An age to begin anew

Adopted Ethiopians strive to adjust to life in Lexington

Dawit Katz, 16, sat with teammates after track practice at Lexington High School. Katz is learning English at Bunker Hill Community College and takes home-school classes. (PHOTOS BY JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

LEXINGTON - Ask how old the Katz children are, and you may need some time to get the answer. The four siblings have all been adopted from Ethiopia, and figuring out their Ethiopian age, US age, and school age require some calculations.

Like many in the Horn of Africa nation, they lack accurate birth certificates. The traditional Ethiopian calendar, which is seven to eight years behind that used in the West, only adds to the confusion.

"Next year, I will be in my old grade," Yordanos, 15, said recently in the family's living room. She laughed when she realized how it sounded and stretched out on the sofa with her brother and sisters in a tangle of lanky arms and legs.

Yordanos, Semhal, 8, Hebrom, 13, and Dawit, 16, are restarting their lives in Lexington. They were adopted in the last four years by Jo Hannah Katz, an elementary school teacher in town and a single parent, and it didn't take long for her to realize that they were not the only Ethiopian children who are struggling to fit in.

After adopting her children, Katz didn't know exactly how old they were or in which grade they should be at school.

They also face challenges familiar to many other foreign adoptees: They look different, talk differently, and come from a culture a world away from the lawns and minivans of Lexington.

"They have a friend. This kid is 17 in Ethiopia, and here he's 12," Katz said. Changing his age "was the only way he could go into the seventh grade, which was the appropriate grade for him."

The number of Ethiopian children adopted each year by US citizens has increased from 82 a decade ago to more than 1,200 last year. War, poverty, and famine have produced an abundance of orphans, especially older children, eligible for overseas adoption, and the Ethiopian government has eased the process.

Katz's journey to fit four Ethiopian children into suburban America began more than a year before she adopted her youngest daughters in 2005, Hebrom and Semhal. Their older siblings, Dawit and Yordanos, came two years later. Before they were reunited, the children would telephone one another each month. Katz quickly realized the strength of the bonds between the brother and sisters.

"As I would hear their voices, they became part of the family," she said. "They were increasingly becoming part of our lives through these phone calls."

Semhal, 8, was desperate to see her big brother Dawit, "I missed playing with him."

On arrival in the United States, all the children had X-rays to determine their bone age. Up to 47 percent of Ethiopian children under age 5 are stunted, so a medical examination, anecdotes, and observations at home and school were used to come up with a fuller age assessment.

But settling on a number is one thing, and fitting in at school is another. Older children who have received limited education in their home country may be compatible with a teenage peer group, but may be placed with younger classmates.

That's exactly the situation Dawit, 16, faced. He arrived in September 2007 with the English skills of a second- or third-grader. Katz worried that he would sink if he were thrown straight into high school, as school officials had initially suggested.

Instead, Dawit has been learning English at Bunker Hill Community College and taking home-school classes. He plans to start high school in the fall. Until then, he's trying to adapt to the polite and subdued isolation of the suburbs.

"In Ethiopia, when you go outside there is a lot of people," he said. "They are walking or some people running. The thing is, in this country there are no people in the street. Everything is quiet. Everyone is driving."

Dawit's younger sisters are already attending local schools.

Yordanos is tall, striking, and articulate. Her round eyes fix a determined gaze. She has been in the United States for only six months and is eager to fit in.

Yordanos is 15, but in the seventh grade. She is in classes with students two and three years younger because of gaps in her schooling in Ethiopia, not a lack of ability. Despite the bustle of the middle school hallways, she has also faced the isolation of being out of synch with her peers.

"I think they don't want to be friends with me because I'm 15," she said.

After a childhood in Ethiopia where age was often unknown or irrelevant, Yordonas has been frustrated by the ongoing curiosity about her birth date and background. In return, she said, she's been struck by the well-fed frames and sophistication of her 12-year-old classmates."They don't look like 12," she said. "They look like 16. They look like 17."

The Katz children are among a new wave of older adopted children who are arriving amid a big shift in attitudes about adoption, said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a not-for-profit organization devoted to improving adoption policy and practice. "It's revolutionary for people to think that you can actually adopt, love, and bring a child into your family, a child forever, who is 7 or 17."

Pertman has called on schools and communities to recognize that many older adopted children are dealing with multiple challenges.

"It isn't age per se that necessarily poses those challenges," he said. "It's what the kids experience before they reach this age."

Many children have experienced trauma, grief, and loss before they arrive. "It's not the children's fault and they should not be made to pay a price," he said.

Katz knew it wasn't going to be easy. But she wasn't ready to stop being a mother after her birth daughter, Stanzie, left for college, "People often ask me how can I do this, and I say how can I not." Her father, relatives, and the community provided much-needed support.

She is now the mother of an instant family. They just call her Mom, and her warm, cluttered house is filled with the noisy footsteps, homework debris, and cheerful banter of a brother and sisters.

When the children are asked what they want to do, their eyes dart upward toward the ceiling as if they are pulling down a long list: Semhal wants to be a runner or a veterinarian, Dawit a movie actor, Hebrom a doctor. Yordanos wants to be a chemist or an astronaut, she said. "I want to go to Jupiter. I know it's difficult."

Katz is optimistic about the future for her children.

"Through the ups and downs, the most important thing is they are all together," she said.

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