Many have commented that our adoption of four older Russian children is a slam-dunk success story. This comes from professionals—agency people, neuropsych, social worker, as well as family and friends who declare that ours is “the most ideal” of a family in anyone’s definition. Not every day would I agree, particularly last Saturday when Sashenka got out of bed to greet her father, her long hair unkempt and still flipped over from the back, obscuring her face and turning her into our very own Cousin It. There are odd occurrences in every family, naturally, but we seem to have escaped many of the serious bullets hitting other adoptive families.

This past week, one of our facilitators from Russia was visiting the adoption agency and they called us.

“Dima cannot believe your family,” they exclaimed, “that these are the same kids-! We showed him some of your latest post-placement photos and he is amazed. They look so happy and well-adjusted. The social worker’s reports of their accomplishments have astounded him.”

To God be the glory. We are no parenting experts, but we have learned to “read” certain cues as to who needs what at any given point in time.

But that begs the legitimate question: Is there a formula for success, or a mindset, or a parenting style that does better for children who have gotten a rough start in life?

Undoubtedly. There are entire books written on the subject. (Read any books by Heather Forbes, Dr. Ron Federici, or Deborah Gray.) What many adoptive parents wish to ignore is that we must first change, if we expect our children to change.  Adoption is so much more than gathering paperwork and hoping for the best.  This is where purposeful parenting comes into play.

There is currently an excellent series on PBS, the first of which will stream for several weeks online. A Long Island Jewish family adopts their second Chinese daughter, after two bio boys, and the documentary follows the eight-year-old girl in China and then during her first 18 months home. Over and over we see the adoptive mom instructing her new daughter, “Tell me what’s wrong! If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, how can I help you?” All this to a child who does not understand nor speak English. It had our kids shaking their heads. Why had the family who went twice to China never learned a word of Chinese to help with the transition phase? http://www.pbs.org/pov/woainimommy/full.php

However, the Sadowsky family’s commitment and love are obvious and overwhelming, despite the many fine points that make one wince—the child being encouraged to forget her birth language resulting in the inability to communicate any longer with her foster family left behind; the sense that she must choose between connection to her current sister versus her former foster sister; and if it’s possible to embrace being American while still cherishing and loving one’s birth culture.

The parents struggle with such questions and issues, and many of their concerns seem par for the course. Is the native culture important to a child starting a new life in a new land? By telling an older child that she is now part of our family, are we negating or choosing to ignore her past? This is an excellent film for families adopting from any foreign country to watch and provide food for thought and action even prior to the adoption.

Here are a few tips to help your older child adoption be that much smoother whether before, during, or after the event:

1. Pray and plan a lot. We all need wisdom from above and we all need a gameplan. Like an engaged couple, you can choose to focus all of your efforts on the wedding itself (the adoption), or the actual work of the marriage and “happily ever after” (adjustments to be made once home).

2. Adopt only when husband and wife are in agreement. Hard times will come, and you don’t need, “I told you so.” It’s okay if that consent ebbs and flows at times. (But not all the time.)

3. Learn a little Russian, Chinese, Amharic, Spanish, Hindi, Creole—whatever language the child currently speaks. You must. It matters not if you’re not the best at languages. This is a non-negotiable. Don’t put all of the burden on the child. Studies have been done even with babies that they recognize the sound and cadence of their birth language, even when they are still non-verbal, themselves. It’s very soothing. Alexandra says: you must learn some of the language now.

Ten words or phrases will suffice up to the age of two. Twenty words or phrases up to the age of four. Over the age of four, aim for thirty or forty words or phrases, along with specifics that are germaine to your lifestyle that you learn from a tutor, whether online by Skype, or with a teacher of Russian at the local college. Google “Adoptive Parent Russian Phrases” (or any language) for a good CD with the basics. You will not need phrases that university students learn, “Do you live in the dormitory?” nor those designed for businesspersons, “I will need a Letter of Intent by the 15^th.”

4. When taking custody of the child, learn what foods would be most “emotionally nourishing” to serve. For instance, in our Russian region, we had big breakfasts at the hotel with their normal buffet of salads, fish, sausages, yogurt, bread, eggs, etc. Then we would go to the grocery store to buy fruit and hand-held meat pies for later. Some were stuffed with chicken, others with mushrooms or cabbage. The kids loved these.

When I got to Moscow, I cooked in the apartment. It helped that before we took custody of the kids, we scoped out the local supermarket and made lists of potential meals and ingredients that were easy to buy. As I told someone else recently: Who knew that butter was not located near the milk and eggs?

To give some order to our days, we went “out” every day for “lapsha” (chicken noodle soup). The taste and texture would make any child (or overtired mama!) happy. It was affordable, and enough for a snack.

Despite what 90% of adoptive families do, now is not the time to be introducing your child to pizza and hamburgers as an every day diet-! Take it slowly, and make it a smooth transition.

