The other day, we took Tommy to a craft show. He loved looking at all the crafts- knitted blankets, crocheted stuffed animals, wooden toys... tons of stuff he would have loved to take home! At one point, we were approached by a woman, who made the comment, "Wow, your son is beautiful! He looks a lot more like Daddy than Mommy though."
As you may know us, or see from our pictures, Mike and Tommy are Caucasian and Kit is Asian/Pacific Islander. In adoption, and especially in transracial/transcultural adoption, comments or questions like this may occur quite frequently.
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We are proud of our identity as an adoptive family; and oftentimes when comments like this arise, we will briefly share that Tommy came into our lives through open adoption. We want to teach Tommy, through example, that we are proud of our story and are comfortable talking about the way in which we became a family. In many cases, when people hear that our family was formed through adoption, they begin to share how a friend or family member has been touched by adoption!
While our family has been touched by adoption, we're also simply a family. Depending on the interaction, there are many times when we simply acknowledge a comment, thank someone for their compliment, and move along... adoption does not even become a part of the conversation. As much as we want to teach our children to be comfortable talking about adoption, we also want them to know that their lives are not open books, that their adoption stories are theirs and they can choose to share this or not with others.
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But back to our story at the craft show...
So in this particular situation, we elected to share. Kit said to the woman, "He is a cutie, isn't he? He looks just like his birth parents."
Her response surprised us, "Oh, didn't you want your own?"
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There is still a certain naivete around adoption. Even through taking adoption classes and having many conversations with others around adoption, there are still certain terms and phrases surrounding adoption that create an internal yucky feeling. We'll list a few here:
your own- used to differentiate between biological children and those who have been adopted
give up- used to describe relinquishment or termination of parental rights
real parent- used to describe a birth parent
You can learn more about positive adoption language here: Adoptive Families Magazine
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Again, back to our story at the craft show...
After a brief pause (mainly to manage that yucky feeling), Mike responded to the woman's "didn't you want your own" comment with, "I gotta tell ya, infertility was probably the best thing that ever happened to us... it brought us this little guy."
The woman smiled and said, "Yes, you all look very happy."
And she's right... we are very happy...
As part of our adoption application, we had to take online courses. This topic was one of those courses, and we are so glad we had to take it! They suggest this: the depth of your response depends on A) if your child is within earshot, and B) the closeness of your relationship with that person. It is amazing what comes out of peoples' mouths...personal questions, assumptions, etc. Makes you want to give your kid an extra-tight hug and be thankful, once again, that you are a family!
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