we’ll talk about it. I’m not sure it’s something TT is ready for yet.

The end of summer. Labor Day. Beginning of Fall. Only a few days left to swim. Almost time to start planning for Halloween costumes. September. Wow.

TwinkleToes is doing fantabulous in kindergarten. She loves going to school in the morning, and comes home just a jabbering about everything she did that day. Beginning with “I got my homewook and my books out of my pack pack and then I put my pack pack and my wunchbof in my wocker and then I signed in” and ending with “I got my pack pack out of my wocker and put my books and my homewook in my pack pack and I got my wunchbof and comed upstairs and there you were.” I get even the littlest details about everything… it takes at least an hour for her to tell me the whole thing, often she finishes up while we are eating dinner. She has to stop while we do homework, and then pick up again. A bonus — I’m hearing more about GlitterGirl’s day this year than I did last year, as they compete for my time – LOL.

TwinkleToes can’t coordinate to say backpack in a sentence just yet, we’re working on that. If she isolates the word and thinks about it really hard she can say it right, but in a sentence… it’s not going to happen in the near future. But her speech is not the worst in her class, and they can all understand each other. My goal was that she could communicate with her friends and teachers in kindergarten, and she’s just fine with that. She’s putting sentences together now, and doing a great job of expressing herself.

The coordinator for the “gifted” program is also the coordinator for all other special services (she is responsible for anything outside of what is considered to be within range of normal benchmarks) so she and I are already well acquainted with each other as we’ve worked to keep GlitterGirl nice and challenged. I sat down with her and explained where we are with TT’s speech and the reasons behind her speech issues. She had the school’s speech person evaluate her, and a meeting is planned for next week where decisions will be made about whether they will be taking TT out of class to give her speech services. I’ve already told them that because she’s been in speech therapy up until a few weeks ago that I believe TT will test at just below where she’s supposed to be, and that she likely won’t be far enough out of range for services at this point. My purpose in talking to them now was to help them establish where she is now, so that in January when they test her again they can see whether she’s gaining ground or staying static. I will be taking her to our speech therapist during Christmas break for testing as well, so we can see if she’s learning on her own now, or if she’s going to continue to need help to move her forward.

I am so proud of TwinkleToes. She had such a hard start in life, and now she is thriving beyond my wildest dreams. She smiles and laughs and just generally enjoys life. I’ve been told that she helps the other kids who aren’t doing as well, that she is very aware of kids who seem to need help, or who are standing off to the side with no one to talk to. They help her too, though. She’s too short to reach the soap dispenser or the towels in the bathroom, so the other kids help her with it. And she can’t reach to put her tray onto the window in the lunchroom (they all get trays, whether they bring their lunch or not), so someone does that for her, too. There is a sink in one of the kindergarten rooms, and she can use a stool to use that sink if she doesn’t want to get help in the bathroom, but she says her friends help her and she doesn’t want to use the sink in the room.

Their class (the kindergarten class as a whole, they change classes already and don’t stay in a single classroom all day) is mostly boys, and some of them are very big boys (a couple of them are bigger than GlitterGirl, even). Apparently the girls have really banded together and TwinkleToes (the tiniest in the class) is the only one brave enough to tell the boys as a group that they shouldn’t be doing that and they should apologize. Recess has apparently been quite an adventure. The teachers are aware of what goes on, and nothing has gotten out of control, but the story is that just when they are about to step in, they hear TwinkleToes speak up and then the kids work it out for themselves from that point. That’s another big point of the school, that students can self police, and the teachers are very good at assisting them when they need help doing it. They don’t step in and handle things, they step in and help the kids find a solution.

When I picked TT up from school the other day one of her teachers saw me and said, “You just never know what’s going to come out of her mouth, do you? Does she keep ya’ll in stitches at home?” I just laughed and said that yes, she does keep us laughing at home, and no, you don’t ever know what will come out of her mouth next. I then doublechecked that TT is raising her hand and waiting to be called on before speaking up and was assured that TT is very conscious of the rules and whether she is inside of the rules or outside of the rules, and that she works very hard to stay inside of them at all times.

