Hurtful Comments

The wife and I are just starting our journey into adoption, but honestly...ain't nobody got time for that. If I were asked that question, I would keep it real, smile...answer the question & move on.

There's a workbook, designed for parents and kids to read together, called "WISE Up." It is intended to help children figure out what to say when someone asks a question about adoption, but it can also be helpful to parents forming responses that combine a desire to protect a child's privacy, while treating adoption as a normal, positive event.WISE stands for "Walk Away, It's Private, Share, and Educate" -- four possible types of response to someone who asks a question about adoption. With regard to "Walk Away", children (AND adults) are often conditioned to "be polite". That's nice -- except that, once in a while, there's a jackass out there who delights in asking barbed questions or making comments that are downright offensive and insulting. There is no need for a person to stand there and take the insults, or to try to answer politely. Instead of crying or getting mad enough to hit the person, a child needs to know that he/she has the right to walk away and maintain his/her dignity. And, frankly, that's what an adult should do, as well, possibly rolling his/her eyes as he/she does so. Nothing the child or adult says or does is going to change the questioner's nasty mindset. And the people in the supermarket or wherever who hear the remark are likely to have more respect for the person who walks away than for the person who resorts to returning the insult, shoving the questioner, or bursting into tears."It's Private" is a phrase that can be a very appropriate response to certain questions that do not rise to the level of insult, but that a reasonable person would consider nosy. Neither a child nor his/her parent needs to answer a question that is very personal, or that involves information that would usually be kept within a family, but saying that "we keep that sort of information private" is an appropriate and polite way of handling things. Now, if the questioner persists, or becomes hostile, walking away might become necessary, but most people will recognize when they have overstepped.In our family, we didn't use the previous two responses very often, because we were very open in discussing adoption. We were more likely to "Share" or "Educate". Sharing refers to discussing your personal adoption journey. As an example, if someone asked, "Why did you choose to adopt from China?", you might have talked about your decision. If your child was asked about what she remembered about China, she could honestly say that she was too young to remember much, and that most of what she knows, she heard from her parents or saw in her scrapbook -- for example, that she lived in an orphanage in Xiamen, and was adopted when she was 18 months old. These questions are pretty innocuous, and don't tend to have much emotional content."Educate" usually refers to discussing adoption in a more general way. As an example, many people used to ask if I got to go to my daughter's orphanage and pick a child. I would talk about China's healthy infant program, and how all children were referred by a Chinese government office in Beijing, then called the China Center for Adoption Affairs. And some people would ask why international adoption was so expensive. Without discussing what I spent, I could talk about all of the paperwork parents need to get from their states and from the U.S. government, about the flights to and from China, airfare, about living in China for two weeks, and so on. I usually was able to make it clear that the fees had nothing to do with "buying a baby", but a lot to do with making sure that the U.S. and China had information showing that the parents could take care of a child, with the high costs of travel, with an orphanage fee that partly covered the costs of caring for your child and of children who would never be adopted because of age or disability, and more.In fact, I tended to find that I used "Educate" a great deal, including in situations where I was asked personal questions. Instead of talking about my adoption, I talked about the adoption process, often giving the questioner so much general information that he/she would "glaze over". My daughter also learned this tactic. One of her teachers, not all that comfortable with how to deal with kids' questions, told me that Becca, age 6, gave some wonderful lectures on the "one child" policy in China and the extent of poverty in China, when kids would ask why her "real parents" gave her up. (Of course, Becca was also a master of the rolled eyes and "the LOOK", which basically was the equivalent of walking away, because she thought that a rude questioner was some variant life form that had just crawled out from under a rock.) She didn't read the WISE Up workbook; she didn't need to; she was self-confident and had good social skills. Although she was tiny compared to most of her classmates, she was popular and something of a leader.Exactly when to use each of these responses will be unique to each family, each adult, and each child. Very private families, and very reserved children, are likely to treat more questions as too personal. I worked in the adoption field, and tended to be very inclined to educate about adoption. The nice thing about the WISE Up material is that it's designed to encourage parents and children to talk about various situations and how they would handle them, as well as to practice answering various adoption-related questions. That way, a child is less likely to be embarrassed because a parent shares too much information, and both parent and child can plan out how they want to respond to various types of question.Sharon

I love what Sharon has said above. It has always been worrisome for me about what people might say, especially because I have no problem telling them what's what, but I love instead of telling your adoption story, making it a little less personal and talking about the adoption process and its workings instead. And if that doesn't work, it's okay to tell people that it's none of their business. In a polite way, of course :)

I call it educating society... It's amazing how ignorant people not in the adoptive world are. I've had to tell my own sister that my kids are "my own", they're just not my biological children.

99% of the time, people aren't meaning to be hurtful. They just need a little gentle education. "HE is my own!" or "I seem pretty real to me!" can be kind responses that help teach people to re-think their words.

One of the things that I've seen work is to say that you are both real moms, neither of you is imaginary. You can use the opportunity to educate, and that's wonderful. But sometimes you just don't feel like it. So I like to be blunt and say "Do you realize what a hurtful question you just asked?" or Most people mean well and just don't think. Calling their attention to how hurtful they are being is awkward, but it will prevent them from making the same mistake with someone else.

Great comment Rachel. I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, especially since I was completely unaware of this separation in language until someone educated me.

Thank you for so much wonderful input! I really like to use it as a chance to educate so I think I just need to prepare myself for these kinds of questions in advance and I need to know how I plan on responding in a kind and educational manner.