For no other reason than (ahem) it's National Adoption Month I'm posting this for anyone who wants to brush up on their adoption lingo. Or just wants to make sure they don't unintentionally tick someone off who is adopted or has adopted a child. So here's your lesson for today...
Negative Terms
Gave her baby up for adoption (this one drives me crazy when I hear it... Kylie was placed out of love, not because her birth mom gave her up, or that she was a gift)
Real parent; natural parent (implies that somehow I'm unnatural)
Adoptive parent
Her adopted child (luckily no one has ever used this around me... blech)
Illegitimate Adoptee
To keep
Adoptable child; available child
Foreign adoption
Track down parents
Unwanted child
Is adopted
Preferred Terms
Placed her child for adoption (ding ding ding!)
Birth parent; biological parent
Parent
His/her child
Born to unmarried parents
Child who was adopted
To parent
Waiting child
International adoption
Search
Child placed for adoption
Was adopted
By far the two that I hear the most are "gave her baby up" and when asking about Kylie's birthmom sometimes people will say something like "was her mom (insert question)?" Ahem, I am her mom. I can usually know what they are talking about so I'll say "Oh you mean her birth mom? And I'll go on to answer the question. Another one I hear a lot of complaints about (though I haven't gotten this myself) is "Are you ever going to have any kids of your OWN?" As if Kylie is on loan to us or something. It's not really a tactful way of asking this question and there are better better ways to inqure if someone is pursuing pregnancy or fertility treatments. (And my answer to that probing question is that according to our RE we need to try IVF to make that happen. So for all of you who are stuffing their pillows at night with their wads of cash send some our way. About 12K worth please!)
There you go folks!
3 comments:
I went somewhere recently where I was being introduced to a lot of new people, and the person who invited me kept introducing me and my "adopted son." I got so tired of it that I finally just sat down and brushed her off when she wanted to introduce me to more people. In retrospect, though, I think next time I will just say "my son" after she introduces me. I'm sure you are much better than I am at handling those things gracefully. Thanks for the excellent idea about how to handle the "her/his mom" comment.
Hey! Thanks for the email. Are you coming this Saturday?? I am supposed to tell you we( em and me) are still waiting for the Halloween pics to be posted. Please we want to see them!!!
Thanks for the lingo lesson. Some times some of us don't mean to offend, but now that we know better...we should be good to go. One of my nephews was adopted, our family wouldn't be the same without him:)
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