Season’s Greetings my Blogville friends. I am sipping on a turmeric chai tea for it’s lovely aroma. I hope that you are, or will be, in the company of family and friends this time of year. 


Personally, the Christmas movies about family can make me laugh or cry depending on the feelings they touch at this time of year. I remember my childhood Christmases and they were happy times for the most part. I mean, everyone has that one Christmas that they did not get exactly what they hoped for, or get to do something they may have wanted to do. However, there were two things I remember that I always thought about at this time of year. 


First, I wondered about my first Christmas. I had been in foster care since my birth and would have just turned three months old on my first Christmas. Did I get any presents? Did I have a visit with Santa? Was there a photo of my first Christmas anywhere? My whole childhood prior to being placed with my parents at 9 months old remained a mystery that piqued my interest every year. 


Next, as I got older and understood more about what adoption actually meant, every Christmas I wondered what my birth parents were doing. I wondered if they had other children and if they got them presents. Did my birth parents get the kids that they liked enough to keep everything those kids had asked for? I wondered if they had other kids, did those kids know about me?


I also wondered about that birth ‘brother’ (who turned out to be a sister) that my parents were told my maternal birth grandparents kept (it turned out that this baby boy was actually an uncle born around the same time as my birth sister), but I digress, that was another story for another blog. My point is that I wondered if my birth mother got him a present and if she did, did she sign his tag/card as his sister or as his mother? 


Since my birth mother had relinquished her parental rights to me I was mostly sure she was not getting me a gift, despite my fantasies. But how was little kid me to know that for sure? This led me to wonder how she would sign my card/tag.


For some reason, I was pretty sure that my birth parents were not together but I still wondered if they thought about me at Christmas. I wondered if they too were wondering how my Christmas was, in the same way I was wondering about theirs. Were they wondering what I got for Christmas and if I was happy with my adoptive parents? I wondered why I couldn’t just call them and tell them I was ok. I felt like this was Jesus’ fault. I kept hearing stories of how Jesus was Joseph’s adopted son but Jesus kept talking to “God”. In my young mind, every Christmas, on his birthday, Jesus got to talk to his birth father. So, why couldn’t I talk to mine on my birthday or at Christmas?


I was raised Catholic, so Jesus’ story was very clear in my mind. I am sure you won’t be surprised to learn that I was more focused on his relationship with Joseph, who was not his ‘biological’ dad. I remember thinking how my dad was kind of like Joseph because he was not my ‘biological’ dad either but he sure acted like he was, just like Joseph did with Jesus. So I pretty much took it upon myself to believe that Jesus and I were both adopted. Well, technically his was a step-parent adoption, but still, I had something in common with Jesus.


There were other silly thoughts too when I was little. It didn’t happen often, but if I didn’t get something that I had wanted for Christmas, I would wonder if my birth parents would have bought me that longed-for gift. I would wonder if I lived with my birth parents, would I have to go to Midnight Mass? It feels like Christmas Eve was the only night of the year that I did NOT want to get to stay up late.


The Christmas season always had this tremendous magic. I mean, you could ask Santa for almost anything and he would make your wish come true. I’m sure I traumatized many Santas with my Christmas wish; to meet my birth parents. I am not one hundred percent sure but I feel like I remember the Santas would suddenly list a bunch of alternative ‘girl’ toys that I might like instead. In hindsight, growing up in a small town, half the Santas were probably guys that worked with my dad or were adoptive dads themselves. There were a lot of adoptive dads in my parents’ circle of friends. Leave it to me to make a fun activity extremely uncomfortable for those poor Santas.


Please do not misunderstand, I LOVED my parents. I think it was just that I had options; or thought I did. Christmas magic got into my mind and offered the impossible. Christmas, when all your dreams could come true!
Also, its not that I wanted to leave my parents, I just wanted to know who my birth parents were and if they thought of me too. I was both excited and terrified at the idea of meeting my birth parents, or about them finding out where I lived and coming to get me back. There was the feeling of being accepted by my birth parents, instead of having been abandoned, and being wanted by them, not unwanted, that was always there in a teeny tiny part of my brain and my heart. I guess I figured Santa and the magic of Christmas could sort that out for me.


