Search Results for: blog postive adoption lanquage

Star’s Death Occasions a Reminder of When and How to Mention Adoption

Other bloggers in this blog have written about Positive Adoption Language and the impact of adoption words. I’m hardly a “word usage Nazi” on the warpath for political correctness, but two things this week have left me wishing our culture would be just a little bit more sensitive to my children. One usage of adoption language not mentioned much in the above blogs is the use of the term “adopted” when there is no purpose for it. There may be a reason to mention adoption in a story involving a family with genetic illness, or when adoption explains a condition … Continue reading →

Book Review: Adoption is a Family Affair–What Family and Friends Must Know

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Prolific adoption writer Patricia Irwin Johnston is herself an adoptive parent of three. Her husband and sister-in-law were also adopted. Pat has been a writer, speaker, educator and advocate on adoption topics for nearly 20 years. While moderating an internet support group for waiting parents, she found many prospective adoptive parents reporting insensitive comments and myths about adoption that they were hearing from family members. Many waiting parents also noted that people didn’t seem to know what to say when they announced that they were adopting, and that before and after the baby arrived they didn’t have the traditional supportive … Continue reading →

Adoption and Inheritance, Part Two

My last blog addressed the issue of inheritance rights between adopted persons and their adoptive parents and relatives. This blog addresses the issue of inheritance rights between birth parents (and their relatives) and their birth children who were adopted by other families. Bear in mind that these laws apply to the estates of those who die without making out a will specifying who they wish to inherit their assets. As I wrote in the last blog, state laws do change, and I am not an attorney. Much of the facts I use here are taken from the Encyclopedia of Adoption, … Continue reading →

Book Review: When Friends Ask About Adoption

When Friends Ask About Adoption by Linda Bothun is a slim volume designed for adoptive parents to give their friends and relatives, schools and professionals, and parents of their children’s friends. Perfect, I thought. A quick, inexpensive read, with examples of positive adoption language, that I could give other people who interact with my children so we’ll all be on the same page. Bothun correctly points out that adoptive parents have spent a lot of time thinking and talking with other adoptive parents about what adopted children say and how they might respond. Adoption is such a natural part of … Continue reading →

Book Review: Allison

Caldecott Medalist Allen Say, who has written about his own family’s connections with both Japan and America, here tells a story of an Asian girl who is processing her growing awareness of her adoption. The plot is simple: Allison is happy to receive an ethnic dress like her doll wears, but grows quiet as she looks at her family in the mirror and notice that the only one who looks like her is her doll. Allison asks where her doll came from, and her father tells how they brought both Allison and her doll back from “a far country”. (Allison … Continue reading →

Adopt a Child–or a Whale?

I’ve always thought that adoptive parent groups protesting the use of “adopt-a-highway/whale/endangered gorilla/etc.” campaigns were overreacting. People can realize that a word is used differently in different settings, surely. But I’ve changed my mind. Think it through with me for a minute: we try so hard to reassure our adopted children that adoption is permanent and forever. Then we tell them we are adopting an animal, say a gorilla, at the local zoo. We send the zoo some money and go visit “our” animal, then go home. Perhaps we visit once or twice more that year. The next year our … Continue reading →