#MumStory: Why Adoption Was Always Her First Choice
"Most people tend to have the misconception that a couple who has adopted a child, especially as first-time parents, defaulted to adoption due to fertility struggles. For us, this was not the case."
By Terri Kue -
#MumStory is a series by The Singapore Women's Weekly to uncover the underrated and underreported moments in motherhood and parenting -- because we believe every mum has a story worth telling. Got a story to share? Email us at sww@sph.com.sg or slide into our DMs on Instagram.
Not many people choose to adopt. Fewer choose to adopt children from another country. But when Elvina Farkas was dating, it was a "make or break" if her partner wasn't on the same page as her about adoption.
The video lead at SPH Content Lab shares: "The day I knew that adoption would be part of my life came after a two-week volunteering trip in East Timor when I was 17 years old. Experiencing the difficulties of an overcrowded orphanage was hard to bear and after some time in the country, I bore witness to the reality of the older children who 'aged out' of the system. Unfortunately, more often than not, these kids' lives ended in tragic circumstances.
"It felt like an injustice that a person's geographical luck could result in them missing out on the basic opportunities that I was afforded in life. It changed my entire perspective of what I wanted in my own life and future family."
Now, Elvina has 5-year-old Enzo (adopted from Ghana), and is pregnant with a girl. Keep reading to find out her #MumStory.
Officially, his adoption was finalised on May 20, 2022, which was 236 days after we had landed in Ghana, West Africa!
Honestly, the inter-country adoption process is in general long and difficult. It felt slow and painful. However, it's a long process for good reason.
There are so many moments of inward reflection as a couple that are required in this journey, which means that you are forced to lay out all your fears and insecurities on the table to be tackled head-first. For example, during the required "Home Study Report" (a document that approves you to be prospective adoptive parents), you need to discuss with your social worker all your child-rearing decisions like who will be the main caregiver, what religion to raise your child, what social and developmental goals we align on as parents, etc.
I personally think that if all parents were made to jump through the same hoops as adoptive parents before beginning their parental journey, we would be far better off as a family-first society!
Financially, it can be quite strenuous as well.
To be fair, we knew in advance from basic research and getting involved in the adoptive community that the journey wouldn't be an easy one, but we were both ready and willing.
If you adopted your child when they were three years old and above, how did you form a bond with them?
When we first received the match with our son, he was four years old. Initially, we were advised that it would be likely that we would be matched with a child around the age of two to three years, so over our two-year wait (delayed due to Covid) we had been mentally preparing for a child in that age range.
Being first-time parents, we were really unsure about having a slightly older child, so it took quite some time before we accepted our match. We deliberated for days about what kind of timeline this would give us in regard to things like formal schooling and living arrangements and, of course, if we felt like this could be the right fit for us overall.
The more we discussed, the more we realised that there is really so little in life that can be fully planned for. We also had to remind ourselves of the reason we started this process.
We knew that the likelihood of this boy getting adopted out would become slimmer if we didn't accept the match as most kids who are not adopted out by the age of four tend to get lost in the system forever. Almost all adoptive parents want young kids, particularly infants or babies.
Bonding with our son was hard at first. I won't lie. The first six months together were some of the toughest, most difficult days of our lives. We spent the first two weeks in Ghana visiting him at the orphanage, where he was in his own environment so he could build trust and familiarity with us at that time.
Despite that, I don't think anything can prepare a child to be ripped away from everyone and everything he has ever known to go home with two complete strangers.
In essence, adoption really is like legal kidnapping.
People would ask us before we adopted our son: "Don't you think it'll be difficult to love a child that isn't yours?" To answer that: No, it's not hard to love an adopted child. Today, I love him more than I can fathom, but during the early days, it is in fact difficult to love a child who is actively pushing you away.
This is a child with big feelings and zero skillsets to safely communicate that; especially a child who had spent his entire life in institutionalised care. Adoption is traumatic, not to mention the complexities of a language barrier and development delays. Compared to a child who is raised in a "secure-attachment" home, most adopted kids tend to be mentally younger in age due to missing out on things like one-on-one language and social development that comes from having direct and nurturing family interactions.
For us to provide calm and safety, it had to come in many different ways that didn't include a lot of touch. It came from providing boundaries, trust, and consistency in our actions. But, despite the dark days, there were so many incredible moments too, like the first time he said the words 'I love you mama' and gently reached out to touch my face. Or just watching him grasp our language with such ease, as he didn't speak a word of English before meeting us.
There were many funny moments too, like the first time he experienced an elevator and thought it was some kind of magic that the doors reopened and it was a completely different place! Or his first time at the beach, being terrified of the water and the sand, but he loves the water now!
It's almost impossible to explain how different our son is now compared to the boy we first brought home. His cognitive and social skills expanded so quickly and he's now almost on par with his peers. There is so much truth in how stability and love can change a child and their development pathway - we are living proof that good things take time and it's 100 per cent worth the journey!
We are what you call a trans-racially adopted family, so our son most definitely knows he's adopted just from the colour of his skin alone! However, having said that, had we not been so visually different in looks, we still would have maintained the same open dialogues about adoption.
It's so important for Enzo to know who he is, ethnically and culturally and how he fits into our family despite being different. The joy about our family, in particular, is that every single one of us is different.
My husband is Italian-Australian and I'm bi-racial (Malay-Singaporean/Hungarian), so being different and looking different to each family member is already built into our DNA. We are also supportive of the idea that one day, our son may want to start looking for his biological parents. We hope that advancements in DNA tracking will lead to clues on who his bio family is, and if that ever happens in future, I look forward to having more extended family members across the globe!