You cannot put a price on the gift I continued to ask Santa for, information about my birth parents. If there had been a price, my parents would have gladly paid it. What price would you put on the gift of information for your child? My parents understood my curiosity, my wanting to know about my ‘roots’ if you will. My mother shared everything she knew; she simply was not told that much, nor was she given anything in writing. My mother would have gladly put a bow on the truth and shared it with me; such as the fact that I had a birth half-sister, and that the parental rights to her were also relinquished by our birth mother, and that my sister too had been adopted. My parents believed that I deserved to know the answers to the many questions I had, they simply did not know them.


It would have helped me to grow up knowing my ‘story’ as told to the agency by my birth mother. I grew up in a time where you raised adopted children ‘as if born to you’, as if no birth family members existed. But I was not born to my parents; my love for them, and a legal system made me their daughter. We grew in each other’s hearts and became a family through experience, not through blood. But make no mistake, we were a family, with our own story, I was just missing chapter one. 


One thing I would change in my story was the lack of information my parents were given about my birth family, and about my time in foster care before I came to live with them. This lack of information forced my parents to be evasive and for me not to trust that they really didn’t know the answers to my questions. How could a system give you a kid and not tell you anything about where that kid came from? Some of my friends who were adopted privately seemed to know a little bit more about their birth families than I did. It falsely led me to believe that if your adoptive parents ‘paid for you’, they received more information. 


So if I could give every adopted child a Christmas gift, it would be that they would arrive into their new parents’ arms with a full history of their birth families, both maternal and paternal. This would allow their adoptive parents to answer their myriad of questions, to share their medical history information, and to help them know why their birth parents let them go. 


Adoptive parents, please believe me when I say that this is your child, but that the child comes with a past, and that knowing this past, and sharing it with your child as they grow and mature helps you to raise a whole child into a secure and trusting adult. Biology caused this child to be born to their birth parents, but your dedication to the adoption process and to their adoption finalization has made them your child (lovingly and legally). Trust their love for you, it has grown through experience, if not through biology. Give them the gift of answering their questions to the best of your ability, do not be afraid because love should know no fear. Be their Santa Claus. 


Thank you for continuing to read my blogs and for your comments. Please feel free to continue to comment here or more privately using my email [email protected] 
These are your gifts to me all year, thank you. 
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I wish you a Merry Christmas (if it applies to you).

Hello Blogville friends! Welcome back, it is so nice to ‘see’ you. This morning I have a honey lemon ginger turmeric concoction that I have started drinking as it is supposed to be good for me. I think it is appropriate to be drinking a clear beverage, maybe it will help me express myself with clarity. 

For some reason, I am inspired to follow up on my last blog (Shadows) as the impact of my birth parent’s ‘shadows’ really impacted on my life in at least two parts. The first part you have read about in my last blog, now let’s talk about the second part.

When something ‘casts a shadow’ it can also have a positive impact. Shadows can protect things from the harsh rays of the sun. For example, you might not be able to see foliage deep down in the shadows but as it grows and matures without being dried up completely by the sun, the foliage can sometimes bloom magnificently. For me, my adoptive parents gave me just enough sun to balance the shadows while I was growing up. They could not protect me completely of course and I did spend some time in the shadows, but they brought balance to being raised as a child who was adopted. Their love for me was the balance of light that I needed, to help me bloom. Though they could not protect me from the shadows of my birth parents, their love warmed me. They were only the first.

