“What Transracially Adopted Children Need from Their Parents” — This was the name of the session we went to yesterday (June 27) at the Bethany office in Indy. It was delivered by one of the intercountry adoption specialists and involved different videos, activities, and lectures on various topics regarding transracial adoption. Since we’re open to children of other races, we decided this would be a good session to attend, especially since this is a topic we don’t know a lot about. The session was interesting and we got some good information from it. One of the things that Chip and I agreed was something we hadn’t really thought about was the difference between the terms “race”, “ethnicity”, and “nationality”. I think both of us used those terms interchangeably, but they really don’t mean the same things. There are five racial groups in the U.S. (Caucasian, African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American). So, when we talk about race, we’re talking about one of these five groupings. Ethnicity (on the other hand) is a person’s place of origin…for example, our presenter was born in Korea, so her ethnicity is Korean. Nationality is your place of citizenship…obviously this could mean different things for different people since some people have dual citizenship or are living in a country with a visa, but don’t have citizenship yet. But, the bottom-line is that Chip and I used these words interchangeably without even thinking that there might be a difference.
In terms of adoption, I think the main thing I took out of the session is that we need to be advocates for our child in any circumstance and that we need to acknowledge and be sensitive to their feelings during different situations. In addition, it’s important to speak to our child about what they might encounter and open the door to communication with our child if they want to talk about different experiences they may be having with other people regarding race. The other thing is to make sure our child has interaction with people of all races and ethnic groups, no matter what race our child is. So, those are the things I got out of the session.
In addition to learning a lot, this particular session was the last official requirement we had to meet to finish our homestudy. So, right now we are waiting for our adoption specialist and the domestic adoption director to finalize our homestudy and approve us for adoption. After that, we are finished with the homestudy process and our profile can be shown to birthmothers. And so the wait begins!!