02 November 2009
Children Adopted from Russia Explore their Roots
Transnational adoptions build bridges, experts say
Washington — You may have heard about Alex Griffith. He is a 16-year-old Boy Scout from Maryland who donated hundreds of hours of work and raised tens of thousands of dollars to build a new playground for a hospital in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. For Alex, it was more than an act of charity — it was a token of personal gratitude and an emotional journey into his past.
It was in that very hospital in Krasnoyarsk that Alex, then called Seryozha, a sick, premature baby left by his parents, was kept alive and nurtured until an American couple, Dwight and Jenny Griffith, could adopt him 11 months later. “Russia is part of me and this hospital is part of me. They gave me life so I [wanted] to give back,” Alex told Cable News Network (CNN) after he returned home.
Alex is something of a hero in both Russia and in America, but his strong emotional ties to the country of his birth are not unique among children adopted into the United States.
“In many countries, adoption is still something that is a little bit below the radar,” says Thomas DiFilipo, the president of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services. “This is not the case in the United States. Here it is widely celebrated.” Keeping adoptive children aware and proud of their origins is becoming a norm in the United States, as signified by a proliferation of organizations and cultural institutions that cater to transnational adoptive families and their children.
When Barbara Blackwell of Pennsylvania adopted two girls from Russia, she immediately started searching for cultural information to share with them about their native country. “We just thought that it was important that they knew about their culture,” says Blackwell, whose daughters — now 11 and 13 — have been learning Russian for seven years.
“They are very proud,” she says. “We are hopeful that their interest in Russia someday leads them to want to learn more about the history of the country. Perhaps that will help them understand the circumstances of their birth families and why they could not keep them.”
After some networking with Russian and American friends, Blackwell hosted a Culture Camp in Connecticut with Russian volunteers. She now runs Kids Culture Center, a Web-based cultural resource hub for adoptive families whose children are not only from Russia but also from Latin America and several Asian countries.
“Most of the adoption literature suggests children need to know that they are not the only children adopted from a given country,” says Sue Gainor, the national chairwoman of the Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption (FRUA), an organization that helps children from Russia and Ukraine meet and interact with each other, and instructs their parents on how to integrate the children’s heritage into their upbringing.
FRUA organizes traditional Russian winter festivals, spring country fairs (yarmarkas) and maslenitsas or “fat weeks” that precede Lent. Its Washington chapter initiates trips to Russian ballet performances at the Kennedy Center. “Sometimes we arrange to meet the cast after the event so that our children are exposed to ‘high culture’ of their birth countries,” Gainor says.
FRUA also works with the Hillwood Museum and Gardens in Washington, famous for its Russian art collection, which runs weeklong summer art camps. “It would be very rare to encounter a family that does not celebrate their children’s culture with them,” Gainor says.
Although neither Barbara Blackwell nor her husband is Russian Orthodox, they recently started taking their girls to a Russian Orthodox church. Thanks to their daughters, they developed their own deep affection for Russian culture. “We love it. We watch and read anything we can find [on Russian culture],” Barbara Blackwell says.
Since 1991, Colorado Heritage Camps Inc. has provided adoptive families with an opportunity to send their children for summer vacations in the Colorado Rocky Mountains with programs built around the cultural heritage of countries of their birth, including Russia and nations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
In 2006, Colorado Heritage Camps Executive Director Pam Sweetser developed a new program, More Than Me, which gives participants an opportunity to “give back” to their native countries by participating in crafts fairs and raising money for overseas charities.
According to child development specialists, pre-adolescent adoptive children often wonder how their lives would have been if they were not adopted. By maintaining their native heritage and working on behalf of their native communities, these children build up self-esteem and realize the advantages of their special situation, child psychologists say.
Some adoptive children choose to explore their roots during “homeland tours” to the town of their birth and their orphanage, or even search of their natural parents and relatives. The Ties Program, an organization that facilitates such trips, helps families understand the potential deep emotional impact on their child, and the cross-cultural issues involved.
16-year-old Kyle Dima Hunt, adopted at age 4, returned to Russia when he was 14. He was able to meet his birth mother and his two sisters. It was a positive experience, he recently told the Boston Adoptive Families Examiner. It made him stronger and more at peace with himself. “I am who I am,” he said. “I learned to accept my past. It happened for a reason.”
“People often say that adoptions, as any kind of immigration, do provide bridges,” says DiFilipo. But according to some adoptive parents, the most important bridges may be those that need to be built in a young person’s mind and heart. Barbara Blackwell’s daughters have many questions about who they are, where they come from and why. “We never kept it a secret. We talk about it as much as the girls want to talk about it,” she says.
