[Katia555]

This question did not come from a grown-up. It came from a seven-year-old girl who lives across the street from us and sometimes comes over to play with my three-year-old daughter, whom we adopted in China two years ago. The two are not very compatible, by the way. I was so surprised by the question, I didn't know what to say. Thank god, my tree-year-old didn't understand the question. How do you respond to a seven-year-old who asks something like this? I ended saying that you can't "own a child." But she didn't get it, said something like, "But you are not her real mommy." It bothered me greatly, because I know my daughter is very smart, she picks up on things instantly, and I did not feel like sharing her life story, or mine, with this seven-year-old. I didn't feel like telling her about the orphanage in China. Sometimes I feel as if our lives are supposed to be an open book, simply because our daughter was born in a different country and we got together in a way that some people consider unusual or news-worthy. Once, while we were standing in line at the grocery store, a women, a total stranger, asked me, "Which agency did you use to get her?" It makes me think off all the future questions we are going to face... We don't own our children, no matter how we got them. They simply pass through us, somehow. And it doesn't matter if we conceived them or adopted them. They are our children, and we are their parents.