Many adoptees report feeling part of their immediate families, but never quite feeling like “part of the gang” at extended family gatherings. Especially when these reunions are of people who live far from each other and don’t know each other that well, much of the talk may center on who looks like who, on memories of someone your child never met, on family history and ethnic traditions which your child may be conscious of not being a part of. Even if your child is used to looking different from you and your spouse, being the only brown child in a sea of twenty blond cousins drives the difference home.
Family members who haven’t been able to get to know your child as a person may focus exclusively on the adoptive status or ethnicity of the child. While well-meaning, they may tend to speak of the child as somehow exotic, rather than as one of the family.
Cheri Register, author of Are Those Kids Yours? and Beyond Good Intentions, reported that at weddings and reunions relatives would say to her daughters, “Oh, you must be Cheri’s little Korean girls” . She and her daughters kept wishing a cousin would adopt so there would be another person at these affairs who looked like her daughters.
Ideally, of course, parents would strive to connect their children over distances. Phone calls can help the relatives see the child as a unique person. The parent can write letters describing their young child’s personality.
Relatives can also call or send postcards. My husband’s grandmother never failed to send our daughter postcards just as she did our biological son. She always used our daughter’s full name—American name, Korean name, family surname.
For relatives with whom you haven’t been in contact, you can write or call before the reunion, a “looking-forward-to-seeing-you” message that also shares information about your child’s activities, likes and dislikes. Depending on the child’s age, they can speak on the phone too. This will help your relatives think of your child as an individual, not as “the adopted one”.
If your child is likely to be extremely shy or fearful of separation, you may wish to remind your relatives ahead of time that this is not unusual in adopted children and you want to be the one to deal with it without it being drawn attention to. (It seems there never fails to be some relative who exclaims, “what’s a big girl like you doing here with mommy instead of playing with the other children!”)
Before the reunion, show your children pictures of the relatives. If you have a memorable story (that’s not too embarrassing), tell it. It will help your child remember the person and they will have something to talk about. It can also subtly demonstrate to your relatives that your child is also sharing in, and contributing to, the family history. Try to think ahead of time of who your child will meet, and if there is a common interest they can talk about.
At the reunion, don’t get so engrossed in talking that your child feels left out. Keep an eye on him or her. Introduce him or her to relatives, perhaps mentioning something they have in common that they can talk about.
Don’t push your child. If you sense your child is becoming too stressed, take a break. Depending on the setting, you can withdraw to your hotel room, return to the house of the relative you are staying at “to get something”, suggest an activity such as swimming or an organized game which won’t require small talk, or simply take a short walk with your child.
Please see these related blogs:
Attaching with Extended Family
Grandparent Favoritism: My Unnecessary Worry