William 4.0: Who Are You?

As Andrew matures, it has been fun to note the emergence of certain characteristics and to chalk them up to Craig's genetics or mine.  Swap out the heads and a picture of Andrew with his serpentine figure could be a photo of Craig taken 30 years ago.  "What's that you say about wanting to be a dancing doctor, Andrew?"  Credit that to the genes on his maternal side; my family is chock-full of doctors and teachers with repressed artistic leanings.

While we've never met any members of William's biological family, we do have a few details about key individuals - some pictures and a few descriptions about their personality, health, and interests.  Based upon the photos we have, it's easy to see from whom William derives his sweet chipmunk cheeks and toothy smile.  When he announced the other day that boxing was his favorite sport second to basketball, I was only half-surprised; a significant member of his Taiwanese family is also a fan.  [Feel free to groan as I insert the obligatory disclaimer: no, we don't let our 4 year-old watch boxing matches or condone his punching people at random.]




Those tidbits notwithstanding, we have nowhere near the wealth of information we have about Andrew and the possible origins of his traits.  In light of adoptees whose histories involve abandonment, where little to no information is available, I feel greedy in wanting to know more.  And yet I do.  Just who are these two people whose genetics have combined to shape this beautiful firecracker of a child?  Reviewing William's development over the past year, I'm all the more curious to know.  It's like trying to solve a mystery in which all the detective has to work with is an evolving outcome and a handful of clues.

From whom does William get his happy, yet fiery personality?  I can guess, but I can't say for sure.  William may have just turned 4 years old in mid-July, but he's a jolly old soul trapped in a 40", 38 lb. body.  He loves "knock-knock" jokes, slapstick humor, and silly turns on everyday words and situations.  If we could bottle up his belly laugh at the line in a "Curious George" book where George writes the word, "BLIMLIMLIM," we could put the depression medicine industry out of business.  He is clearly not a child with an inborn tendency toward sullenness.




William's good humor often makes up for his quick-flaring, intense temper.  He registers emotions deeply and expresses them not only with an ever-developing vocabulary, but with copious amounts of stamping, hitting, growling, and frantic windshield wiper hand motions.  Oh, those hands!  Thankfully, time and grace are maturing him; he has logged significantly fewer visits to the time-out chair for angry outbursts than he did a year ago.  Still, something tells me that this aspect of his personality, this passionate side, shall we call it, is an enduring part of who he is.

Speaking of hands, if there is a gene for compulsive nail biting, William has definitely inherited it.  The oral fixation that was so much a part of his toddler years has taken on the shape of incessant finger and toe sucking.  Whether sitting in the car listening to music or lying in bed trying to fall asleep, his digits often end up in his mouth.  The problem became particularly worrisome when he sucked a cut into his big toe last winter and contracted MRSA.  Thankfully, a regimen of antibiotics cured him, but after that, we were careful to dress him in footed pajamas.  Even now, during the hot summer months, we still make him sleep with mittens on.  Despite those measures, it has been over a year that I have had to trim his fingernails since he continues to nibble them down when I'm not looking.

When not lodged in his mouth, those same nubby-nailed fingers have been busy.  William figured out how to write the alphabet imperfectly over the past year and can now write his name and spell out a few simple words on his own.  His handwriting still resembles the aftermath of a fly swatter come down on a granddaddy long leg spider, but in that regard he's a typical 3-turned-4 year-old.  We still can't tell which hand he favors when it comes to writing and eating; he functions equally well with both.  (Personally, I'm curious to know if anyone in his family line is a leftie.)

Clearly, there are also some smarty-pants genes lurking in his biological pool.  In preparing to adopt, parents are warned to expect a whole range of intellectual abilities in their child.  If anything, they are cautioned to set their expectations low, to anticipate learning disabilities of one sort or another.  However, William has definitely surprised us.  Shortly before he turned 3 1/2 years old, he began sounding out simple consonant-vowel-consonant words.  As I did when Andrew reached that milestone, I started the "Hooked on Phonics" reading program with him.  He completed the Kindergarten level some time before his 4th birthday and is now well into the 1st grade curriculum.  Earlier this spring, his teacher gave him a standardized test used for preschoolers who are a year older.  He scored a 95% on that test and lost the remaining 5% to a simple misunderstanding of a question.  We're thankful that he seems to be on a pace where the content of his future schoolwork will probably not be a struggle.  Rather, the voluntary, gentle-natured completion of it could be the greater obstacle.




Among his other strengths, William may claim to like boxing and can throw a pretty good jab (just ask me: he lobbed one at my chest just yesterday when I went to unstrap him from his car seat).  However, sports involving balls are where he truly shines.  Granted, we only have Andrew to serve as a reference point.  While not uncoordinated, our older son's talents appear to lie moreso in the arts and humanities.  So, perhaps then, our awe at William's sinking basket after basket into his Little Tykes hoop set at 5+ feet tall is misplaced.  Maybe it's just I and my lousy hand-eye coordination thinking that a 3 year-old shouldn't be able to connect a ping pong paddle with an oncoming ball as often as he does.  Maybe it's just the proud parent in me that keeps replaying a certain memory of William at his weekly Little Gym sports class.  Even now, I can see him soaring through the air in slow motion, arms outstretched, hands joined together as he does a perfect flying dig at a falling volleyball.  (Can you hear the "Chariots of Fire" theme song playing in the distance?  I can.)

Yet for all his interest in sports, he's not yet a team player.  Over the last year, he participated on a 3-4 year-old basketball team and a soccer league at our local YMCA.  We thought he'd go nuts with excitement, but instead, he wound up passing much of the hour-long sessions wandering the sidelines and climbing all over our laps.  When we did manage to cajole him onto the field, he'd play for a few seconds, then wander back to us in a foul mood.




His newfound reticence also manifested in other ways over the past year.  The boy who would cackle with glee if a tsunami came rolling his way in the swimming pool, the child who would launch himself down a 10-story sliding board at the playground without a second thought, grew increasingly apprehensive as he approached his 4th birthday.  He now panics when I let go of him just a few feet away from the pool wall, nudging him forward to swim the short distance.  A year ago, he'd make the same swim with an ear-to-ear grin.  When challenged to slide down the 3-foot high firefighter's pole at the park jungle gym, he insists I hold him all the way down.  If I encourage him to try it on his own, he works himself up to an angry, fretful state.  Some degree of caution is a good thing in a young child, but I wonder if this is a sign of more tentativeness to come, perhaps an inherent personality quirk.

A few readers patient enough to get to this point of the post may wonder: do we feel as if we're missing out by not having a child with traits and features that mirror ours? After all, as adoption experts like to point out, an ability to self-identify in one's child is arguably one of the small joys of parenting. Adoptive parents are sometimes denied this perk.




No.  All things considered, I can truly say that I don't regard William and his differences with any sense of loss.  Maybe it's because I have a biological child with whom I've had the pleasure of drawing such comparisons.  Maybe my emotional compass is askew and I just don't feel the things I'm "supposed to" as an adoptive parent.  Whatever the reason, I don't find myself mourning the incongruities.   William is his own special person, and I love him very much for it.

If I'm left feeling anything, it's a deep-seated longing for his biological parents to see for themselves what a talented, beautiful child they produced.  They would be so, so proud of him.  I'm also left with a sense of wonder at the genius of God and his ability to create countless variations of people, each unlike the next.  Finally, I'm left with a profound feeling of gratitude that of, all the people in the world, our family has been entrusted with the care and upbringing of this unique and delightful child.

Happy belated 4th birthday, sweetie boy.