Informing School Personnel: Do you Tell About Adoption?
Do you wonder if being adopted has an impact your on child’s school experience and performance? As a teacher, I can honestly say that I’ve never noticed or thought that actually being adopted has impacted a child’s performance in the classroom.
I’ve heard other professionals use the phrase, “well, you know, so-and-so’s adopted”, as if that explains away any learning trouble or behavior issue in the classroom. Like it’s a diagnosis, or a label, right up there with medical and psychiatric issues. It’s not.
One question that has come up in my circle of adoptive parents is this: to tell or not to tell the school personnel? As a teacher who went on an 8 week family leave and returned to work with an infant, the personnel at the school where my child would eventually attend was already aware. But what about when we enroll her at the next school?
As we were waiting to adopt, I came across a wonderful resource for all things adoption-related, National Adoption Information Clearinghouse*. I ordered all of their publications and they were sent to me the following week. I’ve referred to them time and again, this week I was reading the one entitled Adoption and School Issues. It discusses issues which may arise at every level of schooling, from early childhood settings through high school.
“Whether to tell the preschool staff that your child was adopted is a question with no absolute answer. …Since preschools and daycare centers are often private and separate from the public school system, the preschool years area good time for adoptive parents to practice interacting with school personnel about adoption issues without fear that any labels will follow their child throughout his school career.”
From NAIC article, “Adoption and School Issues”
*Since I found this resource, the articles have been put under the umbrella of Child Welfare Information Gateway. Simply type “adoption” in the search window, and it links to assorted articles appear. They can be downloaded in pdf format, or mailed to you.
So…adoptive mamas of older children—do you tell? Do you put it in writing? Do you tell those who need to know verbally? Please do tell me!
Michelle blogs about everything but being a teacher at Gotchababy.
Other adoption/school articles at Child Welfare Information Gateway:
How Adoption Impacts Children at School
Specific Educational Concerns Associated with Adopted Children
Learning Lag, Learning Problem, or Learning Disability?
Increasing the Adoption Sensitivity of School Personnel
Michelle, this one made me chuckle because it’s not a question of tell or don’t tell for our family. Our adoption is so visible because we adopted transracially, transculturally. During kindergarten registration, I not only brought in our mortgage statement and utility bills to prove residency, I also brought in the Tongginator’s Certificate of Citizenship alongside her birth certificate, which marks her birthplace as in Jiangxi Province, China. I had to or she couldn’t enroll as a student. I did not, however, write down “adopted” anywhere on the ESL questionnaire, which I also filled out in detail, since the Tongginator spent her first year hearing and learning Mandarin rather than English.
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I’m an adult adoptee. I can tell you that it’s critical to tell your child’s teachers that he/she is adopted. Why? Because in a lot of school curriculums (I just went through this with my 7 year old son) have “family tree” assignments and “bring in pictures of your ancestors” assignments and “write how your ancestors came to America” assignments. Most adoptees will find these assignments painful but will not express that pain to you. They “play” along with it and will even put their adoptive families on their trees but it truly is a lie and THEY KNOW IT IS. Children and all human beings need to know their biological histories and unless you can give your child that information for these assignments, it is now your job as the child’s adoptive parents to shield your child from these disenfranchising assignments. Make sure the school offers alternatives to family trees, ask if the wording to “ancestor” assignments can be changed to “elder” assignments. Families in the U.S. are not always biologically based (foster children, adopted children, orphaned children, etc.) and schools need to move away from studies based on “ancestry”. It’s the adopted parents job to make sure that non-adopted children in their kid’s school are NOT being given preferential treatment over their (adopted) children. If you cannot accept this responsibility, PLEASE DO NOT ADOPT A CHILD.
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Mara,
I completely agree. When I was teaching 7th grade I was also in the process of adopting. We had a family project and part of it was to create a family tree. Out of respect for adopted children, I gave each teacher a copy of three alternative family trees. Not one of them included them in their project. I thought it was rude and disrespectful. Their response? The students will figure it out.
Of course, it is a parent’s responsibility to help but as a teacher one needs to be sensitive to this as well, even if they don’t know.
As parents, we have tried to find out everything we can about both our son’s birth history and although it is not much we hope that one day we will be able to learn more and that he will want to include his Russian and/or Guatemalan heritage on his tree.
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It IS extremely rude and disrepectful to a child to give him/her an assignment that can’t honestly be completed. Should a 2nd grade child, like my son, be asked to fill out a family tree when the state of California denies his mother her original birth certificate? What gets me is the state of California seals adoptee birth records and at the same time has family trees and “ancestral” studies in the 2nd grade curriculum. The “state” freely and constantly censors and alters adoptee identities.
Our society expects adoptees to forget that they have their own biological histories and that they must be “grafted” onto their adoptive family’s trees. These untruths and lies are where adoptees, adoptive parents and biological parents get lost in a psychological “fog”. This “fog” is damaging and can take many years to emerge from. For the health of any family, TRUTH must be critical in relationships. Severe psychological damage is done when reality is constantly trampled on and disregarded.
The school board at my son’s school yelled at me and berated me last month for asking for alternatives assignments to family trees for children who cannot complete them. It was disgraceful how my family’s situation meant NOTHING to them. We (adoptees) are insignificant to the “status quo”.
Adoptive parents are the ones who can protect their children and all other children in this predicament. Acknowledge your child’s separate ethnicity (if you know it), their separate biological information (if you have it), and NEVER let the schools discriminate against your child in the name of “history” or any other excuse to put bloodlines into any school curriculum.
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Thank you, Mara!! After I wrote this and put it “out there”, the more I came to my conclusion to disclose, should I ever need to, because the truth must always be out there. If I, as an adoptive parent, set the example that adoption is something to hide, then I am sending the wrong message to my children. My concern lies in the gossipy part of disclosing this information, like I stated, the whole “you know, so and so is adopted” thing. But the only way to overcome that is to educate, and you can’t educate if you don’t disclose….
Anyway, I’m appalled at your predicament in CA–seriously crazy stuff, and in the second grade? Kudos to you for challenging the way things are. Maybe by the time your son is the parent, things will be done differently!
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