field trip

Today I took little A along with me on a field trip that my students were taking to a nearby park. I had planned the field trip over the summer, so I thought it would be fun to join them. It was a great trip, we had beautiful weather, and the people facilitating the trip (it was science-related) were amazing. Little A did an amazing job of being a cute and agreeable baby, as always.



So my students pretty much swarmed me when they saw me (they didn't know I was coming), and they are fascinated by A. They know about the adoption since I told them about it on the very first day of school (and, duh, I think they are old enough to realize that you can't just produce a baby through a pregnancy over the summer!). Many of them today asked me about the adoption, which I wasn't expecting, but I was really interested to see what they asked and to find out a bit about their thoughts on adoption.



One girl asked, not even to me necessarily, "Where do you adopt babies from anyways?" I went ahead and gave her an answer, saying that A was adopted in our city, but some babies are adopted from other countries. One girl asked if I was her mom (yes), then another asked if she had a mother before (yes, and she still does). They also asked if I knew A's first mom, and seemed very surprised when I said yes. Many asked why her first mom "did that". Some kids said things like "those are bad parents", but what was so great was that without my having to jump in, other students jumped in and said, "no, they loved her a lot." I explained that sometimes parents feel that they cannot raise their children themselves (one girl jumped in to suggest that perhaps they didn't have enough money) and that they feel like their babies might have a better life with other parents. Someone asked if I was friends with A's first parents (I said yes, even though I wouldn't call what we have a friendship just yet, and of course we don't know A's first dad). They also asked where K is (here in NYC) and also where A's dad is (I told them that he's in the South American country where K is from, though since we don't know who it is, I really don't know the answer to this question - I only know that A was conceived in that country).



Anyway, I thought it was interesting that they asked so much about A's family. In the past, anytime adoption has come up with my students (they never knew we were in the process), they had very negative views of it. They would say things like people only do that for the money, and that they don't treat the kids well. When I asked them about it, they said that they had known children in those situations. Today's questions revealed much more curiosity than pre-conceived notions (though this is a different group of kids).



I'm hoping that when I get back to school I can find a book to read aloud to them that better explains the kind of adoption we have. I was glad they were so curious not just about little A, but about how we formed our family! This was really my first time trying to weave my way through adoption discussions with children. I still have a lot of thinking/practicing to do on this, and of course my conversations with A will be much different. I would love advice from folks on talking about this with kids - whether they are your own kids or not. Anyone?