Orphanage behavior

OK, a long and serious post now, one about orphanage behavior, in general and in specific. 

"Orphanage behavior" is something of an ill-defined term.  People seem to use it to refer to things that kids who've grown up in orphanages do, that other kids commonly don't, because of their orphanage experience.  Exactly what it encompasses, though, seems to depend on who's using the term.  Moreover, in many cases, "orphanage behavior" is just behavior: things kids do.  Behavior is a continuum, and non-orphanage kids may do the same things, just to a lesser (or even greater) degree.  Of course, in what way and to what extent both of these types of behavior manifest themselves depend on the orphanage and in some part on the child herself.

Because this post wound up a lot lengthier than I had envisioned when starting it, I'll break it into sections.

Background
When professionals talk about orphanage behavior, it's almost always a negative; something that must be overcome.   Here, for example, is a short article with a rundown of behaviors exhibited by children raised in orphanages. The author calls this "Post-Orphanage Behavior," because he's focused on children who enter families after orphanage life. He defines the behavior like so:

Right here

We spent the last weekend in Chicago (as described in the last post) and stayed at Ray's Bucktown B&B, which was quite convenient to the Bucktown Arts Fest.  Ray had a giant world map in the entryway for people to identify where they're from.

Kotlas is right here.

 

Regression Analysis

Teresa was an artist at the Bucktown Arts Festival in Chicago this weekend.  The Festival runs two full days, Saturday and Sunday, so all three of us made a long weekend trip out of it.  We've been on short vacations with Elena before, but this wasn't really a vacation-it was something of a hectic trip, with odd hours and activities.

Elena did have fun, particularly so since the Festival was held right next door to Holstein Park, which has both a playground and a pool.  Saturday was sunny and hot, and both the Festival and the playground were pretty crowded. The playground, of course, had a lot of kids about Elena's age.

I think the combination of the excitement, the lack of sleep, the different location, and the gaggle of kids pushed Elena harder than we thought it would.  She played with other kids in the playground, but then started interacting with the other kids' parents.  Her first "look, man, look!" directed at another adult was kind of amusing, but then she did it more, and it was less amusing.  I finally pulled the plug when she asked to be picked up by a strange woman.

In retrospect, it seems clear that the playground atmosphere seemed very much like playing at the orphange, and the strange surroundings made Elena less sure of her place: the last stressful, crowded travel experience she'd had was one where she wound up living with two strange people half a world away.  Consciously or subconsciously, being "taken back" to an orphanage-like playground probably pushed a few to many buttons.

Sunday afternoon was rainy, and the playground was nearly empty, and we had a perfectly fine (although somewhat wet) time on the swings.   So no real harm done, I think.  In any case, it's not unusual for adopted children to regress to this kind of coping behavior when they're feeling uncertain or overwhelmed.  However, this is a good reminder that it's not always obvious beforehand when Elena is feeling that level of uncertainty, and that might take some thought.  On the one hand, I don't want to underestimate her adaptability and shield her from things she doesn't need to be shielded from, but on the other... she's still three years old.

And she's our daughter.

Another yearly milestone

One year ago today, we were in Kotlas Russia, visiting Elena at the orphanage.  Our court appearance in Arkhangelsk was a few days later.

We give back

To commemorate the upcoming one-year anniversary of our familial addition, we thought it would be fun to buy new children's clothes and ship them off to the Kotlas orphanage.  We bought clothes for the kids once before, on our second trip to Russia, when we hand-carried a bag of clothes to the orphanage.  Hand-carrying, though, is a pretty straightforward process: you pack a bag and bring it with you wherever you go, until you get to the place you want to leave it.

Shipping, however, is a whole different matter, especially when you have customs to deal with.  Shipping to Russia via the post office isn't horribly expensive ($75.00 or so), but the customs requirements seemed confusing and the shipment value was limited, and we really didn't want to screw it up.  Also, I understand that mailing packages into Russia can be chancy; items "disappear" between here and there.  That might be an outdated perception, but still, we'd rather the package actually get there.

We thought maybe shipping via UPS or FedEx might be a reasonable, if somewhat pricier, alternative.  It is indeed an alternative, but "pricier" is an understatement: shipping ranges around $400.

Fortuitously, while looking at a local Russian newspaper, we happened to see an advertisement from Meest (this is an example of when it is handy to know how to read some Russian).  They're a Ukrainian firm that ships between the US and Canada and former Soviet states, including Russia.  What's more, they have a couple local offices here in metro Detroit (one in Oak Park, one in Warren).  Since they ship to Russia pretty much all the time, and cater to the local emigre population, I expect that their success rate in getting through customs and into the hands of the intended recipient is pretty good.

