Sorry it is taking me a billion years to get through all the questions you all sent me waaaaaay back when. The good news is the ones I have answered so far have really helped me work through some of the open adoption related angst I was feeling. The bad news is, I am kind of burned out from all the over processing. I will get to them, though. I just might have to answer a few a week interspersed with other stuff until I get done.A few more:Sky asks: As a stay at home mum, I sometimes feel like I am wasting my talents. Do you ever feel that or other mummy guilt?I don’t think I really have any work-related talents, unless you consider the ability to look busy while really surfing the internet to be a talent. That was what I most excelled at in most of my previous jobs.
Oh, and I also have a serious talent for remembering the appearance, layout and sale history of every single house that has sold in my neighborhood in the past four years. I love houses so much I have even considered becoming a realtor one day, but it wouldn’t be until the kids are much older or maybe even off to college.
My primary work-related guilt involves the fact that I hate cleaning the house. I have a nagging belief that since I am here all day, I should do more cleaning and upkeep but I just don’t like to do it. Maybe next year when L goes to kindergarten, I will do a better job cleaning the house. Or maybe I will get a part-time job so someone else will clean it.
S’s Mom asks
do you use the term “hapa”? I think it would feel strange saying it. Likewise my relative is black/Asian and I would feel strange saying Blasian to her. I just say biracial or multiracial.
have been introducing the idea of “hapa” to M. I made her watch a hapa organization video on youtube last month. She was kind of uninterested, but you know, she is eight. She is very comfortable with the idea that she is “Chinese and white” or “Asian and American” (her words, not mine).
While there are more half or part Asians around than there used to be (especially where we live in the Midwest), M is still a pretty small minority. She has a friend at school who is also half-Chinese and I have heard them talking about what exactly “half chinese” means before. Clearly, it means something to her. .
M is going to live a life where she passes as white most of the time. She is well-aware that Chinese people do not see her as Chinese, but our family considers her to be Chinese/Taiwanese (or maybe Asian/ Asian American). She knows that Chinese people don’t see her as much Chinese at all. Her father’s Asian identity is very important to him. That the kids have an Asian identity is important to him. While that racial identity is important in our family, culturally we are not very Chinese/Taiwanese. Culturally, we are mostly American with a little Chinese around the edges.
M’s experience as a mixed-race person is unique in our family. Every other person in our near extended family is either white or Asian (though she does have some cousins who are Taiwanese/Korean American which is its own mix). I don’t know yet what that will be like for her. I am sure at times it will be difficult, but I am confident that in the end M will be able to figure it all out.
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I like the idea of “hapa” because there has been so much hapa activism lately ( here, here, here, and here for example). I like the idea of M knowing how to find people who have shared her experience of being mixed race Asian if she wants to. I like the idea of one word that can encompass a bit of her experience rather than the unwieldy ”third generation Chinese American and white, raised in the Midwest, doesn’t speak much Chinese, etc.” .
We also talk generally about mixed-race people, too, but introducing M to the idea ”hapa” is more specific. I don’t know how she will identify as she gets older, maybe she will think of herself as hapa, or mixed race or maybe just white. It isn’t up to me. I just put the ideas out there and see what sticks. Also, I don’t generally say she is hapa to other people because I assume they won’t know what it means.
When M started school, it quickly became clear that she was a teacher’s pet. She is cute and an easy student to teach. She is a sweet girl and a people pleaser who will pretty much bend over backwards if she thought that was what the teacher wanted.
I could not relate to this child.
*I* have never been a teachers pet. *I* am the kid who has “socializes too much on every report card, every year of my life.
My MOTHER is a teacher’s pet perfectionist.
OH My God, I thought, I am raising my MOTHER. This is not going to be pretty.
And then it happened. In third grade, at age 8. The focus of M’s people pleasing shifted from pleasing teachers to pleasing other kids.
We had a rather surprising parent teacher conference where the teacher (for the first time ever!) did not say the sun rose and set on M. This teacher has seen third grade boundary testing and she is onto that game.
Three times this year, we have received letters home (handwritten by M) telling us she had to stay in at recess for some kind of showing-off shenanigans. After the second one, M was warned that she would lose privileges at home if she brings home a note from teacher. Today, we got another note.
So now, I am in the position of trying to create punishments for exactly the same kinds of crap I have pulled myself my entire. Shenanigans which are quite honestly, ridiculous and not that big a deal…except she too wound up and a little disrespectful (which we all know is why it is FUNNY to the other kids) so we have to show her that when she is out of line we will pull her back into line.
