POV on PBS

I watched "Off and Running." The birthparent issues really derailed her life for a while. I think it wouldn't have been an issue as big as it became if her aparents had provided more role models of her race. The adoptee really thought she could get a crash course in what it meant to be black from her bfamily and that didn't happen. She said she knew more about what it means to be white and jewish rather than black. I'll have to catch the other show sometime this week. The comments on the PBS website are something else. The majority of the adoptive parents who posted seem to be taking the whole thing the wrong way... I think more training needs to be conducted before allowing people to adopt internationally.

I watched both programs and had mixed reactions, but was frustrated mainly with both. "Off and Running" was particularly painful for me at points... I kept thinking, why were her parents letting her essentially run away and be homeless! I think a lot of that was just their parenting "style"... which was very lax and a style I don't identify with. I don't agree that she needed more AA role models in her life though. I think her older adopted AA brother was a good example of a child in the same family who didn't have the same gut reactions she had. He had no need to band together with AA high school friends and ostracize himself from his family. I think perhaps the parents took this difference in children for granted and just assumed things would work out smoothly for their daughter as it had for their adopted AA son, who stayed in school, went on to ivy league college, and maintained a very close relationship with their mom. Because my daughter is part Asian I was interested in Cha Jung Hee's story. I worried particularly about her age in making the transition. I still think the orphanage made a tough call by keeping her such a stable Chinese home for so long and then rushing her off to America. She had very real bonds with her foster family in China and I think this added to her pain and sense of loss. Overall the story was powerful and I would like to know how she is today. I still wonder how the transition might have been stunted had a Chinese speaking camera crew not been tagging along on the trip... they really smoothed the hotel temper tantrums out and I think if they hadn't been there it would have had a much harsher ending.

She didn't have any adult AA role models in her life from what I could see. IMO it's a bad idea to let the child find her own role models because they tend to gravitate to their own age group and it might not be the best choice and they might not get what they need. The reason it might not be the best choice is if the child was isolated from their own race they might buy into the negative stereotypes that are out there of what it means to be their race. It should not be solely a child's job to find their identity... the parent should assist in finding & securing that identity. Plus having same race role models all along may have prevented her cutting off contact with her mom’s and going on this epic journey… the journey would have been made bit by bit instead of all at once and wouldn’t have been so traumatic for everyone. The difference between the son and the daughter could be a personality issue or it could be a gender one. With my two kids I'm always getting questions from my DD and none from my son regarding their respective birth families. My DD is part Asian as well and she asks alot & I mean alot of questions about that. It's not something we can leave her to her own devices to find out about. We've already dealt with some of the stereotypes about Asians for her...

It's hard to tell how it really went. They can only show so much in the doc. The parents may have tried harder than it seemed to get her to come home (I know I would've!). Or maybe they did feel like they had to let her work it out her own way. I don't think it was a good idea to send her to a school where the was the only AA kid. She did have her one girl friend who wasn't white and they obviously bonded over being the only kids of color in their school. I get wanting to send her to a Jewish school, good school or whatever but I think you have to think holistically. They really didn't go into whether they had close black friends or neighbors that they hung out with, etc so hard to know if she had any adult, black role models. Again, hard to tell because the film didn't dig *too* deep but the moms seemed pretty supportive of their daughter finding her bfamily and they seemed like a very open family, in general, but they seemed a teeny bit defensive and hurt that she was thinking about it so much and taking her bmom's rejection so hard. Like they were supportive to a point and then they wanted her to get over it a bit. But in their defense, she did seem like she was letting it take over her life and that must've been sad and frustrating for them. I was so glad to see she was getting therapy. I hope she gets to meet her birth family. The update video shows her in a better place, it seemed. I thought it was a very good film and definitely hard to watch in places. It did leave me wanting to know more (like how did the parents react when she was pg, did she ever move back home before college).

Did anyone else notice that she went from being almost the ONLY child of color from K through middle school and then in high school they put her in a school where EVERY kid was a child of color. I can only imagine how that messed with her head. I'm sure in her younger years she felt like she wasn't "like" any of the kids racially, but she was like them in mannerisms etc. Then they switch her to that HS and she looks like many of the kids, but has never socialized in groups that are completely made up of people of color so she feels like a social alien. It seemed like some of her friends were ok with teaching her about socially being a person of color, but who knows how the rest of them treated her. She was also in NYC wasn't she? She was AA, being raised in a 2 mom household, and she was Jewish. Clearly it CAN work, because it did work, and worked well for her older brother! (Princeton? I can dream right?)In many experiences I have had, when females get to their late teens, young child bearing age, they really struggle with their adoption identity. I've seen it time after time, even biological siblings who were placed together, the sister had a very rough time, the brother could have cared less. I think it's the direct identification with the birth mother etc. My parents divorced, and I was raised by my father and step mother. I had almost no contact with my Mom till I was in college. My sister and I both started relationships with her at that point. I had a great relationship with my Mom. Since we've adopted, I've struggled greatly with my relationship with my Mom. I'm a parent now and as a parent, she left us for my father to raise. I can't imagine. It's very hard to reconcile my own feelings as a mother, with my feelings of being left by my mother. I think this is why females can have a harder time than males with processing their adoption.That said, we do need to work harder to find more situations where our sons are not the minority. We are searching out an AA church and plan to go into the city more. Transracial adoption is more than bringing a child in your culture, and it's more than exposing them to their culture as they live in yours. It's about going into their world and showing them you embrace it as your own. Or something?