She seems to be getting enough sensory input, one of the great things about this school is their philosophy of “active learning”, which means there isn’t a whole lot of sitting at a desk. There is some, of course, but it’s not a huge part of the day in kindergarten. For that matter it’s not a huge part of the day in the upper classes, either. It is for math, of course, but not for science or language arts or social studies. They do a whole lot of projects and very little busy work.

All of the kindergarten teachers are aware of TT’s sensory stuff, and they all have a few simple things they can do if they realize she is out of sorts and that it’s been a while since she’s had sensory input. Most of it is stuff they do anyway, I remember from when GG was in kindergarten that when the class was getting restless that they’d have them all stand up and they’d do a song that involved jumping and wiggling and hand clapping, and then sit them back down to finish whatever they’d been doing.

I’ve taken the day off Friday to volunteer in the kindergarten classrooms, it will be interesting to see how the day goes.

I first talked about this show here, and now it is finally going to air on PBS. I’ve got my DVR set to tape it.

Starting tomorrow, it looks like you’ll be able to view it online as well.

Here is a trailer, followed by a video of Faith’s mother, followed by a rather lengthy video of the producer talking. I urge you to listen to the entire eight plus minutes of the final video, and listen to some of the reasons the producer wanted to do this documentary.

Have tissue handy for the trailer (top video), but you can probably watch the second two videos shown here without crying.

This tool allows you to translate from English, from pinyin, or from Chinese characters.

As an example, type in Cat and then either hit enter or click the Go button. You’ll see the Chinese character and the pinyin. Click on the character in the first column and you’ll get a pop up. If you click on the little cartoon bubble on the pop up then you’ll hear the word being said.

To go the other way, if you choose the pinyin-to-characters choice on the dropdown box and then type in mao then you’ll see all of the characters for mao. Click on the character for the one you want and it will bring up a pop up box again so you can see what that character means (and hear it pronounced).

And finally, if you have the character and want to know what it means, then copy and paste the character in (the dropbox should fix itself when you paste a character in).

The software is pretty good at figuring out what you type in, but if it gives a wonky answer then make sure the dropbox is where it should be and try again.

I’ve put this into the Links section in the right hand column.

I’ve been doing a lot of that the past few days. I think it’s probably time for me to read Siblings Without Rivalry again. At a certain point I have to remember that if I’m doing my job correctly then there shouldn’t be this much fussing.

Yesterday I heard the words, “Mommy! She smiled at me!”.

I didn’t count to ten first, I went into full on snark mode.

“Really? The nerve! We don’t smile at people in this house! Who dared crack a smile under this roof? There will be no more smiling. Understood?”

RK just raised an eyebrow at me, but wisely kept his mouth closed.

This is a case of having a physical book and wishing I had it in e-book form, it’s so much easier to read something on the fly when it’s loaded onto my netbook. I’ve gotten used to reading ebooks now and holding a physical book suddenly feels awkward. But, I’ll manage. I seem to need to re-read Siblings Without Rivalry at least once a year. It’s like taking a refresher course, but every time I read it I think I pick up on stuff that didn’t really sink in the other dozen or so times I’ve read it. But I also remember a lot that I should be doing that I’ve forgotten.

And I’ll say again that I do not agree with the parenting philosophy of the authors. I’m a bit of a disciplinarian, and the authors of Siblings Without Rivalry don’t believe in giving out consequences, ever. However, I can still learn a great deal about how to help my kids get along with each other from them, even if we do have parenting styles that are so far apart.

