Moving Beyond Stereotypes

We took another excellent class last night called "Moving Beyond Stereotypes", delivered by one of the social workers at our agency, who is an adult transracial adoptee herself.  It was, as usual, filled with excellent information and discussion--interestingly, we were the only ones without bio children and the only ones adopting from Ethiopia at this class, which was new for us.  In fact, a couple families had their adopted children home, and were attending the class to learn strategies for dealing with particular behaviors or issues; it changed the discussion and made it pretty interesting to see how families have handled a wide variety of situations.

The one thing I came away with was that we have really been focused on paperwork, home visits, immigration, changes in the program, etc, etc, etc.  Now that the paperwork piece is behind us for a stretch, we really have time to focus on, well, parenting.  We certainly talk about it a lot, have taken a variety of courses on subjects related to adoption, but haven't (as much as I hate to admit this) cracked open the three huge books we have on transracial adoption issues, but now it's time.  So a new goal to add to enjoying our paperchase-free lifestyle is to delve into the research and really start preparing for the future on a more personal level.  Parenting the Internationally Adopted Child, watch out, you're first!

Happy Friday!