Kind of HT on Monday: Race / adopted / bio family

crystalpopcorn

I will miss HTT because of work tomorrow. ?

DH and I have been leaning heavily toward Korea. ?However, since we have time, we are also exploring other countries and now DA. ?We are sorting through several concerns as we choose our path. ?I would like to get your thoughts:

1. ?We have a bio son. ?Will the adopted child feel like the bio child is favored, or will our bio son feel like the adopted child is receiving special treatment? ?We would obviously love and treat them equally, but kids can develop perceptions on their own. ? I am hoping someone has experience building a family through bio and adoption, or grew up in a combined family.

2. ?Race question #1: ?We are caucasian. ?Do you think that the combination of looking completely different and being adopted will make the adopted child feel out of place? ?

3. ?Race question #2: ?Do you think that having one caucasian child and one asian/hispanic/AA/Biracial child will create a more difficult time for both kids in school? ?I'm sure our kids would view each other as siblings, but are we setting them up to have a hard time with other kids? ?We all know kids can be cruel. ?

4. ?Age: Do you think age of the adopted child matters since we have a bio son (he will likely be 2-3 when DC#2 comes home)? ?Would it be more natural or promote better bonding if the adopted child is a newborn as opposed to 9-12 months when he/she joins our family??

Do you have any other thoughts on combining biological children and adopted children and races? ?I should add that we are close friends with several multi racial families, but all of the children are bio.

Thanks.?

jacksjerseygirl

Gonna be a long response :-) 

An organization in our area that specializes in the psychology of adoption and working through the different issues that arise with adoption had a workshop the previous weekend. It was really great, and great to see other families with their bio and adopted children (as children were welcome to the workshop and spent the day with each other).

1) yes children develop their own perceptions (regardless if they are adopted or biological) about their relationship with their parents, and their parents relationship with the sibilings. There isn't anything you can do about this but promote a healthy, positive relationship between all of your children and have open communication where you can talk about anything with each other.

2) the adopted child may feel out of place if they are raised in an environment where they are made to feel out of place. From my research and discussions with families comprised of different races - home should be a safe haven for children (no matter if they of a different race than everyone else in the house, have different body shape, different hair color or different hobbies than anyone else in their home). A child will only feel out of place in their home environment if they are made to feel that way. That isn't to say that at about the age of 6 that they will start to express that they 'feel' different. But this is where as a parent you step in and acknowledge their feelings and discuss them. The US AA population is comprised of, something like, 17% - as one AA friend of mine put it to me - she feels left out, from a physical appearance, a lot in her middle class neighborhood and corporate environment workplace. Does that make sense?

3) I think having one caucasian child and one child who is asian, black, hispanic or any other race will have it's ups and downs. Once again I think a lot of this comes back to how pro-active the parents are and how open their lines of communication are with their children. You can't stop everything and you can't solve everything - but you can listen and acknowledge and try to find productive solutions for your children.

Story: A caucasian woman I met at our workshop has one adopted daughter who is white/hispanic (but looks white) and another adopted daughter who is white/black (but has very dark skin). They are currently 9 and 7 - they are very close siblings. Race and heritage is something their family openly talks about and CELEBRATES. This past summer the girls picked up on the Michael Jackson song ... baby, it doesn't matter if you are black or white. They sang it all summer long.

One day they stopped at a gas station, the Indian gas station attendant looked in the back of the car and said "one black, one white - how can this be". He was clearly being racist. The mother ignored him and rolled up the window. The girls became upset that the mother didn't say something. She and her husband had done such a great job with having open communication about race and their differences as well as their SIMILARITIES that the girls felt betrayed that their mother did not stand up for THEIR family. The girls insisted that she turn the car around and go back to the station and tell the guy that he was being rude and that they didn't appreciate it.

So she turns the car around. She pulls back up. The girls tell her that she has to sing the song. The mother rolls down the window and tells the attendent "I think you were referring to whether the one white and one black girls were sisters and my daughter. They are indeed sisters and they are my daughters. We do not appreciate your rudeness". The girls then kept saying 'sing it mom, sing it to him". So the three of them sang to the Indian gas station attendent the MJ song ... baby doesn't matter if you are black or white ....

