This post will be a bit different from my usual stories or observations that I make. This one is a bit of a rant. Yesterday and again today on an adoption group board the topic of naming your adopted child came up. People posted what they did, what worked, what didn't, some regrets, some success. But one post just really rubbed me the wrong way, they posted about how they changed all their adopted children's names to American names. Their reason... Naming is Claiming. I just want to explode when I even think of that. These children aren't little puppies and kittens, or a lost dog you found and decided to keep. These are humans, children that were in many cases brought into this world with love and dreams by their parents. The names given to them were picked out for a reason.
My thoughts on this are (and this is in part due to our children's circumstance) that these children were brought into the world loved and cared for. I think of their parents, sick and possibly knowing they were going to die, the heartache that they must have felt knowing that they wouldn't live to see their children grow up. Then to think that those children would be whisked away halfway around the world, their identity taken from them. Someone claiming that these children are now theirs. Does giving them names that mean something to you the parent make these children yours? NO! We as parents don't "own" any of our kids, bio or adopted. We are parents, and as parents we are teachers, leaders, and most importantly caretakers. We care for and love these kids - "our kids", but I think more importantly as the parents of adopted kids we parent them not just for us but for their birth parents that didn't get the opportunity to do so. As the parents of adopted children we can't claim them, but we can parent them with the hope that they will grow to love us and respect us as they would've their birth parents. But we have to earn that we can't claim that.
There are those children that are adopted when infants or have a background where changing names is a logical choice, one that many parents give serious thought to. I'm not even saying that changing names is a bad thing - but to go so far as to say that they name to claim....augh. It makes me wonder how insecure are they in their parenting.
I guess I just look on the parenting of adopted children differently. I see them as a gift - a gift that has been entrusted to us to care for. To make them feel loved and secure to give them a home and opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise. I do this knowing that their parents are watching them and us. I want to look back and know that not only do my kids make us proud, but that Mekonen and Asnaku are proud too not just of them, but of us . Alan and I aren't here to replace their birth family but to complete the job that sadly they were not able too. I can hope that when they are grown they will still turn to us to share all their joys and sorrows, and that they will introduce some day to that special someone as these are my parents - my Mom and my Dad.
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