Search Results for: blog mixed feelings for a child member of the majority minority

Activities Fostering an Appreciation of Other Cultures in Elementary and Middle-school Students

My last blog discussed activity ideas for helping young children become comfortable with racial diversity. Here are some ideas for teachers of elementary and middle school students: –Make sure they know the science of skin color. A good book is All the Colors We Are: The story of How We Get Our Skin Color. This is a bilingual (English/Spanish) book with photographs and simple explanations. –I like to follow or precede a discussion of the science of skin color with an artistic or aesthetic look at the beauty of different skin colors. I like All the Colors of the Earth, … Continue reading →

Friday Funny: the Befuddled Santa

Our scrapbooking blogger Nicole had a series she called the Friday Funnies . In that spirit I offer this humorous holiday incident, wondering whether other adopted kids have had the same experience. My five-year-old and I were at a smaller shopping mall in our neighborhood. Santa wasn’t busy at the time. He saw my daughter looking at him and came closer to the picket fence of the space defined for photo-taking. “Nee How! Nee How!” he said leaning toward Regina. He waved vigorously. “Nee how!” I was wondering what was in Santa’s eggnog that day when I remembered that Ni … Continue reading →

Dolls Don’t Always Have to Match

It’s nice for a child to have a doll who is a positive reflection on the child’s own looks. The child will likely think the doll is pretty, and she may transfer that feeling regarding her own looks. However, I do not believe in trying to match the looks of the doll to the looks of the child all the time. When I was a child, my mother bought me a blonde doll and my younger sister a doll with dark hair, to match our own hair. Then my youngest sister was born with brown hair—not as dark as most … Continue reading →

Month in Review: June 2008 Adoption Blogs

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I kicked off the month by attending a Cultural Fair with exchange students and au pairs. In my blog Celebrating ALL Cultures, I assert that celebrating all cultures makes our kids believe we truly accept diversity and aren’t just accepting them because they are our kids. I talk about some of the history of adoption with Proxy Adoptions. This means adoptions where the prospective parents didn’t meet their children first. In the past this sometimes meant there was little in the way of a homestudy or any education for the adopting family. Today a homestudy is always done, and while … Continue reading →

Mixed Feelings for a Child Member of the Majority Minority

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I recently wrote about Meg’s comment that she wanted to wear sunscreen because she didn’t like her skin getting darker. Today I showed my children the statistics from the website for If the World were a Village, after the book by geography teacher David Smith. The girls were incredibly thrilled to learn that they were among the majority of the world’s people. First I asked my older daughter, “Would you say more of the kids at school look like you or like Patrick?” She hesitated. “Like Patrick,” she said. I nodded. “But if you look at the whole world, more … Continue reading →