Hi everyone.
Sorry for the delay in my blog posts. School has started here, and it’s taken me a little while to get settled. But, I should be back on track now.
Our next question:
My daughter was born in China and was adopted by my husband and myself at 11 1/2 months. She has been part of our family for almost 2 years now.
I have been trying to educated myself on dealing with ignorant questions from adults and her peer group as she gets into the school system. However, I have been getting questions from very young children, and I am really caught off guard by this. I know children are young and want to learn, but I do not want to hurt my daughter’s feelings by answering questions in front of her, so I am looking for advice.
Two situations:
1. A 5 year old girl was playing with my daughter at the park, and while she was pushing her in the swing, she looked at me and asked where did I live. After I told her, she asked where my daughter lived. I explained with me that she was my daughter. She did not understand how we did not look alike or what adoption was. I did the best I could to answer questions about adoption, but I have to admit this made me a little uncomfortable talking about this in front of my daughter. How do you answer innocent questions without hurting your daughter or talking about her life so matter of factly?
2. A 7 yr old boy was playing with my daughter. He looked at her and then at us, and said to her “hey, you look Chinese”. She looked right back at him and said “I AM”, and kept right on talking to him and playing with him until he left. I asked if she had any questions or wanted to talk about anything, and she said “No Mama”. Although I was very proud of her, I also could see that she was troubled by this type of question coming out of the blue.I realize that there are always going to be ignorant questions, I just did not think an almost 3yo would have to deal with them so early.
Any advice for how to handle children’s as well as adult’s questions would be apprecaited. Also, I would love to hear some of your “pat” answers to these types of questions.
