More awards for Kari and George

I was very pleased to read this news item today, focusing on two good friends of mine, Kari and George Grady Grossman, who've been acknowledged for their parenting skills but who have done so much for Cambodia in recent years. Kari is the author of the excellent book Bones That Float. www.bonesthatfloat.com

Parenting honor, for first time, goes to adoptive pair - Rocky Mountain News, USA
George and Kari Grady Grossman went to Cambodia looking to adopt a son seven years ago and wound up adopting a country. On Sunday the Fort Collins couple was named the American Family Coalition's Colorado Parents of the Year, the first time the honor has gone to an adoptive couple in Colorado. The Grossmans are parents to Grady, now 8, whom they brought from Cambodia, and Shanti, 4, whom they adopted in India. The couple also started a nonprofit called Sustainable Schools International, which tries to help Cambodian villages build and maintain schools through economic development. On Monday, they talked about parenting and adoption.

Q: What’s the secret to being good parents?
Kari: I don’t know if we have any secrets other than for us in our situation with kids who were adopted from another country I think one of the few secrets to that is that we experience their walk through understanding their adoption and understanding the loss that goes with losing your country and your birth culture with them. Meaning that we share the story with them. We talk about the truth of the stories. And we don’t have any hidden information. I think in adoption that used to be the case. I don’t know if there was shame associated with it or whatever, but people didn’t share the whole truth. And with our kids we’ve been talking about the truth since day one. Of course, since being adopted means that there’s loss involved, both our kids have to face and learn about loss early in life. And I think that’s a good life skill to have because all of us face losses in our lives.

So as parents we walk through that with them. We celebrate adoption every day. We celebrate who they are and their uniqueness every day. I think that’s one of the things that I’ve always noticed with friends who have non-adopted children, biological children. Maybe because they look different to us, we really see whom they are coming out. That’s not so much a reflection of who we are, because they don’t look like us. Maybe it’s a little easier to separate yourself and say, watch this person emerging and what can I do to support that, whatever it is, instead of putting my own opinions on it.

George: There was a woman we met a long, long time ago, way before Kari and I were married. And she said the only thing you can really give your children is a happy childhood. We have always remembered that. It was like a runoff line that she gave us and we’ve always tried to do by that and to live by that with the kids. I think that would be my one advice for all sorts of things: try to give your children a happy childhood. It’s not about money. It’s really about spending time with them and doing things with them and finding out what they’re interested in and kind of playing with them at that level. Because really what they want is your attention and your time and your love.

Q: What would you say were the most challenging aspects of your two adoptions?
George: The first adoption was patience, because at that point we had no children and so you walk by the bedroom that he or she will go in and the fact that once you start the process, a lot of things are beyond your control. So it requires a lot of patience, a lot of faith and a lot of support for each other while this process is going on. I’d say that’s the biggest thing with the first adoption. The second one, you already have a child, so you don’t think that much.

Kari: On our second adoption it seemed that the information that we were being given was that Shanti was gross motor delayed. She was older. She was almost two. And so we basically had to sit down and say to ourselves, you know, are we accepting a special needs child, a child that will be physically handicapped? What could we really infer from this medical information that was coming from across the planet? So it really was kind of a leap of faith. Interestingly, by the time she came to us, she has totally overcome her gross motor delay. Apparently she had problems with her legs. They didn’t work properly for the first year. But by the time she came to us she was quite capable of walking and she bounced on the trampoline and now she’s our athletic one. So you know, you just go with it.

Q:What brought you to Cambodia in the first place?
Kari: Before we went on our adoption trip, we, like most folks, didn’t know much about Cambodia other than it was next to Vietnam. We’d heard of Pol Pot. We’d heard of the Khmer Rouge, but we really didn’t know. And so we were basically praying a lot about adopting. You get into that world and there’s a lot of information…it’s overwhelming. You just have to step back a bit. So anyway, we were actually starting the process of adopting from China. Primarily because we were with other people who were adopting from China and they were telling us where to go and what to do. But one of those people put us on an e-mail list that was four families who had adopted from China. And on that list one day, someone posted a message about these children in Cambodia, that there were all these children waiting to be adopted.

I called it the fatal click because with that click, up came these faces of beautiful children. And I said to George, I have to find out about this. So over the period of the next two weeks, I called everywhere I could find for information about Cambodia and the adoption process. Then one day, I called my mother. My mother was in Maine. I told her, ‘Mom, you’re not going to believe this but I’ve been learning about Cambodia.’ And she said, Cambodia! I just came from the hairdresser and this woman was there and she had adopted children from Cambodia and I got all the names for you of people to call. And she started reading them off and I had already called the same people. And as I was having this conversation, George walked in the door with National Geographic had a cover story about Cambodia and he plopped it down. And I just looked at him and said: OK. Got it. You don’t need to send any more signals. We got the message.

The story also ran in the Coloradoan.com newspaper yesterday.
Fort Collins couple 'Parents of the Year'
Grossmans have two adopted kids and built a school in Cambodia.

Kari and George Grossman didn't see it coming, but July 7 turned out to be a shocking and humbling day. The Fort Collins couple not only found out they were named the 2008 Colorado Parents of the Year, but they also found out Kari Grossman's book, "Bones that Float, A Story of Adopting Cambodia," won the Independent Publisher Book Award for Peacemaker of the Year. Her book is about the couple's experience of adopting their 8-year-old son Grady from Cambodia and then building a school in Cambodia.

The Grossmans were selected as Parents of the Year by the Colorado Parents' Day Council not only for parenting Grady and his 4-year-old sister, Shanti, whom the family adopted from India, but for their work building and running the Grady Grossman School in Cambodia. The Grossmans were also selected because their work in Cambodia models a life of service for their children. "I never thought about how it would have an effect on our own children's point of view," Kari Grossman said, adding that her son recently told her that when he was "old like Grandma, I'm going to work very hard for the GG School." "To see what he was getting out of it touched me," she said. Kari Grossman said the family didn't even know they had been nominated for the parenting award, which celebrates Parents' Day - a nationally recognized day of remembrance for parents celebrated on the last Sunday of July. "It's just the way our life and the way our family works," George Grossman said of the family's work in Cambodia. "Maybe (the award) is just an affirmation that we're doing something right as a family. We really don't think it's all that extraordinary, but I feel rather humbled by the whole thing."

The Grady Grossman School provides education for five rural villages in Cambodia and is its village's only permanent structure. It started with 50 children in 2001, and today there are 500 students, seven teachers, a solid cement structure with a water well and a solar-powered computer. The school is a part of the Grossmans' foundation, Sustainable Schools International. With a quarter of the proceeds going to the school, Kari's book has raised about $50,000 for the school. The couple also makes trips to Cambodia three or four times per year. "I've never seen a couple go to the extent that the Grossmans have," said Peggy Yujiri, spokeswoman for the Colorado Parents' Day Council. The Grossmans are among 50 nominees for National Parents of the Year, which will be announced on Parents' Day, July 27. They were honored at a dinner on Sunday in Denver along with 11 other Colorado couples.