5. Avoid the lottery-winner lifestyle. We all know that most lottery winners lose their fortunes within a short period of time. Similarly, the overnight rags-to-riches reality may make your kids want more-more-more. Stifle the urge to over-indulge them: limo upon arrival, Disney World the next week, ballet and horseback riding and gymnastics lessons the first month home, etc. Less is more.

Everything is new and stimulation should be kept low.  Focus on relationships, rather than activities or accomplishments.  Keeping the child close and learning about family life should be your first priority, even before schooling concerns.

6. Be willing to talk and discuss issues and feelings a minimum of 30-60 minutes a day with your new child. It sounds like a lot, and it is. Your kids will have an entire “past” pent-up in their heads. Help them to release it when they are willing to talk. For now, you must create the atmosphere.

Have a Russian (or other language) speaker on hand to come to your house at least one hour every week, probably more like one hour, three times a week in the beginning. Explain to the child your expectations, ground rules, beliefs, and let them ask questions and share concerns. The foreign language speaker is there to interpret what you and the child say, not to direct any of the conversations, nor to have the child sit on her lap. Let your son or daughter sit with you, either in a rocking chair if young, or next to you if older. Ask open-ended questions, rather than yes-no ones, and offer up some of your own feelings or observations if the child feels uneasy talking. For instance:

“Sometimes, adopted children feel that if they love their new family, it means that they hate their birth family. But most people have enough love for lots of people and it’s okay with me if you love family members still back in Russia…. Are your memories of your birth family, or of the orphanage, usually happy or sad…?”

7. Educate with real-life examples. Let them meet other immigrants from their same country (or another), or challenged persons, who successfully made their way in life. Press the point that, if it’s been done before, it can be done again. The language and academic issues may be overwhelming for them in the beginning. Give them some role models.

8. Be a cheerleader. Many of these kids have very poor self-images from years of beatings or beratings, or pure loneliness. Tell them every day what you “see” in them, their potential, their beauty, their uniqueness, and how glad you are that they are home. Some days, this will not be easy. (If you “lose it” and yell one day, don’t beat yourself up, either. Sometimes it may be good for the children to se that we’re human and have limits, too.)

I call this positive brainwashing. You are recreating their persona, their personality, by the words of your mouth.

(Benedetto tries it on me, too, sometimes: “You will now wait on me, hand and foot….” Never works. My brain was washed long ago, drip-dried, and pressed into shape. Nice try, though.)

9. Have clear expectations and structure to your life together. Tell your son or daughter what you will be doing today, and give a heads-up that “In ten minutes, we will go to the store. Let’s go to the bathroom and brush our teeth, and comb our hair now.” Don’t just spring things on them.

Our first son had to hear, every day, what we would be eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner from the moment he first woke up. He was unsure that he could expect food each day in his new home. We also kept a bowl of fruit available for him to physically see, and eat, if necessary.

Plan to have time-ins, rather than time-outs, with an adopted child who is misbehaving. They usually cannot stand the isolation and sense of rejection from being sent to their room.

In times of conflict or crisis, breathe! Take deep breaths and if it is extreme, remove yourself from the situation, if need be. Don’t let it escalate. Then bring the young person near you to become regulated once again and reassured that, whatever they are going through, you will be there for them. Traditional disciplinary methods usually don’t work—the adopted child has already been without privileges, and usually been beaten on a regular basis. Love and understanding and talking it through will actually take you further (counterintuitive, I know).

10. Let your own needs go for awhile. It’s not forever, and it’s not about you.  Forget all of the little activities that you might think are absolute necessities to any child’s normal development, but will likely push them over the edge right now.  Take it easy, take it slowly.  In six months to a year, things will even out and become as normal as can be expected. It will be a “new normal”, but very nice, all the same.

Most of my “newborns” have been in the 40 to 90 pound range. It helps one’s mental health to think of it this way, since the newly-adopted international child is often at this diminished emotional or psychological level. If you consider the child simply to be needy, demanding, uncooperative, etc., etc., it will wear you down. You believe she’s acting this way to spite you. Instead, she knows of no other way. She’s a baby.

The older child adoptee, whether 5 or 15, is like a newborn or toddler, at best, needing constant care and supervision. And your life as you know it, will probably end, for at least the first year, because the baby has needs. You will have to juggle feelings of resentment in yourself, as well as jealousy rising up in the family, since the new child will require you 24/7. If there are other children, or a spouse, good luck with that. Pretend like you’re auditioning as a master juggler for the Big Apple Circus.

It can be done, it just takes lots of thought, as well as understanding (or resignation, lol) that the first year will probably be more intense than you ever could have predicted. Imagine everyone in the house suffering with PMS ‘round the clock while reciting the alphabet backwards, chanting alternating math facts from the times tables, while conducting a fire drill, and teaching the children under 7 to drive. That gives you half the picture of the possible pandemonium of the first year with your “newborn”, be they large or small.