Carrying forward my parents’ balance between shadow and light was (and is) my husband. As our relationship got more serious, his willingness to accept a lack of medical history, which might well impact on children we might have together, was reassuring. He honestly felt that no one has a crystal ball that can forecast the future, adopted or not. Since we have known each other as long as I have been legally able to travel the adoption disclosure information path, he has been my travelling companion. He has often helped me see the light when all I could see were the shadows. 

The path to finding and meeting my birth relatives was filled with shadows and light. She had been born before me and also relinquished for adoption. As a result of the tragic practice of separating siblings to satisfy more adoptive parents’ needs, our own parent agency caused us to be separated for just over thirty years; our separation was the shadow. The first ray of sunshine if you will was meeting my maternal birth (half) sister. I wish I could describe to you exactly how it feels to look into the eyes of the first actual adult birth relative you have ever known. It was a bit like looking into the eyes of my newborn children, my only other known birth relatives. I looked for, and found, a kindredness in my birth sister’s eyes. Further, I found acceptance as her sons’ new aunt. Many hours were spent comparing physical resemblances among us and our children as the shadows of knowing no birth relatives began to dissipate.  

The next ray of light in my journey was my birth father. Though he never knew that I was casting a shadow of existence on this earth following his brief relationship with my birth mother, he did not leave adult me in the dark. The day I finally met him face to face was terrifying and filled with the cold fingers of fear that he might not like me, or be disappointed in who I was. Instead, he immediately took me over to a mirror and, standing side by side, the cold fingers of fear were replaced by and indescribable warmth as he compared our images, pointing out all similarities. There are no words except to say I bloomed a little bit more that day. 

My birth father sent me some photos of himself, and also of his children in varying stages of their growing up. I remember one photo, that is memorized in my mind’s eye, of all the children enjoying ice cream cones and I can still feel the coldness of the shadow that passed over my heart as I wondered where my ice cream cone was. I also noticed in these old photos that my birth sister’s ears stuck out just like mine did, my ears had been a source of shame until that moment when I felt the warmth of belonging, of sharing a physical characteristic with a paternal sibling. You might find it interesting that I felt an inexplicable jealousy when I eventually met her and she told me her parents had later arranged for a surgery to pin her ears back, while mine were left to stick out, fodder for teasing by my peer group. 

Before I met my birth father, due to geographic distance challenges, I met his adult children. I met the very children he had kept and raised with his wife, in full sunshine, while I lurked in the shadows of his past. They were wonderful. All shadows were driven away by the warmth of their acceptance. They accepted me as a sibling so unconditionally that I could almost feel the clouds parting, allowing the warmth of acceptance to replace the cold shadow of the fear of rejection. I met my nieces and nephews, immediately searching their faces for any resemblances to my children, their birth cousins. Instead of grandpa’s secret child I became grandpa’s other child, a new aunt. I bloomed even more. We keep in touch to this day and actually visit when I am in their area. There is a warmth when we visit, their acceptance that I am their sister drives away even the darkest shadows.

As you know from previous blogs my birth mother refused the opportunity to meet me, and my sister, casting one of the biggest shadows on my very existence. At our request, she did provide an updated medical history for my sister and I, as well as a single photograph of herself around the age that she was when she had given birth to me. I immediately framed that photograph to protect it from harm. Sadly for her, there would have been a ray of light if she had only seen the acceptance of us from the daughters that she raised. She raised them to be compassionate, and accepting women, whom I have had the pleasure to meet and form relationships with. I regret that she missed the opportunity to have all six of us together with her like a warm ‘Hallmark moment’. For her to have had a photograph of herself with all six of her daughters. But whatever her reasons were, at her request, her two oldest daughters remained in the shadows of her past.

I feel bad that she felt the need to keep us hidden in the shadowy darkness of her past. Her daughters were remarkably accepting when we approached them following the death of their, ‘our’ mother. Once over the shock of our existence, we were as welcomed into their sisterhood as plants welcome the warmth of the sun. If only she had known how accepting and non-judgmental her family would have been, I believe she would have been proud. Six sisters, daughters of the same woman, together at long last, out of the shadows. 
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Thank you so much for visiting with me today. I so enjoy your company and I hope you enjoy my stories. As always, feel free to comment here or send me an e-mail at [email protected]. 'See' you next time.

