Sometimes I get tired of hearing about all that kids “lose” in adoption. Of course we all know that children who have been adopted have lost their birth parents, their extended birth families and sometimes their birth countries, birth cultures, etc. I would never discount these losses, ignore them or sweep them under the proverbial rug.

And yet I think sometimes people get so caught up in focusing on all the loss, that they forget how much good comes out of adoption too. I look at my son from Ethiopia. He was an orphan of the true sense, with both of his parents deceased. International adoption may have taken him away from his home country and culture and all that was familiar to him,... more

There are hundreds of books out there, both specific to adoption and those that just fall under the “general parenting” category that will give you advice on what you need to know to be a good parent. Well, I am here to tell you some things that aren’t in the books. Below is a list of skills that you should start developing now if you are just starting your journey to parenthood, and if you are already a parent, some of these should ring true and hopefully make you chuckle.

Multi-tasking- Parents need to be able to multi-task, especially if you have more than one child. An experienced parent can comb a child’s hair, load the dishwasher, let the dog out, mix a pitcher of Kool-Aid and... more

The longer Ben is home with us, the more “firsts” that he has. It is so much fun to watch him try new things and experience new things. These last few days have been big ones for him.

On Saturday, Josh’s parents came up for Marcus’ birthday, and along with Marcus’ presents, they brought up a bicycle for Ben. We are a big bike-riding family, and my kids will ride for hours on any given day, and Josh’s parents are both bike-riding enthusiasts (they do crazy things, like ride for five days over mountains and things) so having a bike was a must for Ben, now that he is a... more

As I have been posting about the last few days, yesterday was my Marcus’ birthday. It is hard to believe that my little baby is already two years old! It sounds so cliché, but gosh, time sure does fly.

My kids’ birthdays always make me stop and think about their lives and how fast they seem to be whizzing by. There are days that it is really hard for me to believe that I have an almost 11 year old.

It seems like just yesterday that Josh and I were two crazy kids who were planning a life together and most people thought we would never make it.

It seems... more

Raising children today is not an easy task. We live in a time where families, family values, childhood and innocence are attacked and challenged at every bend.

To raise children who can grow up to be happy, well-adjusted and moral adults is a challenge. I taught a lesson in church today about how it is extremely important that parents build bonds with their children that create a “family identity”, so that when children turn into preteens and (ikes!) teenagers, their family identity is stronger than any other peer group, etc. that they identify with.

Although this lesson had nothing to do with adoption, it got me thinking on that path. We often talk about in adoption literature... more

I did an exercise for one of my college social work classes a year ago (slowly slowly working towards a degree) that involved defining family.

Without peaking ahead and reading the text book’s definition of family, it asked the students to try and define family. Then it gave us a whole bunch of pictures and asked “is this a family?” after each one. The answer to each one was yes. One picture showed an older woman and a young child. One picture showed a traditional family with a mother, a father and two children (all of the same race). One picture showed two women and a child, one picture showed just two men, one picture showed a mother, father and children of different races, etc.... more

I got the idea for this post off of the Transracial adoption message board on Adoption.com forums. A prospective adoptive parent who was open to a child of “any race” was wondering what “a transracial home should look like”.

I thought that was an interesting question. Often we hear that we need to incorporate our children’s birth cultures into our home, family and life, and certainly if we do that, it will, in at least small ways, be reflected in our home.

And yet there is no one right answer to this... more

On Wednesday, Ben (our 5 year old son who has now been home from Ethiopia for almost 6 weeks) had his first real day of school. We have been struggling with where the best place for him is next year…Kindergarten or first grade. We are unsure of his exact birthday, but know he is 5 turning 6 sometime this year. He is very smart and can already read, yet some of the “sounds” the letters make in the U.S. are different than how he learned in Ethiopia.

Anyway, my good friend runs our Child Development Center, and I had asked for her opinion on how to decide. She called the next day and said that they had had a child move away and leave an open spot at the preschool, and it was a scholarship... more

Here’s a question that seems to come up a lot on adoption boards and email groups often. How important is it for a child that was adopted transracially to have a sibling of the same race as them?

Is it valuable for example, for an Asian girl, with white parents and white brothers, to have sibling who is also Asian?

This is a question that my husband and I gave a lot of thought with our first adoption, because at that point, we honestly believed that our family would be complete when our daughter came home from Vietnam. (Ha! If we only knew!!) I knew that I could do a good job raising our Vietnamese daughter. I knew I could teach her to be proud of who she was and where she... more

This article is currently on the New York Times website. It is titled “Adopted in China, Seeking Identity in America” and was written by Lynette Clemetson.

The article is written about adoptees from China, but easily applies to any transracially adopted child and family. It focuses on children adopted from China who are now teenagers, and how this first group of current-day adopted children are handling issues of race and culture.

The article states, “As the oldest of the adopted children move through their teenage years, they are beginning — independently and with a mix of enthusiasm... more