Rooting For Gold

I've blogged here about my kids' questions about who to cheer for in the Olympics when China and America compete against each other, and Zoe and Maya have offered their advice on that question here. A Korean-American mom, at the blog More than Serving Tea, blogs about her son's questions about who to cheer for in the Olympics:

The Olympics are fun. We see great sportsmanship and whiny losers. We see patriotism is not unique to America, and apparently neither is the practice of covering your face/balding head/body in your country’s/team’s colors with face paint. We test the kids on their limited knowledge of national flags. We dream, even for a moment, that our kids will be inspired to try something new but not something as crazy as the skeleton. And we pick our favorites and cheer for, root for, celebrate with or shake our heads in defeat for our team.

But in some families like my extended family, it’s complicated and fun because of who we are – Americans, Korean-Americans, Koreans.

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What has been so interesting to me has been my older son’s reaction to the Olympics. During one of the speed skating events, he was quick to notice that there was a Korean skater competing against an American skater. His reaction? “Hey, look! There’s a Korean and an American! Cool! Who do we root for?”

Click here to read the whole thing. Interesting to see the similarity in dealing with identity issues in adoptive and non-adoptive families that straddle the hyphen between another country of origin and America.