What If Blacks Adopted Whites??

Raising Katie
What adopting a white girl taught a black family about race

Several pairs of eyes follow the girl as she pedals around the playground in an affluent suburb of Baltimore. But it isn't the redheaded fourth grader who seems to have moms and dads of the jungle gym nervous on this recent Saturday morning. It's the African-American man—six feet tall, bearded and wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt—watching the girl's every move. Approaching from behind, he grabs the back of her bicycle seat as she wobbles to a stop. "Nice riding," he says, as the fair-skinned girl turns to him, beaming. "Thanks, Daddy," she replies. The onlookers are clearly flummoxed.

As a black father and adopted white daughter, Mark Riding and Katie O'Dea-Smith are a sight at best surprising, and at worst so perplexing that people feel compelled to respond. Like the time at a Pocono Mountains flea market when Riding scolded Katie, attracting so many sharp glares that he and his wife, Terri, 37, and also African-American, thought "we might be lynched." And the time when well-intentioned shoppers followed Mark and Katie out of the mall to make sure she wasn't being kidnapped.

Read more here.

This article is intensely interesting to me. I'm fairly confident I would respond in similar fashion, not because I stereotype blacks as violent, but because this type of transracial adoption is so very rare. As a transracial adoptive mom, I'm very aware of biracial families and I have never seen a family that "looks like" this one.
It is very interesting, though, how very different are the responses I get to my biracial family.

What do you think?

Daniel Pulled a Tooth

Notice I did not say he lost a tooth. He didn't. It wasn't loose, it wasn't wiggly. He pulled it. Why would he pull a tooth, you ask? Because he had a bead stuck on it! Duh!
Look at the size of that tooth! Good grief!
Kyle and I are frequently looking at each other and asking: What was he thinking??
He scribbled on Kyle's car with a brick. He poured body oil on the floor in room. (Thankfully, we have hardwoods.) He came out of the public bathroom with soapy hands. He lathered up. He just forgot to wash the soap off. (He did flush though, which was no minor miracle.)
I keep waiting for the day Daniel sticks a bean up his nose.

Lord, give me grace.

The Fruit of Home Schooling

When Elena was itty bitty, we got a lot of flack for the way we chose to parent her. We put her to bed awake instead of lulling her to sleep with a ride in the car. I woke her up when she needed to eat, instead of letting her sleep as long as she wanted. I nursed her when she woke up, instead of nursing her to sleep. Lots of people didn't agree with us. But before Elena was a year old, they started to see the fruit of the way we did things. Elena was a contented baby. It took me about 2 minutes to put her bed and she didn't fuss between feedings.

Homeschooling has been the same way. Initially, we were questioned and criticized for choosing to educate our kids this way. But, after a few years of homeschooling, the criticism was replaced with praise. They began to see the fruit of homeschooling.

• My children have very close-knit releationships with each other.
• They are self-assured and speak in front of others with confidence.
• They aren't too concerned with what other kids think of them. They are great at laughing at themselves.
• They talk to adults with respect, not awkwardness. They make eye contact.
• They are innocent. They appear younger than their same-age schooled peers because they maintain their childhood innocence so much longer.

I could go on. It is so fulfilling and rewarding to see the difference homeschooling has made. I am so proud and a little bit jealous of what my kids have developed as a result.

What fruits have you seen in your homeschooling?

Car Schooling

Last Friday, we had a lot of errands to run. I had to get the car inspected and then wanted to get it washed. I prefer to run errands like these in the morning (afternoons are pretty much dedicated to my almost-daily nap), so that means taking school with us.

While I was being read to by Maya, the other kids were reading to themselves if they're able (Elena and now Chloe) or just looking to see how many more chapters are left in the book (Isaac).

And then it was Isaac's turn to read to me. He's actually getting pretty good at it, but it's all about achievement for him, not so much for pleasure. Yet. But I have hope.

Meanwhile, everyone else is entertained just watching the cars get scrubbed and rinsed. Endless entertainment! It never gets old.

By the way, I was having a very thorough job done on my messy van, so we had plenty of time to kill. We got all the reading and math done, and then Daniel and Liddy found this candy machine. It was manna from heaven as far as they were concerned.

Suddenly, I found myself barrated with starving children wanting to know if they could buy some candy. I said: If you're buying, you can have whatever you want!

So Isaac starts emptying his pockets. He has all the things he will ever need in case of an emergency.
Isaac had 57 pennies in his pocket as it turned out! There would be candy galore!!

And after keeping six children busy for an hour, I was rewarded with a shiny and spotless "new" van. Woo-Hoo!! Man, I love multi-tasking!

The Interrupt Rule

My friend (in this case, Maya) and I are chatting away and one of the kids wants to talk to me. Instead of incessantly interrupting with: "Mommy, mommy, mommy!" and my having to constantly say: "Hold on a minute, I'm talking" (thus interrupting my friend), the child puts his hand on my arm and waits patiently for me to turn my attention to them. Depending on the age of the child, this may be a few seconds wait or it may be a minute or two.

I put my hand on his to acknowledge him and let him know I'll get to him in just a minute.
And then I tell my friend to excuse me as I turn my attention to my little one, who is then beside himself with excitement to talk to me. (I'm in high demand around here.)
And then someone else runs up and puts her hand on me while Daniel's still talking. I feel so loved. And look how patiently my friend waits to have my attention again!

Everyone gets the attention they want and there's no interrupting.

The Anointed Book

Last Saturday, Kyle and I went to a day seminar to hear the wisdom of Carole Joy Seid, a proponent of literature-based home education. She was so encouraging! One portion of her seminar was "How to Make Your Children Lovers of Books". The simple method is reading to your children all the time, and being a reader yourself. So, some woman asked: But what if you have a husband who doesn't like to read?
Carole had a quick response (clearly she'd heard that question more than once): Have your husband read to the kids whenever he can. That book is the anointed book. No one else, not even Mommy, ever reads it. Just Daddy. If he only reads it once a week, so be it. But that book is Daddy's alone to read.
So, we did just that. Kyle asked me to make an announcement to the kids, so I did. And then Kyle brought out "Jump on Over: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit" and dove in.
The kids l o v e d it!! When he stopped reading, they were all begging him to keep reading. But as any good Charlotte Mason fan, Kyle left them with a cliffhanger.

Charlotte Mason Q&A

"What is the point of literature-based education?"

Textbooks are written by many authors who each know a little bit about the subject their writing about. Living books are written by one author who is passionate about their topic. For instance, Thornton Burgess was a veterinarian. He wrote many living books, which are basically field guides to specific animals (The Burgess Bird Book, The Burgess Animal Book) but in narrated format. They read like a story, but while my kid is entertained by the sweet story, they are learning what the bird looks like, what he eats, where he lives, who his enemies are, and what he does when pursued by an enemy. I love that!
Rather than reading a couple pages about the holocaust in a history textbook, they will read The Von Trapp Family Singers, Number the Stars, and The Hiding Place. Each gives a different perspective (Austria, Poland, Germany) and it's interesting, not boring, because it's a story. I so wish I could have learned history this way! I hated history in school because I never got the point. It was just names and places and dates with no meaning. I see the passion and understanding that Pedro has for that time period because he learned it through literature.