I get a lot of e-mails from people in various phases of the adoption process, from contemplation, to finalization, to assimilation. I try to fill them in on the basics—what to expect, how to prepare, what they might encounter. But, the fact is, you never know until you do it, like with anything else.

May you be pleasantly surprised! We were. (Well, in at least one out of four Russian adoptions, but who’s counting, right?)

Before adoption, let’s face it, it’s all shadow and mirrors. The child usually won’t flip out in the orphanage in front of so many onlookers. It’s only when you get him to your hotel, or the airport, or some other place where you’re all on your own that you learn: he’s a runner, she’s a screamer, this one refuses to listen, and that one will not stop crying. The 12-year-old often acts like a 2-year-old (with some 20-year-old ideas thrown in for good measure).

Fun.

It all gets better, it does. Just brace yourself for the initial adjustments. The child will need you. Maybe you discover that you can’t easily run out for a quick Starbucks, or spend one-on-one time with the kids or spouse. The bio daughter was used to being the only girl in the house. Who among us likes to be slowly sidelined, edged out of existence, even if for a good cause?

Everything changes. Nothing is seamless or smooth.

But isn’t that true with any “newborn”? The baby will cry, and poop, and spit-up. We don’t resent them for it. It comes with the territory.

Your older child may challenge your authority, and huff and puff and threaten to blow the house down. She might not understand how to make friends, how to occupy herself (read, “Entertain me!”), and how to make pleasant dinnertime conversation. Horoshoh, okay, with a toddler you’re happy if even part of the food stays on the highchair tray. “Lower the expectations” is the mantra of the day.

The older child faces a world that has literally changed for them overnight. Rumpelstiltskin is not a fairy tale, he has come to life in our sons and daughters, awaking from a long slumber in the orphanage, and stepping into a new life. The culture is different, the language is different, the parental expectations are unknown and inconceivable. The kids have no frame of reference. And, if we’re honest, that can make us angry at times, too.

In a perfect world, we would all be well-rested, and well-read, and well-advised when facing the first-year transitions. How many times does that happen with a newborn? You’re sleep-deprived, and receiving advice from absolute strangers, in addition to well-meaning relatives (we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt here), all trying to second-guess your decisions. On the other hand, after adoption, you’re pretty much on your own, jet-lagged and hyper-vigilant, winging it as best as possible, with a big bruiser of a preteen baby-! The agency disappears into the woodwork until your first post-placement report is due.

The best thing is to talk with other adoptive parents. They know the real score, which is a score you should avoid keeping in terms of winning or losing. It’s a game where each side scores a few points here and there, and where you’d actually be happy for the other side to score occasionally. Keep in mind that the playing field will not be even for years to come, and that’s alright, too.

The newborn needs so much done for her. My youngest, who is almost 10, recently said she would pack her own bag. Sashenka should be an expert at packing, since we do it every week, twice a week. Usually, I lay out the clothes for the kids, according to our planned activities, and then they pack it. But this time, she wanted to gather the clothes from the closet, herself.

Sounded reasonable enough. (That should have been the first red flag.)

I reviewed a list with her. Most of the outfits I got out myself, leaving only a few items for her to collect: one, two, three. It was too much. We arrived in Location B and she put on some sort of get-up the next day.

“Where are your black pants?” I asked. “Didn’t we talk about black pants?”

She had packed some odd color of blue and I’m not even sure where she found them, or what size they were. Maybe they were meant to be capris…? Maybe she was meant to be a clown…. Maybe I was not meant to be a mother…. Maybe this was Early Immigrant Mix-and-Match Chic….

I had to remember: she was a baby, a newborn, incapable of the simplest tasks without constant supervision. Why hadn’t I checked up on her?

Probably because I was exhausted, myself, helloooo!, and hoping for once that she could do something right. Her little foray into independence had wreaked havoc with my schedule, because now we had to scramble to find something else for her to wear in the public eye. (Parents, make a note of this: live your first year or two on a farm, or somewhere else sequestered away-!)

Every once in a while, I forget: these are not homegrown kids with extensive experience under their belts. Their resumes were lacking, while I treated them like corporate recruits, and they were already stretching enough to reach for the role of stockroom clerk.

What was my big hurry? What was so wrong with being a baby, if you’ve never been allowed to enjoy a real childhood? Burdened by adult responsibilities and worries, these kids needed to regress and kick-back. Meanwhile, their Type-A mother struggled with her own thoughts of being laid-back, not in her normal vocabulary. As I mentally calculated that the kids had to complete at least three or four grade levels per year in order to finish high school before they turned 40, I wondered how necessary it was that they do well, RIGHT NOW, in readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic. Perhaps we should smile and be satisfied with a goofy grin, a hand slipped into ours, the calling out of “Mama” or “Papa”.

