Tuesday, August 28, 2007

1st Homestudy visit

Here we go. We had our first meeting with the social worker for our homestudy. One of the questions she asked was why did we want to adopt? Good thing we talked about that as we walked to her apartment. It seems like an obvious answer, but how would you answer it?

a) I want a kid

b) I want cheap labour

c) it seemed like such a waste to spend all my spare money on fun filled vacations and pedicures.

d) Always wanted to do a criminal background check on myself!

She also asked what we would do if the child was allergic to our dog. My husband answered right away, of course, the dog would have to go to friends. My first thought? The kid goes. Kidding, folks. She was writing all our responses down so I thought it might be best to keep my warped sense of humour to myself for a while.

We're also working on doing some required online courses. The conspicuous family learning module was a little ludicrous for us. We're already a conspicuous couple (I'm black, he's white) and we live in culturally diverse neighbourhood in a culturally diverse city. Pretty hard to swing a dead marmot around here without hitting an ethnic restaurant of one type or another. So the part where we put the coloured dots on all the people and places we know was pretty stupid. From the time I was a kid, my surroundings, friends, co-workers, neighbourhood was quite diverse, though speaking for myself, I was usually in the minority. I can see the course might be applicable to, for example, a Caucasian couple adopting a Chinese child in a small, predominantly white town.

I'm sure we'll learn more in the rest of the courses. At the moment, my husband thinks kids in school are going to pick on a kid who is adopted. Kids are mean, he says. I think that kids get picked on for a whole bunch of reasons, so I don't see why my kid would be singled out for that alone. Any thoughts on this?

5 comments:

Pamela T. said...

I'm still fascinated by the intense screening that people who want to adopt children go through while those who conceive spontaneously could be irresponsible to their hearts content. Role playing, diversity training, allergies, relationship skills -- wouldn't it be fun to see fertile couples go through the process just to see if they'd qualify to be parents??

As for kids being mean...sadly they are but I don't recall ever hearing adoption being a trait that gets singled out...glasses, braces, being too tall, too short, not wearing cool enough clothes -- that seems to be the garden variety stuff to tormenting kids.

JJ said...

I am not as educated on adoption yet--but kids are mean period=) I am so excited you guys are moving forward with all these steps-Ill definitely be coming back to you for wisdom if we go down this path...

Teendoc said...

This is my third attempt to comment. Blogger keep freezing for some reason when I hit publish. Now I feel like what I'm saying really isn't that important.

OK, again, I don't think that most kids would single out another kid for being adopted, but kids are mean and you never know what they will glom onto to pick on.

I didn't realize you were a swirl couple as well. Our social worker told us that we would match quickly because of the dearth of biracial couples in the books. Will it be the same for you up North?

Deathstar said...

In this city, a zebra couple is pretty common. Yes, we were told that we had a really good chance of getting a child soon because we were biracial.

sharah said...

Kids are little freaking sadists. They will find something to pick on each other about, and make something up if there isn't anything obvious. I'm with PJ -- glasses, braces, clothes are all going to be more obvious and picked on more than adoption will be.