Three weekends

Two weekends ago, I was as discouraged as I've ever been. We had been invited to a birthday party for a friend of Maia's from hula. It was at Hanai a Bear, the local take on Adopt a Bear ("hanai" means "to adopt" (sort of) in Hawaiian).

Maia refused to participate. There was a group of half a dozen or so girls (and eventually one boy) around a table, and she refused to join. Here she is, sitting on the lap of the mother of another friend from hula, in the bottom right portion of the picture.



It was strange and uncomfortable for us, for the children and other parents, and for the mother holding the party.

Throughout the process of making bears, Maia just sort of hung around, watching, and continuing to refuse whenever anyone sought to entice her to participate. At the end, when the children reassembled at the table to make necklaces for their bears and to give them hearts, Maia finally joined the group at the table but refused to make a necklace. Even though I know for a certainty that she wanted a necklace. Here's a picture of the scene at the table:



It was very, very discouraging.

Here we are at the lunch after Hanai a Bear. Maia is the only one with no hat (the other girl hadn't put hers on yet). At one point, Maia stuck her finger in the cake.



It would be different if this were an isolated event. But it feels like part of a pattern. It links up in my mind with her resistance to being taught (like hula, for example), to being interviewed, to performing, and, in general, to participating in a constructive way in what is going on around her. She was to learn to participate--it's fundamental to everything else.

Later I told Kristina that sometimes it feels as though Maia is headed towards a train wreck, and all we can do is be there with her when it happens.

Last weekend was a different story.



A picnic for Kazakh adoptees was organized by our adoption agency in a park called Magic Island. It's on a little point at the beginning of Waikiki that was created when the Ala Wai Canal was dug to drain Waikiki and what is now Ala Moana Shopping Center.

The agency had rented a jumping chamber for the gathering. I liked the symbolism of the Nemo figure on top. Maia went there immediately and had fun with the children inside. Kids like Maia because she's fun.



She was fine with us, too. Cooperative and helpful. Here she is feeding Kristina a grape.



It's almost as though she's fine with adults and she's fine with children but she's not fine when those two crowds are mixed and the children are under the control of an adult. Then she resists--passively, by doing nothing, or actively, by doing her Maia-gone-wild thing. She just really seems to dislike being under the direction of an adult while she's in the company of peers.

At one point, I took her into the water. There's a lagoon there, that's very gentle, and Maia likes the water. She made friends with a little Samoan girl, and they had fun playing together, taking turns pretending to be in extreme jeopardy and rescuing each other.

There's something about Polynesian culture that suits Maia. Different generations tend to operate as separate cohorts in Polynesian social life. Maybe she'll always be more comfortable with that.

On the way to the lagoon, I told Maia that I loved her, and she said, "I love you, too, Daddy." I don't know why it always surprises and pleases me when she expresses her thoughts, but it does.

I explained to her that the people at the picnic that day were all people who had adopted children from Kazakhstan like we had adopted her, and that that was why we were there. I expected this to lead to questions--she's very inquisitive and wants to understand things. But it didn't. I let the topic go.

This weekend has been pleasant and easy. Maia helped me work in the yard yesterday, and then I took her to the park and to McDonald's--her fave.



She counted her last French fries for me as she ate them, and then did a substraction problem. She had been eating the fries by twos. When she got done to five and took the next two, I covered up the remaining ones and asked her how many were left. She wanted me to move my hand so she could count them, but I told her to do it in her head.

"Three," she said. We had done this same exercise about a year ago with the number 1. This was the first time we had subtracted 2. She really is good with numbers.

Here she is, just before we left, pretending that the ketchup on her fingers is nail polish.



Such an engaging, cute and fun little creature. How do I get her to participate?

Two steps forward, one step back.

John, Sunday, August 6, 2006