Lowered expectations were so counterintuitive to everything I stood for, fell for, or hoped for. “Let it go….”

Why obsess over where they should be in their schooling, or why they don’t understand the same word we’ve reviewed 100x, or how the grabbing and gobbling of food was so deeply ingrained that it might overshadow every mealtime from here to eternity? We would gently remind, and coddle, and cajole, and accentuate the positive—an easy idea to expound upon in a motivational meeting, harder to hash out in everyday life.

They were babies, pure and simple. For now, we needed to enjoy them, interact with them, and love them. We would spend time playing on the floor, cuddling on the couch, and singing in the car.

(Benedetto’s insertion: “Would you be referring to yourself, or to me?” Alexandra has always been one unafraid of using the royal “we”. Playing on the floor, indeed.)

Eventually, our older child adoptees would grow up. All babies do.

(Even me!–Alexandra’s note to Benedetto)

Just about the time the ten (make that eleven and counting…) Russian undercover agents were being arrested for spying in America, our family invited five Russian students home for dinner. If they were planting microphones for information-gathering purposes, they’d get an earful at our house, that’s for sure.

“She took my pencil!”

“I don’t know vhere are my spelling vords!”

“His feet are touching me!”

“Tell her to stop reading out loud!”

Ah yes, such gems are bound to entertain the FSB (formerly known as the KGB). At least the eavesdropping agents would not require simultaneous translation on their direct feed, since our kids regularly resorted to Russian for all complaints, quarrels, and questions.

Many casual observers could not fathom that the suspected spies lived among them in surburbia, just outside major metro areas. Made absolute sense to me. Not everyone can afford the high-rent districts of the city. Plus, where else do you think they would live—in the Kremlin, or on Capitol Hill? Maybe. But these were the elusive “everyday folks”, couples, families that you’d never suspect. Probably kids like ours will be their next recruits—I mean, who would imagine that children with their never-ending questions might be involved in covert and clandestine operations? Perfect.

They say that most of those arrested did not have Russian names. Oh well, that disqualifies my kids. But many are the days when my kids become confused about their own names, addresses, and emergency phone numbers—what city are we in, and what is our street number?

That might make them very attractive as spy recruits. They would be so deeply under cover that they would forget their own identity, which could prove advantageous in times of torture and interrogation, yet work against them when reporting-in to headquarters.

“Hello, this is Parrot… no Pelican… uh, Rhino?… no, Rubber Ducky!”

A Ph.D. counter-terrorism expert friend of ours once commented a year or two after we brought home Petya, that we should monitor his activities. He knew we were part of the Russian-American community and that Petya could be found at some official functions.

“They’re going to start recruiting him,” he informed me.

“For what? He’s nine years old—,” I laughed.

“It begins with careful cultivation over years…. E-mails, cellphone calls, sleep-overs….”

Little did the Rooskies know, Petya had a secret anti-agent weapon of his own: helicopter parents, aware of his every movement-! The boy’s conspiratorial career would be over before it ever began.

It is currently estimated that there are more Russian spies operating in the US and in the UK than were operating during the Cold War. At any given time, approximately 50 couples work under deep cover in America, “illegals”, while thousands of others engage in everyday secret snooping and surveillance, “legals”.

I’m not sure that the Russians would want to try recruiting any of my Russian-American, dual-passport kids. There would be no successful outcome for several reasons. First of all, they were adopted at older ages and take a very dim view of all that had befallen them in the homeland. Secondly, some of them have the attention span of a distracted ten-year-old waiting just before the school’s final dismissal bell sounds for summer break. Thirdly, they’re not the best blackmail candidates.

“We’ll spread it around that you don’t eat your broccoli,” comes the sneering, threatening voice over the crackling phone line.

“Go ahead, Big Nose, and I’ll tell your mom…..”

On the other hand, doggies Misha and Grisha show some promise, having a lot to recommend them. They can often be spotted fake-sleeping, peering at my computer screen from behind their bushy brows, no doubt passing information to neighbor dogs feigning to lift a leg in our yard. Best to stay alert to the seemingly-benign.

As they say in America: “In God we trust.”

All others, we monitor.

Our first son’s referral photo was so cute. He stood tall and straight like a little soldier. Just before we traveled to meet him, more photos came to us. These were disturbing.

The bright smile was still there, but now his back appeared misshapen, and his head spread wide and flat. Could it be the same child? Were these the foibles of Photoshop? Petya was also dressed in an odd New Year’s costume, making him look buffoonish. The photos would not have been out of place if they had hailed from an insane asylum….

“I don’t know—“ I started to waffle. This, from the one who had BEEN SO SURE in the beginning.

Many are the parents suffering nightmares, wondering what their referred child will look like. I recall hearing from one adoptive mom as she waited for her Chinese referral. She thrashed in bed, awaking with a start, drenched and delusional: she and her husband had been referred a 30-year-old Chinese man-! In the nightmare, he quietly got into the taxi and they took him home. They had no other choice.

