I think, in addition to verbalizing early understanding of adoption, that when he says things about wanting to be white like mom and dad, much of that is just about categorizing “same” and “different” which is developmentally appropriate for this age. He groups EVERYTHING lately, and is thus grouping us by color. We point out too the things that we have in common (mom and baby have brown eyes, daddy has green eyes; we all have dark brown hair, etc.) and the things about us that are different (other than skin tone) that make us each special. I am not so sure, as posted on Multiracial Sky, that at this age noticing this difference is so tied in to early feelings of racism or picking up on societal prejudice. I am not so naive as to say that this won’t/doesn’t happen, but it just doesn’t feel like that to me right now–I feel like I bring the race issue to the table. Just because he says he wishes he was white like us doesn’t mean that he dislikes his brown skin, or thinks white is better than black.

A question that popped up for me is how to talk about birthparents who aren’t a part of the child’s life now and were not good or possibly even decent parents. I know of some families in which the kids were adopted either out of foster care or at age two after two difficult and chaotic years with mom. I’m not saying that it’s the ideal situation for the kids to have no contact with the parents, but that’s how it is. I’m interested in people’s thoughts about how to talk about birthparents that are hard to praise. At younger ages, it’s possible to be vague and say that first mom had some problems and couldn’t take care of them, etc. but that may not suffice as they get older. It’s hard to say “If I gave birth to you, you wouldn’t be you” when much of the info you have is that the birthparents were pretty marginal and may have done quite a bit of damage. Some of the input that first parents had wasn’t so great and the kids might have been better off without that time with their parents.