[fbshare]Terri Mauro is widely known and respected as a very proficient writer who has shared her insight and observations 
on special needs issues through various media. Many of us have read her writings and I was excited to be able to interview her in honor of Adoption Awareness Month. First, Terri shared the following specifics about her work endeavors:
“I’ve been a professional writer for thirty years; I’ve written greeting cards, giftware sayings, magazine articles, book and theater reviews, even horoscopes, whatever I could get paid for. When we adopted our kids, my writing focus swung toward special needs, and I started writing my own website, Mothers With Attitude. In 2004, I was given the opportunity to start writing the About.com Parenting Special Needs site, and that’s my main focus now. I’ve also written two books, The Everything Parent’s Guide To Sensory Integration Disorder and 50 Ways to Support Your Child’s Special Education.“
I was aware of Terri as a writer and an adoptive mother of children from Russia. Beyond that, I didn’t know much. I quickly discovered that Terri was one of the earlier adoptive parents of children from Russia. Her adoptions were 3 years before mine and 9 years before Kay Marner’s. As Terri explained:
My husband and I have two children adopted from Russia in 1994. Our daughter is 20. She graduated high school this year and started in the fall at a community college. She is hoping to get an AA in early childhood education and find a job as a teacher’s aide. Our son is 17. He’s a junior in high school, and just this year moved out of self-contained classes and into all inclusion and resource-room classes. So far, he seems to be rising to the challenge.
When we adopted them in November 1994, our daughter was 4.5 years old and our son was 18 months. They were in the same orphanage in Petrozavodsk, Karelia, but were not birth siblings. They had both been in the orphanage since leaving the hospital after birth.
We were supposed to be in Russia for two weeks, but it turned out being an entire month. We left the US on Halloween and came back on December 1. Our agency was new in the area, we were the third family to travel, and I think the local government was getting cold feet. We waited it out, but it was hard. We had a translator for about five minutes a day, and some days not at all. The woman we were staying with got tired of having us there, and started staying out all night and not feeding us. Our daughter was expecting to be adopted, and confused when we kept coming to visit but never taking her. My husband got sick, and he never gets sick. It was extremely stressful for everybody, but of course, the ending of being able to bring our children home with us made everything more than worth it.“
I asked Terri what the most frustrating experience was about her adoption and here is what she shared:
Definitely the endless wait in Russia. It was terribly frustrating, not being able to communicate, not know what was happening, being completely powerless in this enterprise that was so desperately important. The second most frustrating was the general denial of US agencies and parents involved in adoption that these kids could have problems that would not be solved with a hug. We deliberately adopted kids with special needs, we weren’t blaming anyone, but the question from the agency was always, “Are they caught up yet?” And when the answer continued to be no, they faded away. No supports, no programs. That agency has added those things now, but waaaaaay too late for us. Meanwhile, I remember being on e-mail lists where mention of things like FASD or RAD was met by “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Talking about it was bad for Russian adoption, don’t you know? If hugs’n'love didn’t solve everything, it was your fault.“
But along with the frustrations, there was also humor. Terri remembered the following:
When we finally got the go-ahead to take the kids, we first picked our son up from the baby room, brought him to the playroom in our daughter’s area of the orphanage, and changed him into a diaper and sleeper. I had gone shopping for outfits for him back home with the mother of a friend who knew all about babies … but of course, she knew all about big healthy American babies, and the outfit we’d picked for him was ENORMOUSLY too big. Then it came time to change my daughter into her new clothes so she could leave the clothes she was wearing with the orphanage … and the workers gathered all the children together, little boys and girls three or four years old, to sit and watch her take her old clothes off and put her new clothes on. It was kind of horrifying, but of course highly symbolic too. These kids all slept together in one big room, peed together on pots in one big room, probably bathed together, so I guess seeing their friend take her clothes off was no big deal, but it certainly took us aback.“
Unlike many who adopt and are surprised by special needs, Terri’s story is uniquely different. She explained:
We wanted to adopt children with special needs, and we started with the National Adoption Center in Philadelphia, the one advertised at Wendy’s. We had to get a homestudy to register with them. Once we did, they kept sending referrals that were not appropriate. When we did show interest in a child, they came up with reasons why we weren’t appropriate. I think they thought we were over our heads taking on kids with significant needs, and they weren’t wrong — we had no idea what we were doing. But at some point the lady from our homestudy agency called and said, “We’re starting a program in Russia, we have a little girl with special needs who needs a home right now, are you interested?” We hadn’t intended international adoption, but you know, you go where your children are. We asked them to find a brother for her, and we were on our way.
