Enu came home yesterday all excited about the time line project assigned to her class. She has to have at least 3 pictures and 5 events on her timeline including birth and present day.
I honestly don’t remember Mita doing this assignment last year, but I do remember Meg doing it. This makes me wonder if it was assigned to Mita and she didn’t make a big deal about it or if she kept the assignment on the down-low because it was a big deal to her. Hmm. I must go through the projects I kept from last year and see if I can find it.
Back to yesterday. I told Enu that I would have to get on the computer and order prints as we are a digital family and I rarely have extra prints hanging around. We discussed what pictures she wanted and what her events on the time line were going to be:
1- Birth in Ethiopia – She wanted a baby picture of her and her dad that we have.
2- Mom dying when she was 3.
So when she mentioned this I gently said,”Honey, if you put this down people are going to ask you about it.” She shrugged and said that it was fine.
3- Adoption and movie to the USA.
4- Disneyworld for the first time.
5- Being at 4th grader.
I am planning on supporting her wishes, but I am also going to have a back up picture in case she changes her mind at the last-minute. I will also let her teacher know what is coming so she isn’t put on the spot.
I applaud her for being truthful and authentic in her project. I admire her strength for acknowledging what she has done through. I am so worried that this may trigger something and she will have a bad experience at school. I’m running this by Hubby to see what he thinks.
I think this will also be a lesson-learner for the other kids in the class. Not everyone has an all-happy timeline to share, even 9 year olds. That said I hate that my children seem to be the models for adoption and diversity at school as that is a lot of pressure on a kid. If anyone out there has traveled this path I would love some advice!
Ugh. Hate the school-project timeline! We just did one. Ashley came up w/ stuff she wanted to include on but it was awkward; she included events from younger years that she barely remembers but naturally didn’t want to include big events like “the day I was removed from my home,” and there was a big gap on it: her foster care years. Kids with traumatic histories are faced with a difficult decision with timelines: do they tell the whole story or come up with “lighter” examples that are more in line with what their classmates are doing. And don’t even get me started on the family tree exercise!!!
Not having been through an adoption I never realized how difficult a seemingly simple assignment could be. Good to understand another perspective. I always loved time line assignments because it gave me a chance to remember the joyous moments in my children’s lives that have passed way too quickly and hopefully reinforce them as happy memories for my kids, too.
Kudos to Enu for wanting to share her life, the good and bad. It is all part of what makes her who she is today – a wonderful young lady! I pray the assignment goes positively at school – not an easy line for you to walk.
You can always move here – lots of kids adopted from other countries in the classes! :-)
We haven’t had to travel this part of the adoption road either. We did have a issue where Evie’s school asked for baby pictures of all the parents to show how we look like our parents.