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Adoption
S/O of What Box post
What I've noticed on here quite frequently (and one of the reasons why I like this board so much) is that something that I've been turning over in my head gets raised as a question or something very similar.
Okay, so here's my spin off. Background for those who don't know....adopted DD from China in 2003, back a few weeks from our return visit. When we were preparing for our return trip, one of the "suggestions" that we received from our tour guide was to begin thinking of our family (not just DD) as Chinese/American.
I "get" why it was helpful to think of ourselves that way while in China, but am I missing something? For those of you who have adopted children of other races or ethnicities, how would you describe your family to someone who asked? I actually don't believe I've ever been asked the composition of my family. Anyone who knows me knows that DD is from China. Other people I guess would just assume if I told them I had a daughter that she's a bio child and if they saw me with DD would either assume that DH is Chinese or that DD is adopted.
Don't think I'm too weird here....just still absorbing and processing everything that happened in China.
BB&J
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Re: S/O of What Box post
I absolutely get it. Never in my life have I experienced as much racism, first hand, as I have in the last three months. And, that doesn't mean that it is an every day thing but even the few occasions are more than I can ever remember experiencing before G.
I think that sometimes, I fail to see G as being black - I think that because he is a part of my norm - it's a weird mental thing - I know he is black but he is now a normal extension of myself and I think that sometimes I forget he is black.
When out as a family - I fully realize how much we are a multi-racial family. The positive attention we receive from AA persons in our community is amazing. The negative attention we receive from white people is disheartening.
Sorry can't help still waiting on DD but she will look like us.
People that don't know will think that she is our birth daughter. In fact my mother took pictures to her office and people that knew we were adopting told her that DD looked like her.?
My former supervisor's daughter adopted an AA girl. When the girl was about 4 she asked her parents why they are white and why she is brown. The mom said, "Some families are like vanilla ice cream, all white. Some families are like chocolate ice cream, all brown. Our family is like the chocolate vanilla twist ice cream." The young girl accepted this and then always ate the twist ice cream when they went out for ice cream.
I think the mom did a great job of helping her daughter realize that there all types of families and it is not that one is better or worse, just different.
I have to admit, my husband and I do think of our family as German (me and my husband)-Egyptian (me)-Peruvian (our child)-American, even though we don't even have a referral yet. We're the weird ones, though, I think. I guess it's because of my unique and strong ethnic background (both my parents are immigrants) that I strongly gravitate to the idea of adding on another ethnicity to our family's dynamic. My husband is also on board, and just today we celebrated Peruvian independence day with a special meal.
All that being said, I think it might be a bigger adjustment for a family that never made it a point to celebrate their ethnicity. My husband's family can't quite understand why we want to make Peruvian culture a part of our everyday life. They believe that our child will be "American" through the adoption, and don't see why it is important to us to blend their native culture into our family.
I think this is something that will take them time to get used to, but once they see all the wonderful dimensions the new culture brings, and hopefully how our child relates to them, I think it will make more sense. Since you adopted your daughter at a young age, I don't know if it's as elemental, but I wonder if there's not a part of her that would innately feel comfortable with Chinese traditions/culture in your home.