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?