Russian adoption referral photos might be helpful or harmful. Numeous children have been overlooked or bypassed because the person snapping their photo was less than an Annie Liebowitz. Frequently, even with the best photographer, it was hard to touch-up a chop-job haircut, helter-skelter clothes, and green or purple medicinal blotches on the face. Why they didn’t tell the kids to smile I found out one day at the dyetsky dom.

“Smile!” I encouraged some kids gathered with their teachers, as I took their picture for posterity.

“We don’t smile,” said Galina Andre’evna. “We are Russians. Russians have bad teeth.”

I found out just how bad when my kids came home and our millions were used on their dental decay issues….

“Horoshoh’…” I changed tactics, “Ras, dvah, tree: don’t smile!”

In our daughters’ case, I never saw their official referral photos, which is just as well. Imagine concentration camp inmate meets furious federal prisoner. The shaved heads and foul looks on their faces said it all. They had just been forcibly taken into custody, disoriented and angry, suffering from lice and other maladies. They would have to go to school for the first time in their lives and they were not at all pleased. No one would want these two preteen terrors.

Yet, instead of presenting such a disturbing scenario, the adoption agency showed me an unofficial photo that one of their reps had snapped of semi-smiling girls in bright clothing about a year later when they both had hair again. The older girl actually sported bleached blond locks which I didn’t know for some time to come.

In the case of older children, packaging was everything. This agency worked hard to seal the deal. We were not even looking for girls, but their constant e-mails pushed us in the right direction.

Younger kids were different. A baby is a baby and in high demand. Hard to tell what they would look like when they got older. Agencies often used that to their advantage, some refusing to give out any information whatsoever.

See, agencies want you to travel to Russia. Agencies need you to travel, since this is a lucrative business for their drivers, interpreters and facilitators over there. If nobody travels, there’s no work for them. Agencies will try to make PAPs feel shallow and inferior if the prospective adoptive parents ask for a photo. They will say that you need to travel “blind”—no info, no photo, no idea if you’ve just delivered boy, girl, kitty cat, or chimpanzee.

Nonsense. Why travel halfway around the world to meet a child you would never accept into your family? Cross-eyed, cleft palate, and club foot can all be altered through surgery, but not everyone has the time, private funds, nor health insurance to undertake such interventions. Other unalterable conditions, such as Downs, or FAS, can be seen in certain children’s facial features. Doesn’t a parent deserve to know this before travel? I think so.

Look through the Russian orphan database at www.usynovite.com and observe how many of the kids do not look normal. At all. There are parents making more than one referral trip to Russia these days, because the first child visited had no chance of ever living a productive life. Forget Russia’s oil and diamond reserves, it’s adoptive parents that are keeping things economically afloat over there as four or five trips are no longer unheard-of to complete one adoption. Folks just pray for a healthy referral, even if it’s a baby that’s blue with yellow polka dots. Appearance means nothing to them.

And then there are those who would turn down a referred child based on looks alone.

I don’t know. But if you feel this way, you need to acknowlege those feelings, and wait for a child meeting your criteria. To “force” yourself to accept a little light-skinned child, or a deliciously-dark beauty WHEN THEY REPULSE YOU, is a recipe for disaster, sooner or later. To thine own self be true. You’re the one who’s going to be living with the child.

Why do you want to adopt children? To help a child with no prospects for his future, to have an attractive “accessory” in life, or to mold a mini-me? For some, it’s all about the child, for others, it’s all about the parents and what the child says about them.

Why would a family care so much about a child’s looks? Maybe the parents work in a very public setting and don’t want constant comments about their mismatched children. Maybe the family just wants to relax and not always be the spokespersons for international adoption. Maybe they want the child to feel more attached and not that he’s sticking out like a sore thumb.

There could be a difference between the wishes of those who have bio children of their own prior to adoption, and those who have been waiting a lifetime for children. As the years pass, subconsciously, the bar may be raised… or lowered….

Not to be uncharitable, but I’ve heard it postulated that maybe attractive parents desire attractive children. Maybe less attractive parents claim it doesn’t matter. Having seen a whole lot of photos over the years, I’m not 100% sure this theory works each time, every time. Or maybe nobody’s told you: you’re not as cute as you think you are!

I remember when we were much younger, being in India, or the Philippines, or Hong Kong, or Uganda. Many were the sweet orphan faces. It was not a far stretch to dream of bringing one or two home. Color and race meant nothing, but then I don’t live in a small town nor among rabid rednecks. Our friends are international and rainbow necks, you might say.

Another consideration might be those who may not appreciate their different-appearing children to be the constant source of comments and speculation. This I can understand. Some agencies actually ask for preferences in appearance. Our first agency, which we had to fire before we ever got to Petya, asked for us to list race, hair color, and eye color of a potential child.

