Lessons for Adoptive Parents (and others) from Kung Fu Panda

We just returned from the movie “Kung Fu Panda” and the whole time I was sitting there thinking, “wow, there is so much here that applies to adoptive parenting. I hope I can remember it all.” So I came straight to my desk to attempt to regurgitate all the lessons I learned. Some of them are quotes in the movie and how they apply to me, others are scenes, some just ideas -- what I learned from the movie.

If you haven’t seen this, you may not want to read it yet, as this post will certainly be a spoiler if you do. And you may not agree with everything I observed or how it applies to me, but it’s all pretty great stuff IMHO and for whatever it’s worth.

1) “You may find your destiny on the road you take to avoid it.” How many times do adoptive parents take one road to avoid our destiny? I remember when we were looking for our first sibling group to adopt and I said, “Anything but ODD, RAD, and FAS. I think I can parent anything else. So we chose a sibling group that had none of these diagnosis, and between the two of them, ended up with a all three of them and a whole bunch of other stuff.

2) ”The past is history, the future is a mystery, today is a gift; that's why they call it the present." This is a Eleanor Roosevelt quote, but it is certainly something we all need to hear. We can’t erase the past of our children. We can’t worry too much about their future or we may get discouraged. But we do have today... the present. And it is a gift.

3) Sometimes as adoptive parents we give everything we have and our children still don’t “turn out” right. In the movie, Shifu “adopts” Tai Lung and pours everything he has into him, loving him more than he ever loved anyone else, and he turns on him, using what he has learned for evil and not for good. We have to recognize that this is a possibility, but that cannot cause us to stop investing or stop giving our all to our children. We cannot control what they do with what we give them -- we can only do our part and do what God has called us to do with all our hearts.

4) Sometimes all it takes is one person to believe in us -- to say that we are great -- to make us turn into that person. This hit me in two different ways. First of all, I started to think about how little encouragement we as adoptive parents receive. The professionals who are trying to help often are quick to blame us and make us feel like we are not doing the right thing. But what if each of us personally believed that we were the “Dragon Warrior” that was chosen by God to be the advocate and parent of each of our children? What if we believed that we had everything inside of us that it takes to raise them to adulthood? Maybe we don’t have anyone in our lives that is telling us this, but what if God is? Can we hear God’s voice saying “you are THE one to be ______’s mom” or “I have chosen you to be ______’s Dad?” And if we hear that and believe it, then we know that we are exactly what that child needs.

In addition, what if we are the one person who completely believes in our son or daughter when nobody else does? Will that make the difference? I believe that it will. In the movie Shifu, the master, begins the journey not believing at all that Po, the Panda, is anything more than a fat, lazy panda with no possibility or potential to be a Dragon Warrior. But when Oogway, the old turtle, and by the way my favorite character in the movie, is ready to leave this earth, he passes on to Shifu the belief that Po is the Dragon Warrior. His entire approach changes when he believes that Po can do it.... and he begins to treat him that way.

5) Even if didn’t ask for a peach tree, you can do amazing things with a peach if you believe you can. You need to see the movie, but Shitsu was bemoaning the fact that he only had the fat panda to work with. Oogway said something to the effect of “I know you wished for another kind of tree -- an apple tree maybe -- but you have a peach tree to work with. And no matter how good a gardener you are, no matter what you do with that tree, no matter how well you nourish it, it will never produce anything but peaches. But the key is that you need to believe in what you can do with a peach.”

Wow. How many times have we looked our child and secretly grieved the loss that they and we have because of their disability? Regardless of how good we are as parents, no matter what techniques we use, we are never going to have a child that does not have that disability, that genetic disposition, that personality. We are going to have a peach. But oh the amazing things God can do with a peach if we just believe He can.

6) People are not always in our lives as long as we want them to be, but they are there as long as they need to be. Oogway, Shifu’s master, the awesome advice-giving and wise old turtle, has to be done on this earth, long before Shifu believes he is done needing him. But after he goes, Shifu recognizes that all of the things that he has taught him will never go away, but will live within him forever.

I know that some of my readers have lost their parents long before they were ready to -- or other loves ones. People have to leave us, often long before we are ready to let them go. But if we pay attention we realize that regardless of where they are, once they have been inside us, they are never, ever gone.

7) I am what I believe myself to be. Am I a fat old lazy panda or am I the “Dragon Warrior?” How I see myself makes all the difference in the world.

8) Sometimes we limit our children by believing they are destined for something less that what they are. Po’s dad believed that Po was destined to make noodles, just like his good old Dad. And here he had a “Dragon Warrior” right under his own roof. So when Wilson says he is going to be the first Asian president, in a voice so quiet that nobody can here him, I say to him, “yes, sir, Mr. President.” Or when Sadie mentions being a broadcast journalist, I joke with her about the mansion she’ll build me when she is the next Katie Couric. I call Ricardo the next Pele. I don’t ever want my children’s dreams to be smaller than my dreams for them.

9) Learn what motivates your kids and use it, even if it is a weakness. Po loved food, and Shifu finally figured out that was the way to train him. He took his greatest weakness, and used it as a motivator to train him. We as parents can do the same thing if we pay attention, know our children well, and set out to “train them for life” using the things that motivate them.

10) Even when you don’t think they are paying attention, they may copy you exactly when faced with a similar situation. When Po has to fight Tai Lung to save the people of the valley, he uses the exact same techniques that Shifu used to train him. He looked for his weakness, the scroll, and used all the same tricks with the scroll that Shifu used with food to win the battle.

11) A true Dragon Warrior never gives up, even if nobody believes in him and even if people are trying to get rid of him. The number one job of an adoptive child at placement, especially if they are older, is to make sure that the parents get rid of them. They want to get it over with quickly, so their number one goal is to get rejected as fast as possible -- thus extreme testing behaviors. When the movie comes out on DVD I want to buy it and see the scenes again from the beginning when Tigress, Mantis, Crane, Viper and Monkey, along with Shifu, are all trying to get Po the Panda to give up. He just keeps taking beating after beating after beating and comes back for more. This is how we felt during our first year of placement with our two first older children. Every day was like a beating, and every morning we got up and asked for more. And now one of those two kids is a college graduate. ;-)

12) There is no secret ingredient. When Po’s dad finally explains that the secret ingredient to his soup was that there was no secret ingredient, Po figures out why the scroll was blank. The soup tasted better because those who were drinking it believed it was better. I am my own secret ingredient -- who I believe myself to be. And if we believe that there is something deep inside them that is special, and we can get them to believe that, then they can and will accomplish great things.

Wow. I didn’t intend to write that much, and I hope I didn’t ruin the movie for any of you. But there is a lot of power in this movie for us as adoptive parents. It’s a movie about inner strength for us and instilling it in our children. It’s a movie about never giving up no matter what. It’s a movie about seeing and believing the best of others. It’s a movie about doing our best, regardless of the result. It’s about having mentors and being a good one. It’s about loving and being loved. And it is a movie about how God calls each of us to be a “Dragon Warrior” -- it is our destiny -- and our job is to find out our purpose and to live it out, without fear, without giving up, with courage, integrity and determination, so that we, and our children, can become all they were destined to be.