​Hello everyone and welcome back to Blogville. I am sipping a berry blend tea today hoping to brighten a dull weather day. This morning I had a lazy start and was scrolling through pictures on my phone. It inspired me to write about shadows for some reason. Naively, I thought ‘casting a shadow’ meant to highlight or cover, therefore protecting what it covered, like a cool shade in the summer heat. Apparently I was mistaken.


My web search of the phrase, ‘casting a shadow’, revealed that it actually means to cause something to be less enjoyable. I guess it might be like when someone’s ex-partner arrives unexpectedly at an event, therefore making the event less enjoyable, so that the ex-partner would be ‘casting a shadow’. I mean this only applies if the relationship ended badly of course, some ex-partners have wonderful relationships with each other. But I digress.


I was looking at a photo that I had taken while on a walk in a Canadian East Coast Province that my husband and I visited this past summer. We had hiked a beautiful, though rather steep, trail behind our hotel. It was a beautiful summer day, warm and sunny. It was actually the first time I had ever seen caution signs warning about steepness of a trailside. As we left the treed portion of the trail behind us I was captivated by how our shadows looked on the trail ahead of us, so I took a photo. I also took a photo of our shadows at another point in our journey as we walked down one of Halifax’s steep hills. Somehow, I think that, to me, these pictures mean ‘we were there’ without the distraction of how we looked.


Looking at these photos reminded me how I think that sometimes I can feel my birth mother’s shadow. Not her actual shadow of course but her influence on me and how being relinquished for adoption impacted on my life. Sometimes her shadow even caused some things to be less enjoyable. Things like the anniversary of my birth each year, no amount of candles could extinguish the shadow of hers and my separation on the day I was born. When I would go to the doctor and the topic of family medical history came up, her shadow was cast on the door as it closed behind my mom and the doctor while my mom frantically whispered that I was adopted and she had no birth family history to give him. As a young adult, both of my birth parents’ shadows were there when I was asked about medical histories and hereditary conditions. In fact, I clearly remember my first mammogram after I had met my birth father and all of my birth siblings, I was so proud to say ‘no’ instead of ‘I don’t know’ when asked if there was a family history of breast cancer. I know that does not seem like much but I had lived my entire life until then answering medical questions with “I was adopted, I do not have any birth family medical history information.” Finally getting birth family medical history information through the reunion process was a ray of sunshine on a lifelong medical history shadow.


When my birth mother was offered the chance to meet the adult me, she declined. You can imagine the shadow that cast on my heart. She did provide medical history information and a photograph of herself from about the age she was when I was born (at the request of the social worker). To have had someone give birth to me and leave me to an uncertain future cast a shadow on my existence that I had mostly learned to live with. But for her to later have been offered the opportunity to get to know me as a person and decline it, cast a very different kind of shadow. I will never fully know why she made that decision but I will always believe it was my fault somehow, something I had done in utero, or even during my birth that had ‘cast a shadow’ on our future and our ability to become a reunited birth mother and birth child. 


I used to feel my birth father’s shadow too but it had a more subliminal feel to it than hers did. Did he know I existed? His role, or lack of one, cast a shadow on something I was not sure he even knew existed. The information I had been given from my file indicated that my birth father did not know he had left me behind; the unintended  product of a romantic tryst. There is a shadow of irresponsibility to that as he moved on to live his life, presumably never looking back. Yet there I was, existing in the shadow of their brief relationship. Once I had met my birth father, I felt his shadow less. Perhaps because he had taken shape and became real; I could see and hear him. He became less of a shadow and more a ray of light, though my heart still held him accountable for abandoning my birth mother and leaving her with the responsibility of deciding what to do about me. At the same time, he could shed light on where I came from, who my paternal ancestors are, and yes, provide me with some medical history information. Even after he passed I can still feel his energy, his light as opposed to his shadow I suppose, maybe because he let me get to know him. Maybe because he accepted me as his birth child, he was able to fill in his chapter of the book of my existence. 


