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First Reflection on Adoption

 By: Cecelia Lee

 This is a photo of our son and his young daughter taken In December 2013.



He is Anishnawbe and a status "Indian". We adopted him when he was three months old.

We decided to adopt a Native child because many were in the care of the Children’s Aid Society at that time, with few likely to be adopted. Today thousands of children, Native and non-Native are in the permanent care of Ontario’s Children’s Aid Societies.

Why are these children not getting permanent homes? Most likely it is because not enough people are choosing to adopt. Perhaps some reject the idea of adopting because the children available don't look sufficiently like them, or have biological parents who have very different ancestral backgrounds. Or some of the children may face mental, emotional or physical challenges.

Though there are real barriers to adoption for people whose financial means is not sufficient to deal with some of these issues, for many who wish to be parents, money is not the issue. What matters is that they love and care. When we adopt a child we absorb them into our families. In our case we already had two daughters when we adopted our son and they took to him instantly.

Adoption, like parenting of any kind, has its rewards and challenges. The rewards are fairly universal whether the child has been adopted or not. We watch a baby learn to crawl, then to walk and then to run. At the same time they learn new words and skills. We get kisses and hugs and often a beautiful smile. That’s pretty standard stuff with a healthy, growing child.

The challenges with adopted as well are much the same as with any parenting. They go somewhere without telling us or they don’t come home on time or they don’t clean their room when it is in chaos. An additional challenge, or opportunity, forces us to face what might be the unfamiliar. Learning about our child’s background is necessary for the good of the family. If the child is Native as

is our situation the whole family needs to learn about his Native culture and traditions.

This made us a more integrated family and we all learned many things we might not otherwise have known. We also had to learn about the racism and discrimination he would face (and we would also). The children, we hope, learn much from us and from each other. Learning about the heritage of our child benefitted all of us.

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