What *is* the correct punishment for a girl who intentionally calls the visiting city manager by his first name THREE TIMES (in a jokey, show offy, way too loud way) after her teacher clearly explained that they should call him Mr. City Manager?
We are trying one week of no TV, no DS and (this is the big one) no recreational reading. M has reading homework most nights, so for the next week I am going to be the one who gets to select what she reads. I am trying to think of really, really boring topics. No more beloved wizard cats, maybe dumptrucks or baseball?
We are talking about the third grade equivalent of someone having one beer to many and making out with one of her girlfriends. You know, because it would be funny to the girls at the table and hot for the guys (ok, that was ME).
I can see this is my parenting destiny to raise a child who is just a leeetle too interested in being entertaining.
Just. Like. ME.
Tonight M told me that a boy and a girl in her class are “dating”. She said it somewhat ironically with air quotes, but seriously, 8 year olds are “dating”? Oh man.
Also, I gleaned that piece of information on a walk to the library. Score one for asking vague questions when the kid doesn’t have to look you in the eyes.
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A couple more quick questions from S’s Mom:
Why is this considered an adoption blog? How the heck did that happen? (I do not read it for adoption insight.)
I would guess it is an “adoption blog” because the majority of my readers are adoptive parents. I know that adoption-related posts (particularly those about L’s family) are by far the ones that people look for the most. My stats go WAY up on those posts. They used to go up like that when I wrote about my MIL, but since I don’t see her so much lately, I guess I can’t qualify this as a “people who have the craziest extended families” blog. heh. I also used to write more about race stuff, but right now it isn’t at the top of my consciousness so I haven’t had much to say about it.
If I do keep blogging, expect this blog to morph into a “building my forever house” blog, which will pretty much guarantee a quick exodus of my previously loyal adoptive parent readers. For me, I am mostly just blogging my life, so I don’t really care what categorization internet people want to put me in.
Do people say things like “Oh, multiracial kids are the cutest”. “What a China doll”. Etc. How do you explain to M and L their differences in looks, etc.
We got some comments about M’s looks/mixed-racedness when she was small, but now we hardly get any. M mostly passes for white unless people are familiar with hapa kids, then they can see it. But then again, no one comments when she is out with Mr. A either. Maybe she does look a little Asian. I pretty much never get comments about L not matching me or M either. I have had a handful of weird comments about L, but probably less than 10 in the past 4.5 years.
Most of the time, I forget that we don’t match. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean I forget that she is Asian, it just seems very normal for me to be with an Asian kid or a hapa kid or an Asian husband for that matter.
Actually, now that I think about it, the vast majority of mentions about our not matching happened when we were traveling in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan last year. At least twice a day, someone would say “Oh, the little one looks like your husband. The big one looks like you!” I imagine that might be what people who don’t know L is adopted might be thinking here? I don’t know because they don’t say anything.
As for how I talk to the kids about it, M is very practical and concrete. She has a good understanding of ancestry and knows she is half Chinese/Taiwanese and half European. She knows she looks more white than Chinese because it was commented on so frequently on our trip, but I don’t remember her ever mentioning it before.
She also has internalized the idea that hapa=extra pretty. This makes my roll my eyes, but I guess she has good self esteem or something. I think she got that idea from my misguided attempts to prepare her for so much attention in China. When she was 4 (on our adoption trip) people made a huge deal about her cuteness and hapaness. This time, less so (probably because her teeth were so jacked up and because L was much smaller and cuter).
L doesn’t really get the idea of race yet. She knows she looks Chinese. She thinks that means black hair and brown skin. She knows what parts of her look like each of her birthparents and how she looks like her bio-siblings. She knows that Mr. A also looks Chinese because his parents came from Taiwan (which is Chinese).
I don’t know, I guess I am just a straight -shooter with these kinds of issues. I just lay out the facts (ancestry, genes, etc.) and tell them that some people are racist and why (historical stories, creating an in group and and out group, etc.). It seems to be working ok as far as I can tell. Also, I don’t think we are really at the key ages for race issues to bubble up yet. I anticipate problems in Jr. High and High School, but that is a whole other post.
Onward with the questions!
Elise asks:
Why did you quit Chinese school?
We quit the year M was in a twice a week immersion program at a local university. (Post about dropping out here.) I was also doing private tutoring with both M and L so that was already three days a week plus Chinese school on Sundays. I felt like I was losing my mind. Chinese school was the least effective of all the Chinese we were doing, so we quit.
