Nothing to Prove

Just over a year ago we watched Somewhere Between which is a documentary that follows four Chinese girls who were adopted into American families.  A few things really struck my heart in that movie.  I remember gasping as one girl is told in a room full of people that it was too late to abort her when her parents learned that she was a girl.  My heart really broke over one of the other girls who lives her life with this internal drive as if she has to prove that her life is valuable.  Inside my head I was screaming, she has nothing to prove!!! She is not defined by the circumstances of her early life over which she had no control.

A few months ago, I stumbled upon the blog of an adult adoptee.  She shares how she has always been driven.  She had to have straight 'A's.  She has always felt the need to prove her worth.  Adoptee after adoptee commented on her blog about their own struggles to do the same.

Meanwhile, I am raising these kids who seem healthy and content.  We have worked hard to promote emotional well-being, and I think things are going well.  Then little things capture my attention.  These types of comments:

1. My report card is not worthy of the fridge - there's an A- on it.
2.  I don't want to swim that stroke.  I can't be successful at it.
3. I can't enter that piece in the fair.  It has some imperfections.
4. Will you be mad if I get disqualified in this event?

I come home from work to find that one child has spent most of the day watching videos of the breaststroke fearing a DQ in the meet that night.  I have one child constantly offering to help - the good child thing.

Maybe, just maybe, the adult adoptee and the girl in the documentary are born perfectionists.  Maybe adoption somehow magnified that.  I don't know, but I do know that these kids under my roof are wonderfully made in the image of their God, and they are valuable whether or not they make a 4.0 or outrace everyone in their age group at a swim meet, or just get lazy on occasion.  They faced huge rejection early in life, but they are loved beyond measure and loved no less than their siblings who happen to have a biological connection to their parents.

Yes, we want our kids to be hardworking.  We ask for their best effort, but we don't want them to somehow be caught in a trap of trying to prove they are worthy of having a life.

Whatever the case, I find myself making an effort to say "you will still be loved the same regardless of how you do" when the nerves are high over a swim team event that is supposed to be fun or an attempt at something new fails.  I don't want to use the blog to make my children poster children for adoption. Nor do I wish to share their struggles as they will be adults one day and don't need to live down something mom shared that she should not have, but if this helps another family that may just need to say to a child, "you have nothing to prove," then maybe we all win.