May 13, 2008

'Do Black kids sunburn?' and other crazy questions I had no one to ask in my adoption journey

Yesterday I had the opportunity of participating in the webinar that Carolina Hope's director Laura Beauvais-Godwin did for families who are considering transracial/transcultural adoption. It was a good experience for me, and I hope that those who participated gained a little insight into the world of parenting children who don’t look like us. Personally, I wish that opportunities like this had been available nine years ago when we started adopting, and I hope that many families will choose to participate in web-based seminars like this one. It's not just fluff -- it is a good way to get questions answered in a safe environment, so that families can start going deeper into their own ideas of how God is directing their specific adoption journey.

On a practical note, I would love to see another webinar that could be an open question and answer period about the realities of adopting transracially. Many adoptive families have questions like: Do Black kids sunburn? and How can you tell before they blister? How about hair care and cracked toes? And what are these strange bruises on my newborn baby’s back?! (FYI – Those are Mongolian spots -- not bruises from burping them too hard. I was terrified when my first adopted baby started showing them, and I thought I had somehow hurt him.) These are all real questions that plague us along the journey into transracial parenthood, and this might just be a great format for getting some of them answered.

[Note from admin: please feel free to add your own ideas for future webinars as comments on this post.]

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