My husband and I teach Sunday school for first and second graders at our church. Until recently, our daughter was in the kindergarten room which uses the same lesson as our group. Earlier this summer, we were teaching the kids about people being made in the image of God. The lesson included this discussion question:
My husband and I talked about our dislike of this question, given that both of our children are adopted. We debated whether or not to mention our concern to the children
I compliment your protective nature with your kids, we have over the years found that allowing our kids to feel good about the blessing we feel they are to us through adoption helps them to answer theirs and others questions. Our oldest is from Russia and was 8 when she arrived. Our son’s birthmother lived with us for a few months prior to his birth so he’s been with us from birth (he’s 17 now). Both look much like my husband and I and could easily pass for biological children, but we’ve always been open with the stories of how they arrived in our family and want them to be comfortable with their own histories, even when that history included a lot of negatives as with my oldest daughter. This has helped as our two younger daughter’s both from China who don’t look like the rest of the family, but are just as pleased with their place in the family. Kids always have question’s and equipping our children to be able to provide thier own answers empowers them in life to be the incredible individuals they are. Some are so confident that as we saw with Hannah, who was born with a little hand when one boy wouldn’t leave her alone with questioning why her hand looked like that she confidently looked at him and said “because God made ME special and you’re not!!” My response “you go girl” : ) Honesty and openess has always worked in our family and as my kids are now growing into young adults they seem to have found solid ground for their own lives. We too were very worried for a long time with Amber, my oldest, as her start in life was full of incredible struggles. Time, strong guidance and repeatedly reinforcing her value finally took hold and we saw her move from victim to victor in life. Your desire for your children’s best possible future will help guide you to the necessary resources they need to arrive. Just don’t let fear of what might be overtake your hope of what could be.
Thanks for reading, Lynda! I hope my kids find solid ground too.
I greatly appreciate this post by Shannon and would like to see more like it. Especially involving opposition to things like this w/in the public school system. It is a subject that needs addressing. And with more and more broken/split families and more and more adoptions taking place each year, both domestically and internationally and inter-racially, I firmly believe this is a subject that needs much more attention across the board.
Thank you, Shannon, for not hesitating to speak up and for taking a stand for our children and those grown adult adoptees who may be afraid to voice their thoughts out loud. God bless! <
~ Tanya
Thanks for reading, Tanya. I’m glad you enjoyed the topic. Hopefully, we will see more about this.