he Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It’s designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community. You don’t need to be listed at Open Adoption Bloggers to participate or even be in a traditional open adoption. If you’re thinking about openness in adoption, you have a place at the table. The prompts are meant to be starting points–please feel free to adapt or expand on them.
Check out the other responses at Open Adoption Roundtable #50
Check out the other responses at Open Adoption Roundtable #50
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Whether you have children in your home or not, it is hard to miss the fact that it is back-to-school time. School brings with it a whole host of things which can be made more complex when adoption is involved, from family tree assignments to meeting new teachers to simple milestones like sharing of first-day-of-school photos. How has adoption come to the forefront for you when it comes to school?
Write about open adoption and school.
Baby Girls daycare requires us to fill out paperwork at the start of each school year. Last year I remember agonizing over if I should put that she was adopted on the paper work. The staff already knew since we had been on the waiting list for two years prior to her arrival. We had not finalized yet so were we guardians or parents? Then the question about siblings. Finally questions about her medical history, and birth all threw me into a tailspin.
This year the paperwork was much easier. This year we are legally her parents. She knows the names of her birth siblings so I included it in case she talks about them. Her medical history of her time in the NICU is well behind us (though I never included her stay in the NICU on her daycare paperwork). Her Hep C status is negative. I'm not sure if I'm getting better at this Adoptive Mama stuff or if the questions were really easier this year.
As an aside in her class there is another boy in her daycare class that is also adopted. He also by chance is adopted from the same city/state as Baby Girl. It will be nice to have her have a friend in her class just like her. :)
I'd hazard a guess that the questions were the same, but that your confidence has grown. Feels nice, doesn't it? :)
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How wonderful that you know the names of your child's siblings, and can include it in her rich family history. Good luck this school year!
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