School Assignments
Related to Adoption

In many elementary schools, third or fourth graders are asked to make a family tree. You can help ease the possible uncomfortable feelings that your child might have about this assignment by talking with the teacher about the child's adoption ahead of time.

If you have enough information about the birth family, perhaps your child's family tree can include information about both the birth family and the adoptive family.

Lois Melina, in "Making a Family Tree Helpful for Adopted Child," points out the benefits to adopted children that such an assignment can provide. It is a natural opportunity to talk about adoption with your child.

In the 1990's there are many varieties of families. Children nowadays can live with adoptive parents, foster parents, one parent, divorced parents with joint custody, stepparents, grandparents, or two parents of the same gender.

Most teachers in this day and age are aware of these differences. Hopefully they will take the opportunity to point out that each type of family is a "real" family, and that no one type is better than the other.

You might suggest to the teacher to emphasize to the children that while families may look different on the outside, on the inside they are all the same—they are made up of people who care for and love one another.

If handled in this way, the assignment should be a self-esteem builder for your child and all the children in your child's class.

Elementary school may also be the time when a teacher suggests what he or she thinks is an innocent-sounding science or social studies project for the class to undertake—adopt a whale, zoo animal, redwood tree or highway.

While the intent is to impart positive messages about the need for all of us to take responsibility for saving endangered species and improving our environment, this kind of project can have negative effects on adopted children of this age.

These types of projects may lead school-age adopted children to conclude (because they are still concrete and not abstract thinkers) that all you have to do to adopt is pay some money.

Adoptions of whales and redwoods must be renewed every year. Do their parents have to pay more money every year to keep them? And if their parents do not pay the money, will they be thrown out?

You might need to mention to your child's teacher that the project is fine, but that the phrase "adopt-a-" is problematic. Such a project may require some sensitive explanation on the teacher's part to a class containing adopted children.

If your child is comfortable with the idea, presentations on transculturally adopted children's countries of origin are often well received by children of this age and their teachers.

Slides, photographs, crafts, traditional clothes, and foods are particularly enjoyable. This type of presentation can sometimes be worked into social studies units, particularly in schools where there is already a multicultural population.

Activities that are aimed at eliminating cultural stereotypes and getting children to see that we are a diverse global community where people have many differences as well as similarities are also useful.

This material was obtain from Child Welfare Information Gateway

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