Our daughter had brain damage at birth due to lack of oxygen. She wasn’t expected to survive, but she’s a fighter. She has a really significant deficit in language — when we met her at age 4.5, she had a handful of baby-talk Russian, not age appropriate at all. And then, of course, she had to start all over in English, without the support of her first language for the transition. Language deficits make everything hard — reading, writing, learning, social skills. Our son has Fetal Alcohol Effects, which in his case has involved a lot of autistic behaviors, some ADHD behaviors, sensory-integration issues, a few seizures along the way. They’re both doing really well, and maybe that catch-up thing will finally come … when they’re in their thirties or so.“
Although Terri chose to parent children with special needs, she stated:
We didn’t have any idea what that was going to mean, of course — I don’t think you can truly understand that until you’re in the middle of it — but we wanted to do this.“
Terri found help from her pediatrician and email lists. She explained:
Our first pediatrician helped a lot. He right away referred us to the school’s special-ed preschool for our daughter, and a little later to early intervention and a good neurologist for our son. I also got a lot of help from those e-mail lists, especially from the parents dealing with challenges like mine who did not sit down and shut up. I found so many good books and other resources from the suggestions on those lists, and one time really concrete help. I wanted to move my daughter to inclusion, and the child study team at the school was really fighting me; they said it would destroy her. I took a poll of parents on the e-mail list, asking those whose kids had problems similar to my daughter’s where those kids were being educated. Most of them were in inclusion. I wrote up the survey results, and it was very hard for the school to argue with. Here’s a specific subset of kids with whom you have no experience, and here’s what other school districts are doing.“
It has now been sixteen years since Terri’s adoptions and I asked her how things have changed for today’s adoptive parents. She revealed:
I think the Internet is a tremendous boon. There’s a lot more information and support. I don’t know
what I would have done without my parenting lists, and there’s so much more out there now.“
I questioned Terri about prospective adoptive parents and if she thought they were better educated today and she thoughtfully explained:
You know, I’m not sure being better educated going in is the answer to problems. It sounds good, but I don’t think you can really know what you can handle until you’re handling it. You can educate yourself all you want and expect to know what you’re doing, but every individual child is an unknown. Kids with the same diagnosis can be very different. I’d like to see more of an emphasis on support after the adoption than education before it.“
Terri revealed how she has been changed by parenting her children with special needs:
Well, it pretty much transformed my writing career. I’m all special needs all the time now. I’d like to think I’m more patient and creative. I’ve become aware of how many things we expect from children that we would never expect from ourselves.“
Terri has grown children now and has acquired a wealth of information about adoption. She concluded our interview with the following insight:
I think adoption is a great way to form a family. Considering how much more widespread and out in the open adoption is now, and how much foster care is out in the open now, I wish the public in general was more conscious of the boneheaded things that make adopted kids feel bad. There is absolutely no excuse for school assignments that assume a child is living with birthparents. My daughter just got one of those IN COLLEGE, and it’s got her all upset. The assignment assumes that “the essence of you” is your cultural background, and wants to know where your were born and all about your family origins. That’s a bad assignment for adopted kids, foster kids, kids who grew up in abusive homes, kids in blended families who may not have access to a divorced parent’s family history … just all sorts of scenarios. Ticks me off, it does.“
I want to thank Terri for not only sharing her family’s adoption story, but also giving us her perspective on adoption as a seasoned adoptive parent. If you would like to learn more about special needs, I highly encourage you to visit Terri on her About.com blog or look into one of her many other writing projects. Again, thank you Terri!
About Danette Schott, M.A.
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