nationality of child not known

I for one am not a big fan of the Family Tree project, and whenever I had to do one in school...it became more evident than ever that I had no heritage...but my amom used to speak to the teacher directly at the beginning of the year and discuss with them the difficulty that I had with this project....and this project was never a requirement for me....even though I used to do one just for the heck of it....Hugs, Brenda

I am a genealogist and I do not want to see family frees taken of schools because it upset so some adoptive parent. Adoptive parents need to know that there adoptive children have roots and can not join the DAR or SAR on their adoptive lines. I if some adoptive children can use their adoptive parent line if they were adopted at birth and do not know their birthparents. Children adopted older know they have a past and foster parents need to face the facts. We geneaogist are the only ones that can tell you you roots. Just my my two cents in. by for now Mary Mumby Ramirez:confused: :confused:

of that. When my daughter was 6 yrs she had the same project although she isnt adopted it disturbed me that some of her classmates did not believe she is native american because she doesnt dress the stereotype.

DO you have child that ever came home crying because their world does not include the biological information they need to complete a grade? I have, and I'll tell you that even though I have grafted my children onto my tree you can still see the grafting tape. Family tree projects should be for older (more understanding) teens or adults. Our school system agreed to stop those project if it is known that a child is adopted !! They instead do family trees of famous people. Which by the way our son (adopted) is a member of John Adams family tree.

I'm not adopted and yet I had similar trouble completing the "family heritage" assignment. Simply because nobody in my family ever cared for geneology and noone knew where any of our ancestors had come from! (Literally, noone even knows the names of my ancestors more than 3 generations back.) Anyway, we "decided" that my heritage was probably German and English. We chose this on the basis of our last name, skin coloring, and a really wild stab at a map of Europe wiht a dart. (Truly!) As one other poster said, how's the teacher going to prove otherwise? Of course it helped that ours wasn't a big-deal project. Just a one-week thing focusing on different countries and some historical events that may caused many people to emigrate from those countries (wars, famine, etc). And it wasn't ever repeated, so I didn't have to remember what I "was" from year to year. It isn't a fair project at all, but I also don't think most teachers are looking for a 20-generation family tree with ethnicities and the names of the boats the people arrived in America on! If you can't get the teacher to change the project, I think it's fair to guess the heritage. (I hate the "family tree" project more - easier to guess a heritage than guess a grandparent's name if you never met them!)

Have you looked at the file. There is many times info in the file that the sw sometimes does not realize they have.

"Children adopted older know they have a past and foster parents need to face the facts" Wow! what a horrible thing to say. My kids have pasts, really ugly ones that are none of the school's business. They live with those scars and don't need these school projects to rub it in their faces that their pasts are a mess. My older children remember their pasts and noone was busy telling them about their heritage. They're American. If parents want their children to have the joy of studying their familiy history, let them do it as a family.

hi,have to agree with lucyjoy on this. My childrens pastsare something they have to deal with and not 'just face the facts'. they have suffered enough. I really havnt given much thought on the whole family tree thing, but im sure it is going to come up soon. what grade do they do them in? Maybe ill keep my kid out of school that day. I dont know. I mean we all had our own personnal horrors in school. I cant imagine what these kids go through when they have to do it. I guess id throw out options for the kids, and see what they want to do, but the minute i feel its causing too much stress. That will be the end of it. But i too was offended by the "face the facts" theory. Sounded more like, "get over it" dadfor2

oppppsss!!! RE-read it, it was more for the adoptive parents.....not sure whats worse though. We are very fully aware that our children have pasts, horrible ones, ones that we hope they never have to go through again. For adoptive parents to 'face the facts'. How many adoptive parents take older children with abuse and neglect in the past and with all the behavioral issues that these children have, say to themselves, "make believe this never happend, there perfect little children with no pasts" Most adoptive parents for older children, try to go in with eyes wide open, again, i say most. Most 'face the facts' that these older kids are coming with issues......they 'face the facts' before they even meet them. I cant believe someone even would say that adoptive parents of older children have to face the facts. i dont know about you, but we can not do anything but 'face the facts'. Its in our face every single day with the behaviors these innocent children have, the issues they bring up, the questions they ask about their birth families and siblings. We dont really have a choice to 'face the facts'. with that said, maybe you need to get the 'facts' on adopting older children before you throw out a hurtful comment like that. dadfor2

My oldest son entered foster care at 2 1/2 years old. Only racial background information was from bmom (Italian). Bdad was desceased prior my son's birth and the bmom was not sure which South or Central American country his family originated from. When we fill out ethnicity questions, we usually indicate, "multi-racial." As for the school project, he faced this one in 1st grade during the Winter Olympics. Out of seven kids in his class, three were adopted. Rather than the family tree project, the teacher had each of the kids pick a country participating in the Olympics. They researched the geography, culture, economics, etc. and shared the information with the rest of the class. My son picked Norway, which is where my grandparents emigrated from. The bonus to the project was the medal count. The kids kept track of how many medals "their" country won over the course of the events. Overall, I thought it was much more educational for the class as a whole than the traditional, "My grandfather was a farmer in Ireland" family tree project. In regard to the comment, "Children adopted older know they have a past and foster parents need to face the facts." It's not the past that is so difficult to face. It's the lack of information regarding the past that is intolerable.

Thank you to everyone who replied to my posting. Your comments have been very helpful. I feel better after hearing from you. Thanks again!!

I am learning disabled and can not spell , so my last post might me hard to read. b by for now Mary Mumby Ramirez

Thankfully, the schools in our area have done away with the projedts like family tree, guess whose baby picture is whose, share your ancestor's country project! The teachers here are given special training in being sensitive to the diversity of students! This would include not only adoption issues but things like children from single parent homes , homelesss children, foster children, children from divorced families, etc. It was not this way 15-20 years ago. If your schools are still doing these types of projects. I would write a nice letter to his teacher each year reminding him/her about the inappropriateness of such projects. If the teacher wants the kids to study a country, GREAT! They can all pick a country they would like to visit and make a report on that country. there are plenty of alternatives!!!

foster parents, If you are so closed minded that you never wanted to find out any thing about genealogy. Teaching familyhistory can be done by teaching oral history and cultural diversity. Children learn to investigate thir own ethnic backcultural hertage. By not teaching family in schoosl we genealogist will not pass it to our heirs. Children can learn that all families are the not the same, some children will come from gay families. Genenlogy. com is a good place to start I got a lot of good ideas from them andI use Family Tree Maker. I found out that teaching genealogy is not just filling out charts as I spend most of my time doing. If you still have a problem with genealogists.Guess what, we genelogist are working with adoptes for Open Records. Maybe that is what you foster parents are fearful of us genelogists.Just my two cents by for now Mary Mumby Ramirez BSL2@aol.com

What are you talking about?! "Us foster parents" do not care if you open records. What difference would that possibly make to us? We have lots of records full of details of the brutality our children suffered and all the different people they live with. We know where therir siblings are that they were seperated from because of this abuse. The trauma these projects cause is much more harmful then any value they can get from being forced to do these projects. This isn't about us being afraid of anything, it's about saving our children from useless pain. And I, personally, am much more interested in where I'm going then where I come from. History teaches valuable lessons about past mistakes and I see scientific value in genetic research, but for most of us, a family tree isn't necessary. I also don't particularly find it interesting. If it's something that interests you, feel free to teach it to your children. I don't know what your problem is with foster/adopt parents, but I find the manner that your speaking to us very offensive.