About a year after we brought our kids into our family through adoption my niece who was 6 at the time pointed at our middle child and said “Aunt he sure keeps his tan a long time”. It never occurred to me that she did not realize that he was bi-racial but had strong African American features. If you did not know that his brother and sister were Caucasian and that they all had the same biological mother than you would look at him and see a beautiful black child. Ten years later thinking of that day when we explained to my niece that one of our children was black still brings a smile to our face.
My family never referred to a person by their ethnicity or skin color so I guess it never came up even better she never gave it two thoughts. I guess I just assumed that everyone knew it without it being said.
With our kids when we sat the kids down and explained to the children that they all had the same tummy mom just different tummy dad’s. We then did something a little odd, we all poked our fingers with a glucometer tester and we all took a piece of paper and put a little drop of blood on it. Then we mixed up the pages after cute band-aid’s of course, and asked if anyone could tell me what blood drop’s belonged to who. Well no one could and that was the point, we all have the same things on the inside and what is on the outside is not what matters.
I know some of you are thinking why did we poke each kid, first my hubby is a diabetic so the kids have all seen it done before and everyone wanted to poke their own fingers like dad does. If they did not want to do it they did not have to I would have figured out a different way to get the point across, but luckily for me they all wanted to do it.
From that day forward when the kids talk about someone they met or friends at school, they will describe the color of their hair, the color of their eyes and other physical attributes but not one of them ever say what the skin color is.