[telebabe]

Hi all
we are considering adopting an older boy (3 yrs).
Any experience and advice you can share adopting an older child who might be close to 4 when he comes home to us?
My concerns are language, maintaining memories of his first 3 years, the family and community that took care of him for the first years?
Do they realize at this age that they have different skin color than we (we are white Caucasian)?

Our first son was only 11 months old when we brought him home so we had no issues at all ...

Thanks!

[mommytoEli]

Originally Posted by telebabe

Do they realize at this age that they have different skin color than we (we are white Caucasian)?

they can. my 2 middle sons were each about 3 when they realized they were different colors than each other.

[telebabe]

Originally Posted by mommytoEli

they can. my 2 middle sons were each about 3 when they realized they were different colors than each other.

any tips on how to handle this situation?
Any recommendations for books?

[mommytoEli]

no tips....lol...that is one area i'm not very good in. i just told each kid when they brought it up that God makes everyone differently, and that some people are white, some are brown, and some are pink with brown spots(me-with freckles...lol). that seemed to be the end of the color differences for the most part. every once in a while ds3, Guatemalan, notices that "other people are brown, too." we're not, and i just say little one liners like, "how neat." i'm really not very good at it. but my son does seem appeased at the fact that i just acknowledge his excitement. he does have other friends that are GUatemalan with white parents...sometimes i wonder if that "normalizes" his situation for himself.

we have lots of adoption books where kids happen to be a color other than the family, but none of them specifically deal with talking about color. my kids also enjoy this new show on pbs called 'dinosaur train." a pteranadon (forgive my dinosaur spelling as i'm not a 6 year old boy...lol), mom adopts a t-rex. in many episodes they have little conversations about their differences, but always say things like they are still family. it is cute.

i must being doing something right, bc when my 2 color, they make different characters with different color skin and hair and seem to enjoy making all of the characters in the scene different from anyone else. (crayola makes really awesome skin color markers and crayons for this.....no more brown, black, or white ONLY...lol....there are many shades in the pack.)

[2xaround]

Although our daughter was an infant when we adopted her, I will share what I've learned from others who have adopted older children and from our experience with our niece who moved from Mexico to the U.S. at the age of 3. First of all, the younger the child, the quicker they will pick up the English language. They are human sponges and it only took our niece about 3 months before she was completely fluent in English. Most all the parents I've spoken with who brought kids home between the ages of 3 and 6 have said basically the same thing. Their kids pick up the language very quickly and they figure out how to communicate effectively until that time.

As far as maintaining their memories, that is much more challenging. My advice would be to spend as much time as possible in country taking pictures, journaling your experience while there, taking video if possible and gathering as much information about your son's life as possible. You will probably become his memory by consisently sharing this information with him over the years. Our daughter was 10 1/2 months when she came home from Guatemala. I took tons of pictures, gathered a lot of information about her life prior to coming home and started a blog where I put down information about our time in Guatemala. As she gets older and is able to understand more, I will share all of this information with her. Being so young, she won't remember her experience there, but my hope is that she will feel the connection.

Two of my favorite children's books that discuss the differences between people and the color of skin are "The Colors of Us" by Karen Katz and a Sesame Street book called "We're Different, We're the Same."

"The Colors of Us" is about a little girl who thinks brown is brown and her mom takes her for a walk to show her how every person is a different shade of brown which includes her caucasion friend Lucy who has peachy tan colored skin.

I especially like the Sesame Street book. It starts out by saying "Our noses are different" and then shows several pictures of peoples noses and how they all look different. It then goes into an explanation of how our noses are the same, "They breathe and sniff and sneeze and whiff." They do the same thing with hair, skin, eyes, etc. Very cute!