East Meets West

Yesterday we attended GWCA's East Meets West adoption conference in Minneapolis. It was a very nicely organized event with a number of interesting sessions about such topics as cross cultural parenting, bonding & attachment, chinese culture, community support, travel, etc.

The best session we attended was "Cross Cultural Parenting", presented by Cheri Register, author of Are Those Kids Yours?: American Families With Children Adopted From Other Countries and Beyond Good Intentions: A Mother Reflects On Raising Internationally Adopted Children. She offered a number of insightful comments such as "Listen to what your child tells you about race and racism; do not assume color-blindness." and "Stay in touch with the internationally adopted community because this will probably be where your child finds her identity". She also recommended listening to and reading the writings of adult adoptees and being prepared not to like everything you hear, but acknowleding the validity of the comments. I've been doing this already and, she's right, theirs is not an easy meassage to hear, but it is so important I think for adoptive parents to listen and learn.

Rob went to a (similar? hard to tell since I wasn't there myself) session presented by an adult adoptee and adoptive parent representing the local FCC chapter. Rob said she talked about some of the uninformed and insensitive comments that people make in the presense of children - the example she gave was her mother in law saying something really horrifying like "aren't you glad her eyes aren't very slanty?" (this said to her Korean daughter-in-law and in front of her Chinese granddaughter!) - and the need to educate friends and family in advance of receiving the baby. What she didn't say was how precisely to do this, which would have been very helpful!

We also bumped into a few people we knew at the event. Our friend Annette (hi, Annette!) introduced us to a new book called Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections. I flipped through it a bit at breakfast and it looks like a fantastic reference. Its list price is $29.95, but Amazon has it for only $19.77 ... or you could use a Borders Rewards coupon, which is probably what I'll do since it's an excuse to go to Borders.