Pizza Party

At first, the expert’s advice seemed shallow and flippant. I’d paid good money for the workshop, looking for high level advice and direction about raising my three adopted kids. They were fast growing out of their adorable orphan stage. They were scrappy and competitive – three kids as different as having three different sets of parents could make them. They were also funny and endearing but those things didn’t send me to the workshop. That I didn’t know what I was doing is what made me sign up and fork over my $50.

By then, I was a veteran adoption conference-goer.

Because my kids had spent some significant time in an orphanage in Nicaragua, I was fascinated by the research on institutionalized children, specifically the long-term effects of neglect and lack of human interaction. Attachment disorder and sensory processing disorder were serious issues and I, like many adoptive parents, saw every blip as a symptom. So, I went with a friend for a two-day conference in Indiana where American researchers picked apart the consequences of isolation and neglect of children in Romanian orphanages. Their exhausted and worried adoptive parents sat in the front row. I felt bad for them when they asked their desperate questions. Nothing my kids had ever done was that bad. I was relieved by their distress.

Being the adoptive mom of formerly institutionalized kids became a kind of career. It sounds strange saying that but, looking back, it’s an apt description. I went to other conferences and workshops after the Indiana event. I was always on the hunt for the magic. So it made sense to me to spend yet another Saturday morning in a hotel conference room on the other side of town to hear an expert tell me how to cope with adoptive kids’ family conflict.

Our expert was a likable guy, a tough, no-nonsense, jean-wearing, Harley-riding sweetheart who held the microphone like, any minute, he’d bust out in song. Every woman in the audience could see him in their kitchen, holding a beer and talking about his day. He was that cuddly.

He went through his speech, ran through all the symptoms and pathology. He didn’t have any adopted kids himself, don’t you know, but still he knew what was what. He’d seen a lot, I gave him that, so what he said had great value to me. I’d seen a lot, too, but I didn’t know what to make of it. But he did.

“When all else fails,” he said, as serious as a man could be, “order a pizza.” He went on, “When you announce you’ve ordered a pizza, everyone’s attention turns to when the pizza will arrive.”

That was it? That as what I paid $50 for? When all else fails, order a pizza?

It was great advice. Hidden beneath the cheese and pepperoni was this – sometimes you can’t resolve conflict, you can only interrupt it, divert it, replace it, let go of it. I ended up not taking the cuddly guy’s advice often enough. Instead, I tried to muscle my way through conflict, apply rational thought to children’s feelings, have my way. It never worked nearly as well as ordering a pizza would have. If I could do it all over, I’d have the pizza joint on speed dial.

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Photo by Cristiano Pinto on Unsplash