I did think about signing the girls up again this year, but honestly I hate spending my entire Sunday there. If it were on a week night, I would do it, but we see so little of Mr. A it is hard to force the girls to go sit in boring inefficient classes when the could be playing with him.
If I were really going to psychoanalyze us, I would also admit that Chinese school was a tough cultural fit. Mr. A often felt frustrated about being treated as a second-class citizen since he isn’t a native Chinese speaker. I felt frustrated because it was annoying, disorganized and we didn’t seem to fit in the classes for kids who speak chinese at home (because we don’t) and the very beginner level classes for kids who don’t know chinese at all. Criticize us if you must, but we just don’t have the emotional energy for it.
I have another post brewing about our Chinese language situation this year (frustrating, annoying), but I have to think more about it.
KT asks
Not an adoption question – more on the hapa-side of things. How does your older daughter self-identify? Is it evolving/changing? My hapa daughter (10)clearly is more in touch w/ her chinese-ness than her anglo-saxon-ness. Her closest circle of friends are all asian or hapa-asian. We aren’t sure what the significance (if any) is but we’ve noticed this trend with our hapa nieces and nephews. Is it the experience of being the minority in the community? Very interesting in who she sees as “cute” as well – the asian guys are always”cuter” in her opinion…
This is an interesting question to me because I haven’t actually checked in with M lately as to her hapa-ness. To answer, I asked her if she knew what “race” is in relation to people from different ethnicities/ancestries. She said she did, so I asked her what race she thinks she is. Totally seriously, she answered “human”.
I said no and reexplained “race”. I wish I had a camera to take a picture of her confused face. She looked at me like I was the dumbest person in the world. ”I am half Asian and half European!” she said “You know that, Mommy.” I asked her if she felt like she was more one or the other and she said no, just half of each.
I tried then asking her if she felt like she looked more Asian or white. She said, “Well, my eyes and skin and face are more Asian. My hair is more white. But strangely, I think some people think I am only white! Why is that?” We talked about people assuming Asians have darker/black hair and her hair is solidly brown. She generally does pass as white even though her individual features (except nose and hair) are very Asian, so I thought it was interesting that she picked up on that.
M has always seemed to be completely comfortable making friends with pretty much anyone. She does have a girl in her class who is also hapa and I have heard them discussing their half-chineseness often, so I know it matters to her/them on some level. She also seems to have matured in her understanding of “chinese” since our trip. Before that she always thought of “Chinese” as being someone who could speak Chinese (which excluded herself), but now she seems to have a more mature understanding of race/culture vs. nationality/language.
She isn’t especially interested in boys yet, so I can’t answer that. The other thing about M is she is a very exclusive kind of friend. She prefers a few very very close friends or interacting one on one rather than a bigger group. Her best friend is white and also loves Harry Potter (which M loves more than life itself) while most other kids at school seem uninterested in HP, so I don’t know how much that factors into the equation. Her school is about 25% nonwhite (including 10% of the school being mixed race) and her class this year is about 30% kids of color/mixed race. She has noticed enough to be able to tell me about their heritage (one family from west Africa, one from India, etc.) but I don’t think she is thinking of it with respect to social grouping yet.
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For the record, I am cognizant of the fact that both of these answers are going to make some people say hhmmmmmm and judge us. I am ok with that.
It only took 5 days for someone to refill the toilet paper roll. Who finally stepped up, acted like a responsible adult and did it?
L.
Five year old L.
Jeesh.
Two other members of this family will be getting a lecture today and L will get a small treat of some sort and some much-deserved praise. (Just a note: we don’t even have the kind of TP holder that has the springloaded stick. You only have to slip the roll onto a loop.)
In other my-girls-are-growing-up news, I taught M to shave her (8 year old) legs today. While her leg hair isn’t coarse or thick by any means, it has been becoming increasingly visible this summer.
My mom (who is much hairy-er and has darker, thicker hair than I do) had the unfortunate experience of being a hairy pre-teen when Planet of the Apes came out in the 1970′s. The other kids used to call her “Planet of the [my mom's name]“.
Given the recent release of another Planet of the Apes, I thought we could try to avoid passing that trauma along to another generation.
(I should also note that hair mockery did not encourage my mom to allow ME to shave before I turned 12. I guess in her eyes my wispy, blondish -though long- leg hair did not impress her hairy-ness at all.)
Hopefully, she won’t need to shave again for another 6 months or so.
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