The challenges were endless! In the beginning, collecting all the paperwork required to start the process was lengthy and time-consuming. Then came the interviews and home visits which were nerve-racking - you feel judged and afraid that anything you may say or do will be held against you. But the reality is to just be yourself and show that you are committed and ready to learn as parents. From there, it was just unfortunate timing that as soon as we were approved to adopt in Ghana, the world shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
We then waited two long years before Ghana reopened and were matched with our son. After we landed in Ghana, it was 10 months of messy processes before we were able to return home to Singapore together as a family. Now, we are still in the process of getting the relevant visas and citizenships, so all in all, by the time I think we'll be finished with the full process, it'll be close to four years of this adoption journey, start to end.
Most people tend to have the misconception that a couple who has adopted a child, especially as first-time parents, defaulted to adoption due to fertility struggles. For us, this was not the case. We knew this was how we wanted to start our family and many people are surprised by this fact when we tell them. There's still a lot of stigma or old values attached to the topic of adoption, which can be really disappointing.
I think the most unexpected and fulfilling part of this whole journey is not only how much Enzo changed, but how my husband and I changed as well.
When you're placed into such a stressful situation, away from your support network and the comforts of home, your entire foundation is set on the strength of your relationship with each other.
I'm in total awe of Enzo and how he has grown and adapted from his experience of being adopted, but also how much we've all grown together as a family.
What was Enzo's reaction when he realised he's going to be a big brother?
He was super excited when we told him, and he even attended the first few baby scans with us so he got to see the little image of his sibling on screen. He had always been quite vocal about wanting a sibling; I think he was quite used to being raised around so many kids from the orphanage. So I'm sure it was quite a shock to his system to have been so suddenly alone. So far, his only disappointment is that he wanted a little brother as opposed to a little sister!
I think there are levels of societal expectation and family pressure to have kids, so if I had to narrow down to the why, I'm happy to admit that it's likely to be that. I was never a particularly maternal person, in the sense that I never cooed over babies or dreamed of getting pregnant and having lots of kids. In fact, when I thought of my life and future family, I had always envisioned it to be myself, my husband and our adopted child. Nothing more, nothing less.
However, after becoming a mum with Enzo, I suddenly felt very sad at the thought of him not getting to experience a childhood with a sibling, so my perspective on what our family would look like began to change. Not so much for me, but for my son.
It was the early months with Enzo.
There was a moment in time when my husband and I sat down, looked at each other and thought: 'we can't do this, I think we made a huge mistake'. It was so emotionally and physically draining; trying to bond and keep safe this little human who absolutely wanted nothing to do with us. He was hurting so much from losing everything he knew, and there was very little we could do to comfort him or take away that pain he was feeling.
That, to me, was the most stressful time, because I began to doubt myself and question my own abilities. Reminding myself to trust my instincts was the greatest lesson learned in that.
My own mother used to always use this line on me which was "when you become a mother, then you'll know!", and I would always roll my eyes at it. But the truth of the matter is you really do need to become a mum to understand the full complexities and complications of motherhood. It changes you in ways I don't even know how to fully explain. The willingness to give all that you are to your child, in order to care for, love, and protect them, makes for a very confusing time when you think you know who you are, but then your identity begins to shift.
When Enzo recently started school and he came home one day and told me that he shared with his friends the story about being "a doctor". Curious, I asked him to explain more.
"Because they asked me why my family looks different, so I told them, I'm a doctor!"
It was only then I realised he meant to say "adopted"! Even though he was slightly off on the word, I was quite proud that he was happy to share that openly and confidently with his friends.
Enzo is a child with trauma so our tactics had to pivot when we realised that certain parts of our discipline plan just weren't the right fit for him. What we've found to work best in our situation is when he is doing something wrong, or on the verge of a meltdown, he is given a clear and stern warning and the chance to correct his behaviour. If he continues, then it's a timeout (the duration is based on one minute for every year of his age, so five years old equals five minutes of timeout).
Previously, we used to have a dedicated spot for timeout, but that required us to bring him there, and it took us some time before we realised that this physical touch to get him to the spot was a trigger point. In Ghana, the common method of discipline is physical reprimanding, so we began to understand that any kind of touch (even just to move him) would trigger him to escalate. At the end of his timeout, once he is calm and ready, we discuss what he did and how he can fix his mistake.
He is also given the option to work out what privilege he would lose for the day as a consequence of his behaviour. Including him in this gives him a chance to take some ownership of his actions.
How has your relationship with your other half changed after having a kid? How do you keep it strong?
I think an experience like the one we went through really would make or break a couple. Thankfully in our case, it only made us stronger. It was such an intense time being stuck in another country and being first-time parents without our own family around, that we really had to learn to support and encourage each other to avoid constantly slipping into depression or anxiety.
Learning to appreciate the little things and finding joy in the mundane moments was a huge help too. I think in today's day and age of social media, we put too much emphasis on the big and grand, but at the end of the day, it's really the small acts of kindness that have the greatest impact on our relationships.
My husband is a wonderful hands-on father and he often allows me to lay in bed for a little bit extra while he gets up to sort Enzo out in the mornings. I consider these 10 minutes of alone time in the morning as pure bliss.
At the moment, I think it's an accomplishment when I remember to shave my legs in the shower! A bit more self care is on my list for sure. Things I did pre-motherhood like manicures and facials, and hair cuts and colours. I've also been meaning to book in a pre-natal massage, but somehow things to do for myself just never make it far up the list.