So I did.

“Why did you fill out that section of the form?!” they screamed at me over the phone.

“Um, because it was there?”

No one had given us the secret decoder ring to figure out agency double-speak, nor told us that certain sections of the application had no purpose in being there. Ah, well.

Being blond over blue myself, our first son Petya looked nothing like me. This was brought to my attention at, of all places, a felafel stand in Jerusalem. I had just scooped some extra-hot zhoug into my pita—the green kind which is a step beyond the red hot sauce. Not a time to be trifling with me. I was already hot under the collar. A Joe-Cool guy sidled up to the two of us.

“Is he your son?” asked the leather jacket.

“Yes….”

“He doesn’t at all look like you,” he observed.

There are few times in life that I am speechless. The term “chutzpah” sprang to mind. Some other more ugly things were percolating under the surface, as well. Though not flesh of my flesh, I could not be any more connected to this child, this son, this dear one whose personality mirrored mine step for step, and who was now being maligned in front of my face.

“Imagine that: a DNA expert at the local felafel stand…” I murmured in Hebrew, thankful that Petya knew nothing of the language at that time. He was safe in his Russian cocoon as I shepherded him out into the street, pickles dropping in our wake. I felt like telling Joe Cool that he was one big kosher dill himself.

I can remember staring for hours at each of our children’s referral photos. With older children it was not so much that they had been chosen for us by the Ministry of Education, but we had chosen them. Long story. But I had as many trepidations as those who traveled blindly. Numerous were the nights that I talked with the photos, their grainy images mute to my multiplied questions: “Are you my child? Do you want to live with us? Will you like it here?” Years ago, when adoptive parents received brief video clips of their intended children, scores admitted to watching the two-minute footage so much that they wore out the tape.

All of us created cute bedrooms, and bought attractive clothes, all the while insisting that looks didn’t matter….

Funny thing is, if it’s important to you, kids can be improved. (I aim to improve myself every day, as well. Some days, it actually works.) A new haircut, decent clothes, better posture, and a happy smile will lead to a mini-makeover for anyone.

Children can also be presented to look like they “fit”. Petya has more of Benedetto’s coloring, brown over hazel, even if their facial characteristics are not all that matchy-matchy. But put them both in white polo – white polo, or blue shirt, red tie – blue shirt, red tie, and the comments come pouring in, “Well, if he isn’t a chip off the old block!” “No question about whose son he is!” “Like father, like son!”

So is it shallow, is it vain, is it ridiculous to want a child who resembles you? Maybe, maybe not. I believe that most parents care how their children appear. I at least like mine neat, with well-combed hair, brushed teeth, and clean clothes. Do the best with what you have. Is that a crime?

My second son and two girls tend to resemble me. Whenever I’m somewhere with my daughters, chattering away in Russian, we get a kick out of anyone trying to interfere, trying to figure us out, trying to put all of the pieces together. Simple minds, simple fixes….

“Where are you from?” comes the inevitable question.

“Raseeeyah!” they reply.

“Oh, your mother speaks English so well….”

Genius. It runs in the family, even if the looks don’t.

Do you think your Russian kids speak real Russian? Unless they’re teenagers, think again. Our kids were adopted over the years from the ages of 7.5 to 11.75. Except for the oldest, all speak a substandard form of Russian.

Only a fluent, native-born Russian would detect this. Not that I’m in that category, butchering and making up words at will. But I have enough friends and family willing to tell me-! Which is why I, in some ways “least likely to succeed”, will be teaching them Russian.

Don’t get me wrong. We have a bonafide tutor for the oldest boys. She makes them speak, and read, and answer questions about famous Russian plays by Marshak. My concern centers around the basic, everyday, shoot-the-breeze-with-your-friends-in-the-ploschad type of Russian. I am focusing on conversational Russian, polite Russian, and written Russian.

I have my work cut out for me.

“Where is your rucksack?” I ask one day.

“Toot’ah,” replies one.

“What?”

“Tahm’ah,” she thinks she’s answered incorrectly.

“‘Toot’ah’? ‘Tahm’ah?’ No such thing in Russian. It’s either ‘toot’ or ‘tahm’.”

I make my plans to gather the troops and run them through the paces. It’s one thing to have Russian natives comment about the cute American kids who speak such good Russian, it’s another thing to have the cute Russian kids speak awful Russian. We convene at the long, lacquered, kitchen farmhouse table, hanging halogen lights doubling as interrogation spotlights.

“Dokumenti!” I bark out, play-acting a Customs Official at an unnamed Russian airport.

“Mama, you need to say ‘please’”, protests my youngest in Russian, so sweet.

“When I hear it at the airport, I’ll say it,” I play-snarl back.

My eyes narrow as I peer at my older daughter. I find a ruler to smack on my hand’s open palm, pacing back and forth, soldier-style.

“Kak vas zavoot?”

