This week my daughter attends ‘culture camp’. Culture camp is a week long cultural immersion program for kids who joined their families through adoption from Asia. She has ‘camp’ friends-girls and boys she sees once a year-and they pick up from where they left off the year before.

Believe me, this is not a very glamorous camp. It takes place the third week of July-which is inevitably the hottest week of the year. The camp takes place in a church which is not air-conditioned and is a bit smelly. The kids go through seven or eight ‘periods’ each day. They cook, take language and dance classes, Tae Kwon Do, Arts and Crafts and music.

It is one of the few places that my daughter blends into the crowd. Frankly, I think the environment where all the kids have dark hair, almond-shaped eyes and joined their families throught adoption that is the appeal-and what keeps the kids coming year after year.

I have thought about how she must feel being one of the ‘onlies’-only child, only Asian, only adopted kid etc, but since I have not lived those feelings, I can only experience it intellectually.

Today, I was looking for her in the music class and got a more viceral experience.

The kids were sitting in the chapel with their backs to me and were all wearing yellow t-shirts (it was picture day). I had a moment of panic when I could not pick her out of the crowd. I couldn’t believe it. She is my child. I know what she looks like. But the pony-tailed, yellow shirted girls all looked alike.

I had to walk to the front of the room, to spot my daughter.

This experience made me wonder what my daughter sees when she is looking for me in a sea of Caucasians. It also reminded me what it feels like to be a minority-if only for a week.

Are you in situations where your kids are in the majority most of the time, or do they struggle to ‘fit in’ to our Caucasian standards.

It makes you think.

With Respect,
Deb

I have never really considered myself a lucky person. In fact, one of my mentors was perennially frustrated because he thought that I alway saw the glass as half full.

But, today I think my glass is at lesat 3/4 of the way to full!

One of the issues for people raising children of a different race is providing authentic role models. After all, if you are white and your child is Chinese, you can teach him about China, but you can’t teach him how to be Chinese. You may have an intellectual understanding of what a child of color might experience, but you would never really know what implications the child’s race or ethnicity has-simply because your experience in the world has not prepared you.

Today, my daughter is splashing in a pool with LuLu. LuLu has been in the US (from Shanghai)for four of her 13 years. LuLu’s mom is my daughter’s Chinese language and culture teacher. When Min offered to send her daughter to be a mother’s helper a few days a week, I was estatic-and not just because my daughter would be out of my hair for a few hours-she would have role model. A Chinese teen, born in China and living in a Chinese family.

My daughter took to LuLu right away and I heard Lulu teaching my daughter some Mandarin and practicing what she already knew. LuLu taught her the character for horse-and then played Monopoly with her. They were chatting away like old friends.

I believe that my daughter is starved for friends of color, role models and experiences that I can’t give her. I am not exaggerating. Nor am I downplaying my role as her parent. I am just facing up to the fact that as much as I love her I can’t provide it all.

Beside her immediate attraction to LuLu, my daughter surprised me by listing her ‘best friends’ the other day. The are: Delaney (adopted from China); Ping (adopted from China) Kendra (adopted from Cambodia) and Pablo (born in El Salvador).

I was surprised those were her choices-I was expecting the parade of the WASPs.

But her choices tell me a lot about what she is processing now.

So, as you look to raise great kids, don’t overlook the importance of developing friends of all shapes, colors and sizes. You don’t have to feel awkward in ‘targeting’ people-after all, if you were a single woman, you might ‘target’ single moms to engage.

Get your kids used to dealing with people from everywhere, in every color in the rainbow. It might be one of the most important thing you do for your kids!

With Respect and Celebration,

Deb