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Lately I have been giving a good deal of thought to Ella as a school aged child. As we prepare to move to a new town I have been researching school districts, and I’m pretty sure that is what has prompted these daydreams. I have been checking statistics to ensure that she is not the only Asian or only minority in her class once she gets to school and that we move to a culturally diverse area. Part of this is guilt related since we are moving from a wonderfully diverse area and I feel badly for removing her (at only one year old!) from this environment to be closer to family and to be in an area that her dad and I really enjoy.
All of this over analyzing is rooted in my fear that she will one day feel like an outsider; that she won’t fit in. If she were the only Asian person and then the only adopted person on top of that in her group of friends, would she feel like she didn’t really belong? Or would she just be happy with the person she is and not give it a second thought? Of course, there is no way to know what the future will hold, but it still weighs on my mind.
Is there anything we can do to help protect our children from feeling like outsiders? Does that responsibility lie in our hands at all? I think it does to a point. She will grow into the person that she is meant to be, but a great percentage of that person is going to be shaped by us, how she is raised and how she is made to feel about herself.
When I’m not making myself crazy with over thinking, I realize that placing her in a culturally diverse setting with other Asian and adopted children will not necessarily help her feel that she fits in. That is a very important piece to the puzzle, but she needs to feel it and believe it at home first. Hopefully the full love and acceptance that she gets at home will help her conquer the world and feel that she absolutely belongs and has so much to offer.
Related Links:
Issues For Children: Identity
Always the Outsider
The Emotions of Adoption
“Fitting in” at home is very different from “fitting in” in a peer group, both being tremendously important for mental and spiritual growth in my opinion.
Wherever you life, I think it is important to find other Asian adopted children for her to play with. Of course they don’t have to be her sole friends, but it always helps to have friends that you don’t have to “explain” things to, if you get my jist.
Lisa (Guat. blogger)
Hi Lisa
I absolutely agree with the importance of friends. I think that by starting to instill feelings of belonging at home will help with fitting in with friends that are her peers.
And I definitely know what you mean about being with people who automatically get it. We get together with my friend who has a transracial foster baby (they’re in the process of adopting him) and it’s so nice to know that she understands. I can definitely see how important this will be for Ella as she grows.
So far all the other Asian adoptees that we’ve met up with have been a little older or too young to play with her, so hopefully we’ll be able to hook up with some others who are closer in age. I think it’s great for the kids as well as the moms!
Thanks for posting~from one Ella mommy to another