Zero-To-Five In Three Years

In an earlier post I talked about the difficulty of going from one child to two and how the effort and energy expended just didn’t seem proportional. I know now that it was only preparing us for the leap from two to five. Jennifer, our first, had arrived in October 1983. In November of 1986 we were now the parents of five! How did we do it??? We still ask ourselves that question.

We named the Huh Siblings as follows: Eun Kyung became Christina Joy (Christy), Kee Haeng changed to Scott Robert, and Kee Seong, Kevin Walter. Joy was my mother's middle name; Robert was my father's name, and Walter was the middle name of Lora’s father. They spoke no English beyond hello, good-bye, and thank you. They could count to ten and had learned their ABC’s but had no idea how to use either. While still in Korea, I used my "survival Korean" to get them to come, sit, be quiet, hello, and thank you. Its amazing how much can be accomplished with so little!

Our arrival at Los Angeles International Airport on November 18, 1986 was a story in itself. We were greeted in the immigration and customs area by representatives of our agency who were volunteers authorized into the secured areas. They were there to help us through the inspection of the kids' visas, travel certificates and baggage. One of them collected the paperwork to hold while I loaded our large, heavy bags onto a cart. She then left the area to report back to Lora, who was waiting upstairs, that we were there and it would take awhile for us to get through the lines. Meanwhile, we're now in line without any paperwork—do you see the problem, yet? The officials didn't like us standing before them without identification and we were now subject to their arbitrary wrath. We were finally able to get our volunteer back downstairs with the papers but the damage was already done.

While in Korea I had purchased lots of shoes and clothing because the kids would be coming home with just the clothes on their backs. The customs officer grilled me about my reasons for attempting to bring so much past her table. It didn't seem to matter that I was accompanied by three children who were entering the United States to be adopted. She inspected every item in our bags which had to be re-packed once she was satisfied. She also levied a tax for the amount in excess of our allowance; the person ahead of me had spent double my purchases yet she was cleared without an inspection or tax. We had officially ticked off the system and our “friendly” customs inspector made it her duty to punish me. After more than two hours we were finally cleared while the rest of our fellow passengers were long gone.


The initial meeting upstairs was exciting and tearful. Lora and family members, after their long wait, were rewarded with our smiling faces and relieved we had finally made it. As for me, I was just relieved. The entire trip had been physically and emotionally stressful. I didn't realize how stressful until we boarded the plane in Korea; I collapsed into my seat and started shaking with what felt like a fever. Fortunately, the plane was not full and I was able to stretch out across several seats and sleep a good portion of the twelve hour flight. I remember awakening at one point and the kids were sleeping alongside me; I learned they were concerned about me and wanted to be close in case I needed help.

Aside from the stress of adoption issues was the political unrest in Korea while we were there. It was rumored that the president of North Korea had been assassinated. South Korea was on high alert with all public transportation, and some street corners, guarded by armed soldiers. One of our paperwork issues required the American embassy to endorse a document and notarize our signatures. (Notice I said, "Our" signatures; they wanted Lora's signature, too. I was finally able to convince them that my signature would be sufficient since she was home in the states with no way to notarize her signature before our departure.) Getting into the embassy grounds required us to vacate our vehicle while it was searched for bombs. My briefcase, filled with adoption documents, was searched, as well. In addition, as we approached the airport for our return flight we would go through the same search procedure; my thought at the time was, "Just get me out of here!"

Finally, we arrived home in Ventura. Michael was going to share his room with Scott and Kevin. Jennifer was going to bunk with her new older sister, Christy. Our home was small and their rooms are about 9x9 feet square. Bunk beds were the only way the three boys would fit. Our kitchen table wasn't really big enough for seven but it would have to do for now. Although we had two baths only one had a shower which was off our bedroom. That one shower ended up being used by all seven family members. After many years and thousands of showers it would require a complete demolition to repair the damage.

We had made arrangements with a young Korean adoptee to live with us the first two weeks of the kid's homecoming. She was invaluable in being able to communicate, in Korean, the daily routines including the use of the bathroom, the shower, dirty clothes, and our expectations about helping with the household chores. She was in high school and spent the night on our couch. We couldn't have done it without her and we would recommend a similar arrangement as a way to make it easier on everyone during a very difficult adjustment for older adoptees.

We had planned to start the kids in school after the Christmas holidays. Around the first of December, however, they communicated that they were bored and wanted to go to school. We had already met with the schools to give them a head's up about three Korean speaking children coming to enroll. In preparation, I had attended a bi-lingual parent meeting before traveling to Korea; the meeting was conducted in Spanish! One of the presenters recognized my lack of understanding and translated for me. There were no Korean interpreters, tutors, or assistance being offered for our situation. After the kid's arrival we did find language help but it was without the school district's assistance. Christy, at thirteen, entered sixth grade. Scott would enter fifth and Kevin third.

Although Christy, Scott, and Kevin spoke no English they were essentially given the same expectations to complete their daily studies as their English speaking classmates. Christy was fortunate because her home room teacher took extra time and patience to encourage her. Scott, too, was lucky to have a wonderful teacher who made his transition much easier. Kevin, by contrast, had a teacher who was overwhelmed at the difficulty of working with a non-English speaking student and gave him a block of clay to keep him busy throughout the day. We didn’t learn of Kevin’s lack of instruction until parent conferences in the spring of 1987.

Homework became a nightly ritual that required one-on-one time. Many nights were spent sitting at the kitchen table with all three. They sat armed with their Korean-to-English dictionaries; I had my English-to-Korean dictionary and together we connected the dots in their lessons. Much of the time it was a form of charades or a key word that got the message across. They readily understood math problems because math is a universal language, however, their counting and figuring in Korean left me in the dark if they didn’t come up with the correct answer.

When one is immersed into a new culture and language verbal skills develop first. Then comes reading with writing being the last and hardest skill to acquire. The kids did a remarkable job of trying to use English from the beginning. Arguments, however, reverted back to their native language and from the sound were quite heated. So we made a rule that arguments had to be in English. It slowed them down for awhile but they soon adapted and were yelling in heavily accented English. We also began to notice certain Korean words had special emphasis and we could only imagine what the translation was!

One of the more difficult challenges we faced was the age differences of our two sets of kids. The younger ones were still infants and required lots of attention and care. The older kids, however, had never really received the same nurturing and their perception was (and to some extent still is) that they were somehow second-class citizen’s less worthy of our consideration. We tried our best to treat all of our children, equally, in an age appropriate way. It has been a hard, thin line for us as parents and it was totally unexpected.

I need to stop now to organize my thoughts about Christy, Scott, and Kevin. Each will get their own story but it will differ from Jennifer and Michael. You already have their homecoming story and a little of the transition to life in the United States. My next post will concentrate on Christy and her resolve to take full advantage of the opportunities with her new family. I’m going to call it, “Determined—Christy’s Story”.