Transition of responsibility

Stacey and I were very fortunate to have great support from Evelyn while we were in Nanchang. She gave us some great advice about the girls and helped us to start the bonding process. There were times when she stepped in to help out, but for the most part she just coached us along. She was very experienced with babies in the adoption process since she has worked with our agency for a number of years.

This is a tricky relationship since, as first time parents, we were (are) learning a lot as we go. At the same time, we were with the girls 24 hrs/day and probably knew a lot more about them than anybody around us. So, the tension comes in the zone of where advice slides into imposition of ways of doing things that we would not choose. These are mostly very minor issues, but of course we feel full responsibility for the girls and while we might need to consider alternative ways of doing things we need to make the decisions.

There are two areas now where people are providing excessive advice. The first is about feeding and the second is about clothing. We frequently hear that "Chinese babies like..." or "In China we do x, y and z with our babies.

It is natural for people to want to help with their well being, but the fact that these girls were born in China does not mean that we are going to follow Chinese cultural norms in how we raise them. So, to a certain, minor extent it feels like these are our babies, but we are sharing some of the responsibility for raising them with people around us, even if it is unsolicited assistance.