Sunday, June 21, 2009

Burn BaBa Burn

Happy Father's Day! Zoe and Maya wanted to do for Father's Day what we did for Mother's Day -- burn notes to their birth fathers so the smoke would carry their good wishes to them. An interesting change I attribute to Chinese Camp -- this time Zoe wrote as much as it she could in Chinese characters (She knew most of these characters already, but I think Chinese Camp has given her a lot more confidence in her Chinese ability. At Chinese School she is the only non-native Chinese speaker in her class, so she struggles; at Chinese Camp, she's one of the stronger students).

I've written before about the girls' attitude toward their birth fathers:

Neither Zoe nor Maya seem very interested in their birth fathers. Is that because we don't have a dad in our family? I've always tried to include discussion of their birth fathers, thinking it might make them feel more "normal" -- "no, you don't have a daddy, but you do have a birth father. It takes a man and a woman to make a baby, and your birth mother and birth father made you." But they don't seem to invest much in that idea. Zoe will talk or write about her birth parents, plural, but her acute grief seems reserved for the loss of her birth mother.

No real change there -- even with today being Father's Day, Zoe asked some questions about her birth mother (She wanted to know, since she's learning so much more Chinese, if we could go to China and ask at every house in the city whether they know who her birth mother might be. She also wanted to know how her birth mother would be related to a child Zoe adopted from China (we had talked earlier about second cousins, and she LOVES figuring out family relationships!))

So did birth fathers come up today? Do your kids ask/talk about them?
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2 comments:

  1. a Tonggu MommaJune 21, 2009 at 10:32 PM

    The Tongginator does not... I think it's not concrete enough for them to fully understand at these younger ages. We say basically the same thing at our house, but it seems to go in one ear and out the other. A pregnancy is much more visible and easier to understand.

    Although the Tongginator does speak of her first mother on occasion, she is much more likely to talk about her foster mother. We adopted her when she was not quite one.

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  2. MahmeeJune 24, 2009 at 11:27 AM

    Nope. Our 3.5 year old has started asking questions about her birth mother but, not her birth father. I agree with Tonggu Momma, a pregnant woman is a much more visual 'aid'. The 'contribution' of a birth father maybe isn't as tangible at this age?

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