Back to School Tip List for Interracial Adoptive Families

16 Back to School Tips for Interracial Adoptive Families

• Be proactive! Involve yourself in their school environment. Interracial adoptees need parents who are willing to attend school meetings and check in with teachers about how their children are doing in class.
• Prepare! Prepare interracial adoptees for questions they might face from their peers about being an interracial adoptee. Share their adoption stories with them in honest and open ways that honor their connections to their birth families and let them know that they can step back when they do not feel comfortable answering questions about their adopted status.
• Observe! Observe your children’s teachers at least once a year in the classroom environment. Observe how they are treating all of the kids in the room. If your child is having big behaviors, are they being disciplined any differently than other kids having big behaviors?
• Explore! Are your children in diverse learning environments? Interracial adoptees are often placed in classrooms where they are the only children of their racial groups, creating scenarios where they are asked to speak for their racial group in class, without having other children from their racial groups to turn to for support. Equally important: having teachers with whom your child can identify racially. Not every teacher needs to be your child’s race, but if your child does not have any access to those teachers, consider after school programs and mentors who can be reflective.
• Help! Help your child explore their racial and cultural identity through books, movies, language, art, food, and traditions from their birth culture. This should be a regular part of life, not just saved for special occasions. The more they learn and engage at home, the more confidently they can navigate identity in school.
• Be prepared! Be prepared to talk about race. For interracial adoptees, it is essential that parents are aware of how to support us, and the first thing parents can do is to believe us when we tell them what we have experienced. Don’t minimize! Explore! Ask questions. The next thing parents can do is talk to teachers at the beginning of the school year about how they will set their classroom up to be an understanding environment.
• Be mindful! Be mindful of your children’s appearance at school. Interracial adoptees need our parents to understand how important our hair, skin, and clothes are to us. Kids can be cruel! It’s also important to know how to help us maintain our appearance in ways that honor our cultural identities like keeping our hair safe from breakage and dryness. Look into hair care help such as Stylez for Kids, for ideas!
• Ask questions! Don’t be afraid to ask your kids how they are feeling about school, about being adopted, or about being interracially adopted. At school, their differences are present in ways that remind them of what they have been separated from, both before and after being adopted (their names, their family of origin, their communities). Ask parents of color how they navigated their own children’s school environments.
• Create alliances! Create alliances with other parents at school who are invested in talking about adoption, race, and other subjects in informed ways. Establish relationships with other adoptive families and families of color who can provide support to your family.
• Consider moving! Consider moving f your child’s school and community environment consistently place them in a position of being the racial minority If moving is not an available option, consider finding clubs, sports teams, book club groups, and other spaces for your child to interact with more children from diverse racial backgrounds that are more reflective of their racial identities.
• Understand! Understand that your child may not feel connected to their racial group, at least not right away. Interracial adoptees navigate the space in between — feeling a sense of non-belonging to their racial groups and the racial groups of their adoptive parents. Additionally, they encounter school systems (and peer groups) that may not understand the added complexity and trauma that being adopted imposes on their bodies. Help them understand that it is okay to feel different from their peers of the same race, but that their difference does not make them any less worthy of belonging to their racial groups!
• Examine! Examine the course curriculum at your child’s school. It is important that parents are aware of how teachers approach topics like race. Interracial adoptees, as well as the birth and adoptive families they belong to, experience intersecting identities that are important to honor. Parents can make teachers aware of the importance of honoring diverse voices in their history and social studies classes.
• Observe! Observe your child’s interactions with their peers at school. Consider how race is talked about among their friends. If ethnic and racial groups are being put down by their peer groups, step in to reframe the conversation, while pushing back on problematic statements.
• Get a second opinion! Sometimes Interracial adoptive parents are told that their kids are not “enough” in the classroom, intellectually speaking. This often comes from teachers who do not understand their learning process, and who make pre-judgements about them. The second opinion can come from other educators or interested parties.
• Partner! Reach out to your child’s teachers at the start of the year to share any important context about your family and your child’s cultural background. Offer helpful resources, books, or holidays that are meaningful to your child. It doesn’t have to be a long conversation, but opening the door can encourage thoughtful inclusion throughout the school year.
• Engage! Engage in self-care as parents. Find things that allow you to recharge for a moment, allowing you to step back into parenting mode when needed. Hobbies, people, and places help us recharge. If we can’t care for ourselves with love and honor, it makes it harder for us to do the same for our kids.