“Uhh… Mashenka?” she starts tentatively, exactly the goldfish in the shark pool that Customs Officials are trained to spot.

“Famil’yah –- eem’yah –- oh’chestvah,” I remind. Last name, first name, patronymic. For this exercise, we have ditched our multi-syllabic Italian last name for “Smirnov”.

“Uh… Smirnov….”

“Ehhhhh!” goes my pretend, game-show buzzer. “Wrong! How do we make a female last name? What do you need to add to Smirnov?”

“Smirnovna…?” she attempts, confused.

These are my Russian children. They have no clue. They have never lived in the real world where they would have the need to address anyone by their last name.

“Ehhhhh!” goes the make-believe buzzer again. “-Ovna is the ending for the patronymic.”

“Ooh-ooh-ooh!” Petya our oldest son raises his hand excitedly.

“Dah, gaspahdyin’?” I give him my wary gaze.

“Smirnov’a!”

“Prah’velnah, ten points for you,” I congratulate.

“Eem’yah,” I turn back to the girls. “I don’t have time for this. Speshee!” The more pressure I put on them, the more giggly and happy to learn they are. They think it’s a game.

“Mashenka!” says one.

“Sashenka!” exclaims the next.

“What, you think I want to be your friend? Is that what your passport reads? You need your legal name!” I protest, still in the Customs Agent role.

This is a good way to get rid of parental frustration and angst, I’m finding. I would recommend commandant role-playing to any parent needing to keep the troops in line.

At several points, I send one or more to “prison” for not giving me their place and date of birth in a rapid-fire manner. The power that I wield….

And thus we start our hour-long lesson, quizzing backwards, forwards.

“Ivan, the son of Ivan,” I toss out to the boys, like a dry piece of bread to a couple of hungry goosie waddling down a muddy village lane.

“Ivan’ Ivan’ich!” shouts Pasha, who still retains the most correct Russian out of the four of them, though he’s been home now a full year and a half.

“Ahtlitch’nah!” Excellent, I applaud him.

“But why not ‘Ivan’ Ivan’ovich?’” questions Petya.

“Good question, you’re both right. One is how you pronounce it, one is how you write it.”

Our writing exercises could be termed an exercise in futility. The kids insist they are brain surgeons and above something so elementary as handwriting or vocabulary practice. But we all know about doctors’ handwriting-! Bring it on.

“Horoshoh’, exa’men!” I announce.

“Nyetttt!!!” they shrink back in horror.

“Dahhhh!!!” my gold teeth gleam in the sunlight.

“Nomer ahdyin: ‘Zdrast’vweetyeh! Davai’tyeh pahznakomeemsyah!’ Nomer dvah….”

“Mama, slow down!”

Afterward, as I check over their eight or so test phrases, some of the kids don’t captalize anything; one writes entire sentences as a whole, bolshoi, run-on mega-word, totally connected at every hook and loop; another substitutes the occasional English letter for the Russian sound. It’s enough to make the most hardened of teacher/tutors give up, but, glutton for punishment that I am, I trudge forward.

We try to finish on a high note for the day, a free word-association exercise involving Russian formal names and nicknames.

“Yevgeny….” “Zhenya!”

“Nikolai….” “Kolya!”

“Maria….” “Masha!”

“Yekaterina….” “Katya!”

“Aleksandr….” “Sasha!”

“Boris….” “Borya!”

“Anna….” “Anya!”

“Dmitri….” “Dima!”

“Anything else? Just Dima? How about ‘Mitya’?”

They shrug, unimpressed. “Dima” does it just fine for them.

I wrap up the lesson, summarizing the high points.

“On a female last name, what letter do we add?” I coach.

“-Ovna!” one shouts.

“No!” I put my head in my hands. “One letter—ahdnah’ book’vah!”

“Aaaa!” shouts another.

“There is no long ‘aaaa’ in Russian…” I moan.

“Ah! Book’vah ‘ah’,” they all scream, our grand prize winners for the day. At last.

Next class, maybe I’ll try to focus on the Russian vocabulary needed to decipher Rohrshach ink blots, or how to conduct a business presentation, argue a legal case in court, or defend a Ph.D. dissertation. Anything’s got to be easier than saying hello and figuring out their name in Russian….

God can do anything. Of this I am firmly convinced. How He forms families is beyond me, simultaneously both wild and wonderful.

I have family members to whom I do not feel particularly related, and non-blood relatives to whom I would give my last drop of blood. My husband and I share no genetic connection (and that’s more than some of you can say!), other than forefathers who had large noses and foremothers who had moustaches (his side, of course). But we are strongly related, even if not by blood.

For us, Hanukkah and Christmas are totally normal, not a stretch of the imagination by any means. The fact that Hanukkah (the Feast of Dedication), a Jewish holiday, is mentioned only in the New Testament (John 10), and that Christmas celebrates a virgin birth with God coming to dwell among us, does not require me to suspend any rational powers of reason. But then I don’t believe in Santa Claus, so maybe I’m not mainstream these days.

