Pushing adoption and culture? Is this right or wrong? I don't think it's necessary right or wrong, but maybe better moderation. Just my personal opinion, though. I'm not really one to push things on any of my kids, adopted or not. I do push values and family togetherness. I do encourage them to respect their family (each other) and learn lessons to be good individuals. Past that...their interests...I don't push. When they find something that suits their interest, that's when I 'encourage'.
So far, the 4 oldest are involved in extra curriculars. I have never pushed a sport or activity. I do open up the option, if it's a viable option for our family. So basically, we encourage the kids to try things. If they don't like them, they have to finish out the season or session and then they can try something new. So far this has worked to their advantage trying to find what they enjoy. For one boy, it's basketball or football. For another boy, it's football or baseball. For one girl, it's all soccer. For another girl, it's gymnastics. The older boys have tried what they were interested in and narrowed it down. The girls are doing the same thing. It's neat to watch them find their niche.
So some adoptive parents choose to push their adopted children into cultural activities and talk about their adoptions on a daily basis. Is this hard on kids? I don't know. I think for some, it's their way of ensuring that they are not taking on the roles past generations of adoptive parents did and ignore international and adoption culture.
I choose to take the middle road with this as we have with activities. We do what we can. We do what we're interested in doing as a family. We all like Korean food, so we do cook Korean on a regular basis. We do get together with our international group for Korean holidays to celebrate. But, we can never emulate true Korean culture because we are not Korean.
I tend to take the middle road on adoption culture too. We don't make it everyday conversation with our kids. They know they're adopted. We do talk about adoption when a situation arises that sounds like a good time to broach a subject and when the kids bring up a question themselves. They are very aware that we are open to answering what we can. And they do feel free to ask. I'm glad they do that.
So, one parent's success by pushing adoption and international culture may not be how we find our family success. Our family enjoys the moderation of the meld we have in our biological/adoptive family mix. We, like our children, just try to find happy mediums so we can be family, but not dismiss what may be important to all of our five kids. They each have their own needs and wants and I would support them whether they're directly related to adoption or not. For instance, my 7 year old told me last night that she would like to live in Korea, one day, for a little bit. I told her that when she's in college she can apply for a scholarship to go to Korea or after college she can find a temporary job and live there for a year and see what she thinks. She's excited about this prospect and since she wants to be a teacher I think it would be a wonderful opportunity for her. I don't support her because it's her birth country and culture, I support her because she's my child, it's an honorable goal in life and a wonderful opportunity for anyone. I would support our two older, biological, children the same way. I guess, I just can't imagine consuming my or their lives with just one thing, be it sports, or adoption. I don't want them blaming every bad thing in their lives with adoption either. I just hope they see it as a way they entered our family. That doesn't mean I ignore that it happened, but it doesn't make them 100% of who they are.
My point is that adoptive parents don't have to try to cut each other down constantly and critize each other because it's not a one size fits all life. We all have our lives to live and we do the best we can with the life we're given. If that's what my children take from me, then I'll be thrilled.
2 comments:
Interesting post. My boys never showed the slightest bit of interest in their home country. I always wished they would. Still do. Perhaps, since they were given up for adoption at ages 3 and 5, it's the unhappy memories that keeps them from being interested. When they went to college, I thought that maybe they would meet Korean friends, join the South Korean culture club -- but still no interest. Oh well. Maybe one day.
Hi Robin. I should have elaborated more on the background and why I wrote what I did. All the past and current conversations within adoptive parenting groups had finally gotten to me and I wrote. I have taken heat so many times for not pushing hard or focusing enough of their adoption and loss, etc. So, even when I wrote about past generations of adoptive parents, I was mainly trying to convey that some parents, now, are pushing adoption/culture because somehow they see everything past generations did as wrong. Like now, past generations parented differently from each other. We have the luxury of the internet which can be an amazing tool, but maybe it makes some more paranoid? Your boys sound wonderful and it's great to read another a-mom blogging.
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