I want to state that I saw all 3 documentaries....by far I was very fascinated with the one last tuesday night (I just watched it on my DVR) "in the matter of Cha Jung He" from all of them...that said With the first on Woi ai Nai Mommy to me was so "cold"....from the orphanage director in China telling Faith how she needs to act now and to totally forget her name to the home that she went in....NOW, I do believe the family loves all their children, I think some of what I thought was "coldness" was northeastern differences to me...(I'll say that only because I have family that live in NJ and the way they talk albeit with an Spanish accent and mannerisms are similar) "Off and Running" I had issues with the way the moms were appearing to let her live on the streets...(now maybe Avery was already 18 and the moms thought that she needed her space as a young adult...but still it's so different culturally and parenting wise then if that would have happened in my family....as in my mother would have hunted me down and brought me back home by the ear if needed :arrow: ) however, I do know that editing and what they show may not show the whole picture. I'm wondering adult wise, since they lived in NY, how come there didn't seem to be more AA adults connected to the family? "in the matter of Cha Jung Hee" was excellent. I hope you all see it, I thought it was just fascinating....I found the "trying to save a child and give a child a 'lucky' " life from the Korean side to be interesting....

Yeah. I really liked the whole family, but I could not understand why she got to be a teenager without having black friends or black role models, and then went to an all black (or almost all black?) school. It just seemed like her parents should have been proactive about exposing her to black people when she was younger. The parents came off as so smart and thoughtful and such excellent communicators, but when she went through her breakdown, they seemed completely unprepared and unable to respond. I feel like there was a lot more going on that we didn't see in the documentary. I would really like to watch it again.

I thought it was sad that Avery didn't even know that one of her mothers had braided her hair as a young girl. I think that can (in my idealistic views on parenting a girl) an important part of bonding and building self esteem for a girl. Did anyone else feel like Avery was slightly parent like toward her younger brother?

For some reason, I thought that Avery chose to switch schools because she wanted a more diverse school. Something made me think that was her choice not that her parents switched her. And with the braiding, what I got from that was that she was saying Yeah, mom braided my hair but it wasn't that great. Can I go to a professional now? But maybe I missed something. I agree w/ you Quesita that they were so great and then were stunned when she started having problems. I guess they just didn't expect for her to be thrown for a loop like that when she wasn't getting the responses she wanted/needed from her bmom. They are obviously great parents-look at all 3 smart, articulate, thoughtful kids. I hope I do as well!I think y'all are right about the girl thing. We like to process a lot don't we?!

Nope, she def had no idea her mother braided her hair, and then she said, She did? Well can she do it good? styles and stuff that's in? or something like that and her Mom said, no, she just did basic braiding for you, but she would braid your hair all the time when you were young. I can't remember what she called her other Mom...something besides Momma. Memaw or something? The little guys across the street were over one day with their Mom and I saw their other Mom driving up and I said, Oh, Mom's home, and they looked at me like I had two heads and said, That's MAMA...like I actually didn't know her name...it was so cute.

Well, I thought that the parents, while apparently caring and open to the notion of Avery being in contact with her birthfamily, were completely oblivious about why she was struggling so much. They talked in platitudes, in code, without coming out and saying that maybe she wanted to identify more with her black self. To them, it appeared most of her problems came with wanting knowledge about her adoption and birthfamily.I was just shocked at how selfish they were. They lacked empathy towards her, imo. Instead of feeling sadness that their only daughter was not at their wedding, they were angry. They were the prime example of how not to be a TRA parent - they apparently exposed her to NO black role models, no black culture, no black friends. For being so educated, how ignorant is that?I felt so much for Avery. It is truly impressve to me that she pulled through, with seemingly little aid from her parents. As for Rafi, I wonder if the fact that he was biracial may have had something to do with the fact that he did not go through a similar traumatic experience. His personality, obviously, also played a large part. I was disappointed (though perhaps somewhat understanding of the fact) that he didn't feel that he could tell his friends that he had two moms, but preferred to tolerate their homophobic comments (albeit with some anger).

I too watched both documentaries. I think both were done very well...and it was definitely an eye opener and at sometimes very blunt. Editing these days is genius and in my opinion we only got a glimpse of what took place in the lives of both families featured. That being said, I don't like to judge too much. I will say this it was very brave for Avery to come out of her shell and share with the world through a documentary a portion of her life. The same goes for the Sadowsky's. Although, there are some things I didn't like in Wo Ai Ni. Overall, I really walked away from both documentaries feeling like I learned a lot from each. Shellymike