Growing up adopted involved many unanswered questions as you might guess. These are often the shadows that darken the lives of adopted people. These shadows cover school activities such as learning about genetics and not being able to fill in any of those blanks. These shadows cover the fact that you began life as ‘illegitimate’, a child born to unmarried parents. By today’s standards, this is no longer an issue, however, in my generation it was fodder for teasing, shame and embarrassment. It is hard to build self-esteem when you actually should not have existed; when your very existence was an accident, a mistake. This shadow still lives in me, even into my 60s. 


Today the term used for these shadows is typically referred to as ‘adoption trauma’ and is acknowledged as a side effect of being adopted. Our ‘shadow’ finally has a name. Now I know why I suffered such low self-esteem for so much of my life. Though I never met my birth mother, I have gotten to know who she was through her children and grandchildren. Meeting my birth father made me feel acknowledged, that once he knew I existed, I mattered. Meeting and maintaining some level of contact with his children and grandchildren is inexplicably gratifying. These are my maternal and paternal ‘blood’ sisters and brother, but more importantly, they accept me as their sister, even as an aunt to their children.


As you may or may not know, from previous blogs, I have a maternal birth half-sister who was also placed for adoption. The greatest cloud over this relationship was the Ontario Government’s denial of my right to connect with her at the time I learned she existed. I had grown up knowing that there was a half-sibling out there and subsequently fought for the right to gain access to them once I was an adult. Eventually, I won a battle, that happily no one should have to fight today thanks to legislative changes, and I was eventually able to meet my birth sister. We were robbed of the opportunity to have grown up together in an adoptive home under the shadow of an agency’s practice of satisfying more adoptive parents’ needs over the meeting the needs of siblings by placing them together in the same adoptive family. Under the shadow of the provincial adoption disclosure laws, we were further robbed of the opportunity to know each other for the first thirty years of our lives. The government’s actions clearly ‘casting shadows’ on our lives, and the lives of generations of adopted persons.


As always, thank you for stopping by. I look forward to reading your comments here, or via email at [email protected]! See you next time in Blogville!

Hello everyone, welcome back to Blogville. I appreciate that each of you come back to read about my thoughts and I truly enjoy reading the comments that some of you are comfortable in sending my way. Thank you. Today I am sipping a blood orange based herbal tea while I write this blog. I hope you gain some insight from reading it.

As you know, I teamed up with one of my maternal birth sisters to write and self-publish a book to help families talk with their children about adoption and kinship. Krista, my birth sister, illustrated the book. It was an accidental project that I am actually really proud of. As an adopted person, being proud of things takes an extra effort, given that I was never really meant to exist on the planet. But I am really proud of our book.

So, one day I was speaking with a friend about my book and explaining how I had teamed up with a maternal birth sister to create it. My friend looked at me and asked, “Why do you say ‘birth sister’ when talking about Krista and not just ‘my sister’? I thought about what she just said and replied, “That’s a great question.”

When I hear the word siblings, I think of my brother right away. We are not blood related but we were raised by the same parents, and parented as brother and sister. I wonder if I think of sibling relationships being like the one my brother and I have is a result of having shared parenting parents and childhoods, rather than having shared a womb? I only ever refer to him as my brother, without feeling the need to qualify by saying my adopted brother. Hmmmm.

Come to think of it, whenever I am talking with people about my parents the term ‘real parents’ often comes into the discussion (from them, not from me). For some reason, most folks seem to think of my adoptive parents as just that, the parents who adopted me. But when I am talking about my birth parents, often people will question if I mean my ‘real’ parents. It occurs to me that when I talk about my biological siblings, those born to my birth parents, no one ever asks if I mean my ‘real’ siblings. Isn’t that interesting?

