"How come you speak our language?"

We've had beautiful weather the past couple of days;  Friday after school we decided to play on the playground for a while before going home for piano lessons.  There were two boys already playing when we got there, about the same age as my girls, but not from their school since they were in a different uniform.  The kids played well together, but I didn't know afterwards that the boys had lots of questions for the girls.  Zoe doesn't remember exactly how the questioning started, but she said she had to explain adoption to them.  One asked if she spoke some other language, and Zoe told them she spoke Chinese. 

I didn't hear anything about it until we were leaving.  One boy asked, pointing at me, "Is that the girl who adopted you?"  Zoe said, "Yes, she's my mom."  Kinda funny question since both girls had called me Mama as they were playing, one time even running away from the boys while playing tag, and telling them that "Mama" was "base," so they couldn't be tagged while touching me.

Then the last question from the 7-year-old -- "So how come you speak our language?"  Zoe handled that question with aplomb -- "I was just a baby when I came here.  I learned English the same way you did!"

And that was that.

While we were driving home, I asked the girls what they thought of the questions the boys asked.  They said it was OK.  I asked if they get tired of having to answer those kinds of questions all the time, and both said they didn't mind.

They are far more charitable than I am!  I told them sometimes I feel annoyed by all the questions, but they insisted they really didn't mind.  Still, we reviewed the W.I.S.E. Up strategy and I reminded them it was always OK to just Walk away or say It's private.  And it is always their choice whether to Share or Educate.