I look at 324 Messianic prophecies written in the Hebrew Bible, hundreds and thousands of years before, telling when, where, and what the Messiah would do. Mathematicians say that if only one person fulfilled 48 prophecies (not 324), the odds of that would be one to 1… followed by 157 zeros! But one person fulfilled all 324 and His name is Jesus.

I’ve heard all of the other arguments: that Israel is the “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53, etc. For many years, it was thought that dishonest Christians, monks hidden away in some monasteries, had pencilled in this chapter that describes Yeshua to a T. But with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls only six decades ago, we see the same prophecies included in manuscripts dating 1,000 years previous to anything in existence up until that time. There goes that theory.

This brings to mind the famous short story penned by Jewish American novelist Philip Roth, “The Conversion of the Jews”. It tells the story of teenager Ozzie Freedman in post World War II America and his theological questions posed to the local rabbi. The rabbi insists that the virgin birth of Jesus is impossible, which leads to a showdown with Ozzie on the synagogue rooftop, refusing to come down until Rabbi Binder answer why, if God is all-powerful, why He could not create a Divine birth if He chose.

Winner of a 1960 National Book Award, the story raises important issues faced by many families such as ours. Not just how Jews can believe in Jesus, but for us, it goes a step farther when you add the mix of adoption.

Our children are ours through adoption, not blood. I have no problem with this. We chose this route. I see it as Divine dealings in the affairs of man, the children being rescued from pain and suffering, none of it their own making. We discussed it one recent day in the car, where all good conversations take place until an ice cream shop looms on the horizon. I had just dropped the boys at one activity, and the girls were headed to their own sporting event.

“It’s only us three girls,” Sashenka giggled in the back seat. “Just like in Russia, da, Mama?”

They couldn’t get over the fact that I could drive, or take care of them, or do any of a variety of things unknown to their previous little patch of Russian countryside.

“Da…. Can you imagine, out of the all of the people in the world (and there are six billion), how we ended up together? God saw you and He saw us, and He put us all together in a family,” I start.

“And Misha and Grisha,” Mashenka adds, reminding me of the dogs…as though I would forget! If ever there was a closer connection, I did not know of any. Slit our paws and mingle our blood, and you could not have a stronger bond.

I continue.

“Did you know that Mama and Papa met in Israel? We were from different places, but we ended up working there together. That’s how God can bring people together from all around the world, people who are just right for each other.”

“Wasn’t Jesus from Israel?” Sashenka wondered, her almost-nine-year-old brow furrowed in thought. The girls were similar to Ozzie Freedman, trying to make sense of it all.

“Yes, He lived in Israel.” I acknowleged, anticipating more questions about Divine plan and intent…..

“So when you were very, very young, did you see Him there?”

Talk about pause for thought-!

“Um, no, honey. He was before my time….” I say slowly.

Or was He?

Jesus the promised Messiah is for all time, and for all people. He is the creator of all individuals, and all families, coming to dwell with us, renew us, and make us whole. He is the therapist par excellence, the redeemer who will save us from our sins, and save us from ourselves.

I have a favorite song, one among many, for this time of year. Performed by the Trans Siberian Orchestra, its lyrics kept me going forward during several years of dark holidays when we felt we would never bring home Petya’s friend Pasha. Ensconsed behind the high walls of a Dickensian institution, Russian officials felt he was unadoptable, an invalid-idiot to be relegated to the margins of mania. We saw none of their diagnoses and kept believing for our own Christmas miracle and homecoming of a child in which others could not believe. For four long years, we fought for the impossible, the Divine “Da” overruling the Russian bureucratic “Nyet”. The past would be forgiven, the future be rewritten.

It is my prayer for you today: believe, and open your life to the realm of all things being possible!

Here are the words to “Anno Domine”:

“On this night of hope and salvation
One child lies embraced in a dream
Where each man regardless of station
On this night can now be redeemed

Where every man regardless of his nation
Ancestral relations
On this night the past can fly away

And that dream we’ve dreamed most
That every child is held close
On this night that dream won’t be betrayed

All as one
Raise your voices!
Raise your voices!
All as one
On this Christmas day!

All rejoice
Raise your voices!
Raise your voices!
All rejoice
Anno Domine!

On this night when no child’s forgotten
No dream sleeps where He cannot see
No man here is misbegotten
And this night’s dreams are still yet to be

Where every man regardless of his nation
Ancestral relations
On this night the past can fly away

And that dream we’ve dreamed most
That every child is held close
On this night that dream won’t be betrayed

All as one
Raise your voices!
Raise your voices!
All as one
On this Christmas day!

All rejoice
Raise your voices!
Raise your voices!
All rejoice
Anno Domine!” Play Song Here: 06-anno-domine