We had a social worker visit us last night for Eleanor's six month post-placement report. Yes, it's a little late in coming, because our homestudy agency said, "Gee, we didn't know you had traveled in March," which is completely ridiculous, since I had to call for an emergency addendum (that they hadn't completed on time, despite having months to do it) the weekend before we left for China. One would think they'd remember that incident, although I suppose it was a lot more meaningful to me than to them that we could have been stuck in Guangzhou indefinitely, without a visa for our child to come home. Fortunately, according to Heritage (and Heritage has always been great as an agency), the CCAA is flexible on report timing.
Anyway, I told Eleanor about the impending visit earlier in the day, so she'd know what was going on. I asked her whether she understood, and she said, "The lady is coming to see if I'm good." And I said, "No, sweetie, she's coming to see if you're happy and healthy and eating good things." Eleanor: "Oh. Mom, I want to eat more ice cream." Hmmm... hadn't heard of social services being involved in parent/child ice cream negotiations, but if anyone would try to push that envelope, it would be Eleanor.
Ice cream issue notwithstanding, all went well; three happy children attacked the social worker with joyous exclamations of, "Look at MY drawing! Look at MY toy!" So, I wasn't particularly worried about the visit - the kids were just thrilled to have a new person to show everything to, and the kids were clean, chubby, and smiley. Eleanor pulled out a photo album and made the social worker look at every single page, and showed the SW her Mandarin school materials. Sarah talked about volleyball, Genevieve proudly shared her My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop collection of small plastic animals. The SW happily proclaimed that Eleanor and the other girls are doing "incredibly, wonderfully well," and I smiled and nodded rather than saying, "Duh," which is what came to mind.
I tried not to think about the bad things that social workers sometimes see... while I understand the reasoning behind homestudies and post-placement visits, I don't like the reason they're needed. There are too many icky people out there. On the other hand, there's only so much anyone can find out in an hour; although I suppose the worst folks might be weeded out. Speaking of worst, I was driving home on Wednesday, listening to a silly radio show. That afternoon, people were asked to call in with reasons they admitted they were shallow (e.g. loving money or things, etc.) A woman called in and said quite plainly, "I want to adopt a baby from China, but if she's ugly, I don't want her. I'll hand her back." My jaw had already hit my lap, but then the radio host said, "Wow. But, they all pretty much look the same, so I guess you'll be handing her back, then, eh? Ha ha ha..." I quickly turned off the radio, my knuckles were white with rage on the steering wheel, and I tried not to grind my teeth on the way home. I hope this person never is allowed to adopt, and if she does adopt somehow, I wish the child had the chance to get rid of her new mother for being ugly in the worst way possible: on the inside. And the radio announcer was just an idiot. Grr. I was so glad none of the kids were in the car to hear anything so horrible.
Anyway, the clean house I created for the SW visit lasted the whole evening; today, the kids are back to their jobs as professional stuff-rearrangers. They are amazingly good at creating messes without any effort at all! Fortunately, they're really pretty good about cleaning up after themselves, with some reminding. Still, Eleanor vehemently denied that she had spread boogers on the wall by her bed, which I had spent some time scrubbing away. "It wasn't me. How did you know?" I'm recording it in a blog for posterity, either for overeager future boyfriends, or so she'll know I've been there, done that when she scrubs unpleasant things off of her children's walls someday. My own mother has freely informed me of my fingerpainting talents when I was very young; my own media choice was even more disgusting than boogers when I was 2 years old or so. Lovely.
It really is amazing that Eleanor has been home for six months. So much has changed in that time. She's grown by inches and pounds, and eats more than the other two kids put together. She speaks two languages nearly fluently (more English than Mandarin right now). Her smiles come much more easily, and her sense of security and ability to care for her own needs have improved greatly. She wants to please, she wants to be hugged, she wants attention (preferably all of it). She loves school in a big way, and does well. She's robustly beautiful, and I love her.
Not everything has been easy, and after the social worker left she prefaced a crying fit with "Mom, I don't want to go back to China!" She screamed for a good while, and I stayed, and comforted, and she drifted off to sleep after I convinced her that I wanted to stay here, with her, and nobody was going anywhere.
On the other hand, I left her to scream it out when she started up the next night, since she was upset that I wouldn't let her have her way about keeping the light on, staying up late, and eating treats right before bed. It's hard to know which kind of screaming she's doing sometimes - the genuinely hurt child scream, or the pushing-limits-want-my-own-way scream. And I realize they're not exclusive categories; I think sometimes she wants to control things because she has been hurt before, and the fight over whether she can sit in a certain chair, or eat a certain treat, or even have her hair brushed first (before her sisters) comes down to her having had to fight for everything before at the orphanage. I am getting tired of so many things being a battle of the wills; while things get steadily better as we try to be consistent about boundaries and rules and allowing her to have choices between reasonable options, the "I wants" still seem to rule the day. While her nature is basically sweet, she pushes as hard as she can push to control as much as she can. Someday she will realize that some things don't change no matter how many times she asks. Someday she will realize that we will be here no matter how much she screams. She'll realize she'll never be sent to China for somehow behaving badly, she'll know that her new home is where she can stay and be loved. She'll know what the social worker said - "You're a good family," and she'll know it in her heart of hearts.