Getting back to my friend’s question, I wonder if I refer to Krista as my birth sister because I do not think I am entitled to just say ‘my sister’. I did not have that role with Krista, nor with any of my birth mother’s other daughters while growing up. We did not even meet until after our birth mother had passed away. Being a sister typically means more than sharing blood, especially blood from only one birth parent, doesn’t it? Apparently I think it has to do with being parented as siblings more than being blood related. When I watch my maternal birth half-sisters together I can see, and feel, their history as sisters. This also applies to my birth father’s other children.We do not share childhood experiences and relationships, nor any kind of history together that I feel makes us ‘true’ sisters and brothers. 

It’s funny that when I refer to my older birth sister (also named Lynne, but that is a topic of a different blog lol) I do not say ‘birth sister’. I usually say Lynne is my older half-sister who was also placed on adoption, but separately from me. In truth, I am as biologically related to Lynne as I am to my maternal and paternal half-siblings but I feel differently toward her than the others. I wonder if I feel this way as a result of having shared relinquishment and adoption journeys, rather than having been raised and parented together? Even though we were raised apart, in many ways I feel that we are ‘sisters in adoption’ if you will, through our shared birth mother, our relinquishments, and our adoption journeys.

Being a sister usually, but not always, means sharing a history. Perhaps that explains a little why I refer to my (also adopted) brother as my brother, to Lynne as my half-sister, and to the children raised by my birth parents as my birth half-siblings. Frankly, I’m not sure. I do love hearing parental stories from my birth half-siblings about my birth parents. It helps me to get to know them as people and as parents. It helps me to hear how they were with their other children. Sometimes it hurts too, to have missed being raised by them. I even wonder what my life might have been like if my birth parents had married and raised me together. Please know that this is no reflection on my ‘real’ parents (as I see my adoptive parents to have been) or how they raised me, but a simple curiosity about what might have been without relinquishment and adoption in my life.

I do know that when I am not invited to events in the lives of my birth half-sisters such as their children’s weddings, I truly understand. I love to look at the photos they send or post and cannot seem to stop myself from seeking out physical resemblances between me and the adult children of my half-siblings, or even between my children and theirs. I am not offended by not being invited because I believe that I am too hard to explain to the other wedding guests. I believe they are respecting their mother’s privacy, even her reputation if I’m being honest, and I respect that. Her daughters clearly loved and respected their mother as her children should. That I share some DNA with these women is a source of pride for me. 

I remember how interesting it was when my older half sister Lynne attended my daughter’s wedding. People were intrigued by the fact that we had been able to find each other despite having been separated by the adoption system. No one was more curious than my mom. She was both intrigued by Lynne’s story and upset that she and my dad had not been given the opportunity to raise us together, or at least, upset that we were not able to have been raised together as sisters. She thought that this had been a system failure, and I can’t say I disagree. Until her passing, my mother always asked about Lynne and whether or not we had been in touch lately. 

In the end, I cannot express how much it means to me to have contact with the children of my birth parents, aka my half-siblings. When I think of each of them today, I don’t worry about titles, I simply wonder how my sisters and brothers are doing. 

As ever, thank you for reading. I love that you visit me in Blogville and look forward to your comments either here, or more privately through my email at [email protected] 
Until next time…

Hi everyone, thanks for coming back to visit with me in Blogville! I am currently sipping on a white hot chocolate with a chai teabag to spice it up! This blog’s topic is the continuing saga of the challenges educators face in the world of new family dynamics and student assignments! 