If you weren’t around last year when I was battling with ASUS customer service, the short story is that I received a brand new Asus T91 Tablet Netbook on July 16th, and it broke on July 17th. I returned it to ASUS and was told I’d have to pay for repairs. I argued the point, they didn’t care. They thought they had all of the power, if I wanted a working unit I’d pay to have it fixed, end of story. One of my readers here found a few dozen ASUS email addresses for me and I sent my story to all of them, including the fact that I was documenting this on my blog, and if they wanted to see how many readers I had they should click on the link to the forum and see how active it is. Voila, I finally got to speak to someone other than the three people I’d been speaking to who wouldn’t send me to anyone else. And I finally received a new unit. I made the request that my one year warranty be extended to September 7th, and they said they would.

So, when my charging unit died a few weeks ago, and I saw how expensive a new one would be, I figured I’d spend the money to UPS it back to them and see what happened. I emailed my final contact person at ASUS, the one who told me he was extending the warranty date, and he put me in contact with someone else who gave me an RA number. Imagine my surprise when they shipped me a new charging unit the same day they received my broken one! Does this mean their customer service has suddenly improved? I’d like to think so, but the sceptic in me says that doesn’t seem likely. Still, I was in that time past July 16th and before September 7th, and they did honor the one year warranty, and they did it in a timely manner.

At almost one year after receiving a working unit, I can say that this is one of the best computer purchases I’ve ever made. It has survived a year of being in my purse, and there is no telling how many hours the thing has been used. It’s the perfect e-reader for me, since it has a button on the monitor that rotates the screen to portrait mode so that it feels more like reading a book. Once the screen is flipped you use the touch screen to turn the pages — with a pdf you can either page down using the slider on the side, or you can just “push” the page up as you read. With the other ebook formats you touch the spot on the screen that goes forward or backward.

Dedicated e-readers all have a limited number of e-book formats they can access, but with my netbook I can read every e-book version in existence. Of course, now the dedicated e-readers are in the $150 range, and the netbook is in the $370 range. If all you want is an e-reader then not being able to read all formats isn’t worth the extra dollars. But, if you need to be able to do more than just read books then the Asus is way (way way) cheaper than the Ipad or the other tablets that get good reviews. There are some el-cheapo ($150 to $200) tablets out that run Droid, but so far none of them appear to have gotten it right – either a really bad touch screen, or not being able to access space on the memory chip, or not being able to access the Marketplace to get the apps that would make it versatile. They look great on paper, but the reviewers are all disappointed.

My netbook also lets me open word and excel documents easily, meaning I can get a lot of work done when I’m out and about, sitting in on one of my girls’ extra curricular activity practices, or while I’m on a plane, or whatever.

If I’m near a wi-fi hotspot I can check email, check in to see if comments need to be let out of the moderation queue, etc. It’s a seriously versatile piece of equipment, it weighs less than two pounds, and it easily fits into my purse. There is now a slightly larger version of it available, and I’m told the extra inch makes the keyboard a bit more comfortable, but I think I would still prefer the 9 inch screen that I have. If I were in the market again then I’d want to see both of them, fit them both into my purse, before I made the final decision. It’s a mute point for me right now, because I’m happy with the one I have.

I loaded most of season four of Dexter onto a USB thumbdrive and when I went to spend the better part of a day with my friend in the hospital, we sat and watched Dexter on it. You know, getting ready for Season Five to start next month. Anyone else excited about that? I’m going to switch from HBO to Showtime after True Blood is over. It’s hard to believe there are only two more episodes of True Blood left. I can’t imagine how they are going to wrap all of this up in two episodes. I’m so flabbergasted by some of what is happening that I don’t even know where to start talking about it.

Dexter Is Delicious, the fifth Dexter book by Jeff Lindsay, is scheduled for release September 7th. But, as with True Blood, the books and the TV shows have split, with different story lines being followed, so I won’t be able to read the new book that close to Season Five starting. I need to get back into the TV show, back into which characters are alive and which are dead, which exist and which don’t in the TV show Universe, so I can enjoy the next season. Once it’s over then I’ll switch back to the books and refresh my memory of the first four so I can enjoy the fifth book.

Here are a few peaks at Season 5.