Please see Part One of this blog for updates on adoption blog writers and highlights from late March and early April.
In Feeling Different from Family? I muse on finding the right balance between acknowledging our daughters’ different ethnicity and heritage and overemphasizing them. My daughter puts my fears at least temporarily at rest with this zinger—check it out.
In How Do You Introduce Yourself to Your Own Child? -Part One: Prepare Them
I talk about things adoptive parents can do, even from a distance, to prepare their child for the transition, such as sending photos, tapes, and even a blanket with the parents’ scent on it.
In Introducing Yourself to Your Child-Part Two: The Meeting I talk about how important it is to go slowly and not overwhelm the child, and how ideally the interaction between previous caregiver and new parent gives the older baby or child “permission” to accept nurturing from the new parent.
Arrival Parties describes the festive reception at the airport often staged by eager friends and relatives, and explains why the adopted child may not be feeling festive.
Slow Down, Grandma discusses the tensions that may arise when grandparents and other well-meaning people are eager to hold and care for the baby at a time when the child has not fully grasped just who the new parents are.
Adjustment at Home –during the day everyone said how beautifully my daughter had adjusted, but oh, those nights when she grieved for her foster mother and didn’t sleep until 5 a.m.!
Preferred Parent? discusses how some children, adopted or not, seem to seek out one parent for comfort, and how that may change with time and with the kind of comfort sought. I talk about the jealousy this may cause among adoptive parents, but about the normalcy of this phenomenon also.
In the third week of April I also shared some thoughts and links about the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech. I am still conflicted about writing those blogs at all. Part of me feels that the shooter’s race should be irrelevant, and agrees with those who say it might have remained irrelevant if minority groups hadn’t been quick to accuse the media of playing up the shooter’s race, and if Koreans and Korean-Americans hadn’t apologized for Seung-Hui Cho’s actions. Nevertheless, I do not believe that if the shooter had been born in a European country but had been a legal US resident for over a decade, and a graduate of US schools, the media would have shown his country of origin’s flag superimposed upon pictures of the killer and his actions as they showed a Korean flag behind Cho. I touch on incidents which lead adoptive parents to fear a racist backlash affecting their Asian children.
I also wanted to explore what might make individuals or groups feel guilty about or apologize for the actions of someone they have never met. I think there is a sense of group identity at work, which differs from that held by many Americans and which may in part explain the negative views certain groups express about transcultural adoption.
Since my reading and membership in other communities tells me this is affecting Korean-Americans and adoptive families, I decided to bring these issues to the discussion here at families.com….but they are blogs I wish I’d never had to write. I invite your comments.
Backlash Against Korean Adoptees/Families?
Group Apologies and Ethnic Shame?–No Thanks
Group Apologies and Ethnic Shame Part Two: Can We Understand Each Other?