I think educators in general need to reconsider the questionnaires they send home about ‘family’ dynamics. Some new questions might be more comfortable, such as: 
Who lives in your house and what are their relationships to the student? 
Who can we expect to come to school activities with the student?
Who should we call if the student is ill or injured at school?
Is there any thing special we should know about your family and the student?
Be creative and open in your questions to help normalize today’s family dynamics! Knowing the family dynamics of your students will help you to adjust class activities. One example that comes to mind are Family Tree activities. I believe that this type of activity could be renamed as My Family Orchard. You can see how simply adjusting the title makes the activity more inclusive for students who have more than one set of parents/caregivers. I prefer to look at the activity as trees in the student’s orchard, rather than branches on a single tree. I probably do not have to, but I will offer a couple of examples: Children and youth living in step families; single parents and their support system, kinship families; adoptive families; and so forth all have orchards, versus one tree with maternal and paternal branches. Further, I believe completing an ‘orchard’ offers students the option of adding a foster family tree as well. For students who have not experienced multiple families, their craft can allow them to expand their orchards by creating trees for grandparents, aunts, uncles, and their families as well. In this way you may also learn who their support systems are.

I believe it will also be helpful for educators to look at their students’ orchards to help determine the supplies you will need for special occasion cards and crafts as the school year unfolds. When the inevitable Mother’s Day and Father’s Day card-making days approach you will be much more relaxed when you ask the student how many cards or crafts they wish to make. The student will be more relaxed too, knowing they do not have to ‘pick’ the person that ‘deserves’ a card or craft. It may even be more economical to buy enough supplies for multiple bookmarks, sun catchers, handprint bunnies, and coffee filter butterflies, than the cost of supplies needed to make one extravagant craft per student. It’s worth looking into. 

Moving on now to biology class . . .

Looking at common family traits or tendencies instead of focusing on eye colour, hair colour, and other physical commonalities may also help a student maintain a sense of belonging to their current family. As well, it may help prepare them for the future when they meet a relative, even a parent, whom they never met when they were a child but that they discover they share a family trait with. I’m thinking of family traits such as athleticism, musical talent, and so forth. Belonging to a family, whether the student was born into it or not, should be the educators’ focus. A personal example was when I discovered I have a birth nephew who has the natural ventriloquial talent that I have. Now that was an unexpected bonus! 

Often one will hear how a child or youth is very musical while their adoptive family is ‘tone deaf’ or they can draw beautifully while their adoptive parents struggle to colour in the lines of a colouring picture. Science is suggesting that there may be more to family traits or tendencies than we know. Perhaps modelling is not the only way to encourage talents in children and youth, but simply offering the opportunity to grow is the true way. Educators need to focus on the talents and abilities the child or youth is showing, not simply on inherited traits expected because of biology. One example is avoiding questions like: Who in your family can draw like you?; Can your dad skate like you?; Does your whole family sing? Trust me, if there is someone in the family the child shares their talent with, they will tell you. If a biological child of two talented singers cannot sing, we should avoid commenting on that as well. Children and youth, given the opportunities and tools, will develop their own paths. 

I don’t think we expected to have the ability to one day pick up our phone and go on line to do all of our grocery shopping, or seasonal gift shopping, nor did we expect such variety of students’ life experiences in a single classroom but we must adjust. Educators need to adapt and adjust the curriculum activities that relate to students and their family dynamics.

No student of any age in any classroom setting should feel uncomfortable because they are being asked to complete a craft or activity that is only applicable to the concept of ‘mother/father/sister/brother/dog/cat’ that dominated outdated text books. Like family members of this new world, educators must learn to embrace and encourage a new understanding and acceptance of loving family units. No student should feel ashamed of being adopted, a step-child, a child being raised by grandparents, aunts, uncles, two moms, two dads . . . I think you get my meaning. 

Maybe when adults learn to accept these differences and model their  acceptance, there will be less shaming and bullying in our schools. 
We are all trees in a child’s orchard! 

As ever, thank you for your continued support as you read my blogs. I write from my heart in an effort to make a difference for children, youth and families. As ever, please feel free to leave me a comment, your comments give me the encouragement to carry on. If you prefer a more personal comment forum, please send me an email at [email protected]