The moral to the story is this. You as a parent are responsible for creating a healthy environment for your child. You are responsible for creating open communication lines early on. You are responsible for instilling in themselves a sense of pride about who they are (adopted or biological). There are tough issues that have to be addressed (regardless if your child is adopted or biological) - if you ignore them and try to pretend they don't exist you are not validating your childs feelings. This particular family has done a wonderful job, IMO, of creating a loving, open communication environment for their daughters in which they not only have pride in their individual selves but also have pride and respect for each other. Differences don't always have to be a bad thing, they can be celebrated too.

Of course there will be bullies through out your child's life that might make fun of your Asian child's face or eyes, or your hispanic child's dark hair, or your black child's skin color, or your hefty child, or your akward looking child, or your child with a big nose, or your child with glasses, or your child who is extra tall or extra thin or particularly short in stature.

I think that children should be added to a family in a "natural" order (such as they should come into the home in age order, and should not be closer in age than 9 months). I think that an older sibling is going to have rival feelings and even angry feelings for a younger, new sibling no matter the age. This happens with biological siblings as well.

I think my over-all feelings towards your questions is this: the issues you raise are valid and good ones. But the solutions to those issues are not much different than ones you would use as a parent for any other issue not related to adoption or race. Certainly race has to be validated for your child and any issues arising from that has to be validated for your child with open communication. But this is more about parenting in general than about adoption/race issues. The skill set you use as a parent for a variety of issues will and can also be used to address issues that pertain to adoption and race.

What I have learned through my workshops on this issue is that a lot of time parents themselves are the ones that are over sensitive to the issue of race and adoption. It's almost like 'we' are looking for any issue our child has to be related to race or adoption but often times it really is more so related to the natural ebb of growing up (ie: sibiling rivalry or fighting, school bullies, the out of place feeling we all have had at one time or another, and so forth).

KWIM? Does that make sense at all?

crystalpopcorn

Yep, that makes sense. ?Thank you for all the thought you put into that. ?

I know it comes down to parenting. ?As a parent, I want to make sure that I am thinking through as many issues as I can before finalizing this decision. I would hate to make a conscious decision that will end up making things difficult for my kids. ?We do want more than one child. ?We just need to figure out the best path to make that happen.

jacksjerseygirl

I know what you mean. When DH and I originally talked about DA over five years ago - we both said no to other races. It took a lot of research and identifying what our 'hangs up' where and figuring out where those hang ups came from before we found our path.

I think that as you come up with these issues you have to step back and ask yourself, "are these issues related solely to adoption or race" or are there other similar situations that could come if race and adoption were not the issues. It was really interesting at my last workshop to hear current adoptive parents of racially diverse family talk about these very issues.

One of the mothers talked about how she over-reacted about a kid in school making fun of her kid for being adopted - saying that 'adopted people are dumb'. When it got down to it - the kid would have used anything 'people with glasses are dumb' .. 'fat people are dumb' ... 'kids with freckles are dumb' ...

I know this will be our biggest challege as our child grows. Not becoming, ourselves, overly sensitive to race and adoption. To look at issues that are seemingly related to race or adoption - stepping back - and seeing if this is one of those 'normal' ebbs that come along. And handling just as we would handle any other related situation with bullies, sibiling fighting, and name calling.

EmmieB

this is all I can tell you: I have a cousin who is adopted and she and her brother (my bio cousin) were raised as twins. I've asked both of them outright if they ever felt that one was loved more or wanted and more and their only response was gender-related. Sometimes Kala felt that their Dad bonded with Asher more because they were boys and sometimes the opposite was true - but it was when they were young and that's generally to be expected. They also always knew and Kala's birth family is a very big part of all of their lives.

 

So yes- it's like the PP said - it all comes down to parenting.

crystalpopcorn

Thank you all for the responses. ?I still have no idea which direction we will go, but you have given me lots to think about.

speak-ez

I have the SAME questions so thank you for posting! I can't read all the responses now but I will be back. We were very open to race with the adoption but had an agreement that if our first was a different race then we'd want our 2nd to also be a different race than us. Now that we are having a bio I'm not sure what I think/feel.