Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Foster/Adoption Ignorance

I've decided to start a list of the most insensitive comments I've received thus far, ofcourse there are honestly too many to list but Ill get started with the most offensive first:
1. I wouldn't spend the money to buy that until you actually know they are going to give you a baby/babies. In response to me sharing with a "friend" my excitement over a big baby gear purchase(after we were licensed, as we were waiting for "the call")
2. I think you are moving a little fast and should take a step back, you don't even know if its going to work out yet. This was said to me by a "friend" after I shared how emotional it was to hear my new daughter being introduced to me as "mommy" at our pre placement visit, the week after our "matching meeting" and just days before we brought her home
3. You can tell ___________'s mom was on a pipe her whole pregnancy, you can just tell by looking at ___________. This was said to me about one of my kids on thanksgiving by a relative, in front of my whole family AND the kid.
4. Are any of them your real kids?
5. Are they all drug babies?
6. Oh meth baby ehh?
7. Don't you want kids of your own?
and the others I am thinking of right now are too horrible to type, so Ill stop here....for now.
This society is SO ignorant about adoption and its maddening, and heart breaking. Today I was sitting next to a nursing mother and she asked if I was nursing A, I explained that no I was a foster-adopt parent and that he was a pre-adoptive placement(meaning we have formally been asked to adopt but anything can still happen) and she said: oh I thought he was your real son? Are any of them your real kids?
::sigh::
If Id been quick enough I might have said:
yup, they all look pretty REAL to me. But instead I said no, and didn't bother telling her Olivia is my birth daughter--because relaly it was none of her business anyway.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i see you didn't make it to bed early.

i didn't know about thanksgiving. how rude.

i'm sorry you are having to put up with everyone else's shit.
rae

Anonymous said...

o...m...g. How insensitive can people be?!?! (((Renee)))

Laura said...

OMG, those comments are so appalling. I can't believe people would think these things much less say them to you. Geez!!!

Anonymous said...

You don't know me (and please don't be spooked by that), but I'm an adoptive mother and I wholeheartedly agree with your entire post. Amen, sister! I get so tired of hearing, "So why didn't their real parents want them?" Sigh...

Anonymous said...

Somedays are worse than others for us- we try to look at it as an opportunity to educate- although that gets exhausting too.

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