Lisa, I’m one who doesn’t necessarily believe that it’s “just a coincidence” that many of our children who came to us through matches, resemble us physically. Particularly, as it pertains to skin color. A part of me honestly believes (and I think our sw at the time hinted to it) that many AA bparents take the “skin color” aspect more into account and try to match up when they are looking for AA families for their AA children. I think they may also look a little harder at our family pictures in our profiles to see what’s going on there. I’ve just seen so many cases of “skin similarities” to not think there may be an element of truth to it. I am also light-skinned, my husband is a warm brown and my dd falls right in the middle. She also has beautiful dimples like my dh, a square jawline that also matches his, and a tall physique which also matches his. The only similarities between us I can claim is like most black folks we both have brown eyes and brown hair.
Even still, I’ve had people who don’t know we're an afamily(acquaintances, teachers, etc.) tell me how much she looks like me. I think they’re just being nice though because they also like to say “You did all the work but she looks like her daddy spit her out.” If they only knew, yeah, I actually did "all" the work, but it's not what they're thinking. And I'm the one who wanted to "spit at him" at times to make him hurry on up.
Once he got started though, I couldn't slow him down. I don’t think people immediately spot that we’re an afamily and we’ve gotten kind of used to the lack of attention on that front.
With that said, of course there are no guarantees that this will always be the case and if your next child looks a lot different then you three, then my guess is your family would be inclined to be a bit more of a curiosity to others. You would probably be fielding more adoption related questions and where did he/she get that pretty nose, hair, skin, etc., type stuff from adults. IMO, not a bad thing, (other then you might get tired of answering sometimes), but I don’t have much experience on that end. I also think most of the “brutal” stuff, would probably be coming out of the mouth of other children to your children. They can say some of the most horrible stuff sometimes. I’m certainly no expert and hence can’t offer you much advice (curious to hear what others have to say though), but I think it’s never too early to begin building confidence, and an appreciation of self that will aid in weathering any negative garbage that comes their way.
Good question.
Best wishes,
Kelli