Follow That Bird & Transracial Adoption Conversations

Maya and I were on our own this morning since Zoe spent the night with a friend.  She wanted to watch Follow That Bird (as the little sister, poor Maya doesn't often get to pick the movie!), a 1985 Sesame Street flick, described as follows:

A meddling social worker sends poor Big Bird off to Ocean View, Illinois, for the comforts of family life with his "own kind," the Dodos. But Big Bird is a disaster as a Dodo and, lonely and homesick, he soon sets off on foot for Seasame Street. Can his old friends find him before he runs "afowl" of trouble en route?

At one point, the Dodos tell Big Bird he can't be friends with Snuffy, since Snuffy isn't a bird.  Maya was incensed -- "That would be like saying I can't be friends with C. (her "boyfriend!") because I'm Chinese and he's not!"  Maya also caught the same-same adoption theme --"I don't think that lady (the social worker bird) would let you adopt me, Mama."  We had a lovely discussion about transracial adoption, and how there are different opinions about it.  Maya said she thought people who are different can be a fine family.

Maya also said, "Mama, it's like adoption when Big Bird went with the Dodo family, but he ran away so they weren't his forever family.  . . ."  We talked about why Big Bird wanted to run away, that he missed his family and friends, and how adoption is supposed to be for children who didn't have family or whose families can't take care of them;  Big Bird already had a family on Sesame Street, Maya concluded.  And, she thought it was great that her Sesame Street family include grown-ups and kids and monsters and honkers and cows . . . .

FYI, the movie is on STARZ on Demand if you get that cable channel and want to watch it with your kids.