Friday, January 20, 2006

Being Excellent - For the Right Reasons

The one phrase you hear a lot as an adopted kid is "You're even more special because your parents got to pick you! You were chosen!". I heard it so much and from so many people that I even repeated it to other people. Let me just state for the record, that this is not what a kid needs to hear. No matter how young, I think that a kids are a lot smarter than adults give them credit for and they are able to read waaay too far into that statement. I know I did.

I lived in a foster home for 4 months before my parents got me. They have never kept my adoption a secret, I always knew that I was adopted and I knew about the foster home. However, I never understood what a foster home was until I was older, maybe 9 or 10, and since my adoption wasn't exactly a topic to be discussed at the dinner table, I never asked. I vividly remember exactly what I thought a foster home was. I even had a story in my head about what happened to me in the "foster home". I thought that when I was a baby, I lived in an orphanage with a lot of other babies, and this was a "foster home". People like my parents would come in and look at all the babies and pick the best one to adopt. The babies would all try to be good when people like my parents came in. My parents thought I was the best one. I swear that until I was about 10, I thought I came from some kind of humane society for humans. Living with that thought as you grow up, coupled with everyone telling you you are something special that was chosen makes you feel like you have to do something to prove that you were a good choice for your parents.

Granted, I was never one to think that my parents were going to get rid of me, that thought never crossed my mind. But I did always feel like I had to live up to a higher standard than other kids, including my brother and sister who aren't adopted. So I overcompensated in everything that I did. I got straight A's. I joined every club that I could. I was hardly at home during middle school and high school because I had some club meeting or extra curricular activity every single night of the week. When I was at home, I practiced the piano for hours and hours. I was the kid that did it all - good grades, musically inclined, behaved well in public and went to church. With a resume like that, there is no way they could regret picking me. It wasn't to make my parents proud, it was to make them happy with their choice. Looking back, I don't even think I enjoyed most of what I did, in high school especially. I just kept myself involved with everything I could so that I could add it to my list of "Why I was the right choice".

I never wanted anyone to be able to say something like "No wonder her mom gave her up for adoption" to me and thank God, no one ever has, because I don't think I could handle it.

Sounds pretty dumb, right? Yeah, I thought so too until I realized that I still do this. Now that I don't have school to gauge my success, it just becomes other things. I try to be the perfect friend, the perfect wife, the perfect employee and the perfect coworker. In a way, it is like trying to prove to everyone in your life that your real mom obviously made a mistake by getting rid of you.

I think its great to strive for excellence, the problem lies in the motivations behind it. If you're motivated toward excellence because you genuinely want to do a good job that is one thing. But when you are overachieving because you feel like you have to prove something to everyone else, to prove that you aren't defective, that you aren't a mistake, that's not healthy. I have always been an perfectionist - I loathe making mistakes. 98% on a test and I'm obsessing over the one question I missed. But I never thought about why until recently. Part of it is just my personality, but there still is that little kid somewhere in there trying to prove that she was the right choice. It's a pretty crappy feeling, especially when you do mess up and prove that you aren't the perfect friend, wife or worker. These are a couple of verses that have been helpful in reminding me why I should be doing a good job, being a good friend, etc.

"Whatever you do, do with all your might..." Eccl. 9:10

"Work hard and cheerfully at all you do, just as though you were working for the Lord and not merely for your masters, remembering that it is the Lord Christ who is going to pay you...He is the one you are really working for" Col. 3:23-24

1 Comments:

Blogger everyscarisabridge said...

First, thanks for commenting. It's really encouraging to hear that my seemingly crazy thought process is helping someone else out there = )

I can only speak for myself, but I think that it was really important that I came to terms with the impact adoption has had on me in my own time, and on my own terms. I put my adoption in the back of my mind my entire life, partially because I was following my parents' lead and partially because I refused to believe that I was different from anyone else because of it.

It wasn't until about a month ago, when I read my first book about adoption that I realized how it really had impacted me in almost every area of my life. When I was your daughter's age, I wouldn't have been very receptive to someone telling me that I had "adoption issues" or that I was somehow different because I was adopted, even though both were true for me.

Again, just my opinion but I think the best thing you could do for your daughter would be to make it clear that you would have loved her no matter what kind of person she was when she found you. Even if she got horrible grades, was anti-social and had nothing going for her. Maybe even give her a book to read - I would suggest Sherrie Eldridge's book 20 Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew. This was the first book about adoption that I read, and one of the reasons it caught my attention was because it didn't seem like a "self-help" kind of book. It seemed very non-confrontational and I was really curious to see if I agreed with what the author said. I went into it as a skeptic, but that book really changed my life. You should check it out, too!

Finally, keep in mind that some people are just perfectionists = ) I think I would have been that way to some degree whether I was adopted or not. It's really the why behind it that matters.

6:35 PM  

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