Armed with that as a plan, we shopped around for good quality children's clothes that were on sale.  We bought new, and left the tags on: that gives the folks at the orphanage the option of reselling them if they decide they need other things more urgently. This also enabled us to send many more things and stay under the $250.00 limit for paying customs duties.  We got a mix of items: sweatshirts, dresses, pants and shirts, socks and underwear.  Twelve pounds of kid's clothes, in a cubical cardboard box.  We printed off some pictures of Elena from the past year or so and slipped them in too, along with a letter to the folks at the orphanage (poorly translated into Russian via Google).

We dropped the box off with Meest today; their price for shipping here to Kotlas was about $55 (plus $12 insurance, which we opted for).  The downside is that the box of clothes is literally going on a slow boat: expected delivery is about two months.  That seems terribly slow, but I expect there will still be kids in the orphanage two months from now who can use the clothes.

Traditional Russian Clothing

As I said a few posts back, we're approaching the year anniversary of our second and third trips to Russia.  The second trip, in August 2011, was when we had our court appearance, and also when we visited Elena in the baby house in Kotlas.

And, as I said in the previous post, Kotlas isn't exactly a tourist mecca.  But it is a mid-sized city, and there really are some interesting things to visit, if you have a few spare hours.  We pointed out some of them way back in this post.  But there are also places to go shopping.  We went to a few of them.  There are a series of souvenir stands at the train station; that's where we bought the little magnets in he picture below, as well as the matroyshka doll and wooden box you can see on the stand in the lower picture:

Souvenir magnets

Kotlas hotel, August 2011

There was also a really nice little bookstore just a couple blocks from the hotel.  It had a good selection of nice children's books, and astonishingly low prices. 

Finally, there was a clothing store literally next door to the hotel.  We browsed through the kid's clothes, and wound up buying a couple things.  One was a little overall dress with Russian-themed embroidery; unfortunately, Elena quickly outgrew it.  The other was a traditional heavy Russian shirt.  Since it's been chilly the last few days, we've pulled it out; it still fits Elena.  Here she is wearing it:

Bad news indeed: August 2012.

The little patch says "vintage apple & smile."  The inner tag is labeled with Chinese characters.

The Swedish are Coming! The Swedish are Coming!

One nice thing about the Blogger software is that it allows us to track, in a general way, who's looking at this blog.  We started it with friends and family in mind, as an easy way to let people know how our trip to Russia was progressing.  However, this blog is indexed by search engines, and a fair number of people find their way here through a search engine.  That's actually really fun - I've had email conversations with half-a-dozen people who we didn't know previously, who had "met" us through this blog.

This isn't a huge number of people - this blog just topped 7000 pageviews, which is relatively tiny as blogs go - but that's OK.  We're talking about pretty specialized subject material, and there's not all that many people who might be interested.

One of the stats Blogger coughs up is the country of origin.  As you might expect, most people reading are from the US - about 65%.  Most of those are probably people we know.  Of the other countries, Russia is, again as you might expect, high on the list.  But it's in the third spot.  The second-most number of people come from Sweden.

Sweden? Why? Well, there's a general answer and a specific answer (more after the cut).

We Go To Restaurants

The one-year anniversary of Elena's adoption is fast approaching, as I noted a little while ago.  That's got me thinking about how things have changed over the course of the last almost-year.  How Elena's grown taller, for example. Or how her experiences have broadened.

We went to a new restaurant last night.  New to Elena, but also new to Teresa and me.  The Green Dot Stables, a place here in Detroit that opened fairly recently.  Elena's been going to restaurants for a little while now, and she's usually pretty good (as she was last night).  She actually likes going to restaurants quite a bit; she's unduly impressed by people bringing her food.  She even incorporates the "baby waitress" part into her play at home, bringing us pretend food and clearing away the "dirty" dishes afterward.

She's less easily overstimulated than she was a year or so ago, as we bring her more places and she gets more used to loud, open spaces.  One of the first times we felt comfortable enough to bring her to a restaurant at all was around Easter, when we went to a family dinner.  The restaurant then was large and noisy and very busy, just the place not to bring an easily overstimulated toddler.  However, Elena lasted for a whole hour-and-a-half, which was actually quite encouraging.

Since then, we've brought her to more places, and she's more used to the bustle; she generally has no problem sitting through the meal (although I think there's likely a time limit on her patience).  It's good training for her, I think, to sit and watch in a busy place. Orphanage kids tend to be easily overstimulated, as they're used to a quiet and repetitive schedule.  Elena was no exception, but bringing her out and about has significantly eroded her tendency to be overstimulated.  The first few times, she insisted on getting down and walking around, but by now she's generally content staying seated for a reasonable amount of time. 

She still get fidgety, but not a lot.  That's a pretty significant shift from nearly a year ago.  Part of the shift is because she's a year older, but I think she's now more comfortable going places, and more comfortable being part of a family.