You're Not His Dad

"You're not his Dad."  Those few words turned a trip with two little boys and their DAD into a very short trip.

My husband is often very ambitious in his adventures out by himself with the boys.  Where I would just rather stay home than take them to places I deem stressful (Chuck E Cheese's, a department store that doesn't have shopping carts, a restaurant by myself and them) my husband has no problems with it and packs them up in the car and they are off!  On Sunday he decided to take them to McDonald's so they could play in the playland since it's been below zero out for about a week and he needed to do some reading for school.  I know, reading while watching two toddlers at McDonald's playland!  Crazy!

My husband is very nice to strangers and is willing to talk and carry on a conversation.  So it was no surprise that when he was out with the boys a lady that was Native inquired what tribe AJ was from.  They talked a little about that and she shared which tribe she was from.  But then....but then....the lecture and grilling started. 

"Are you feeding him Native foods?  Has he tried seal oil?  Do you feed him lots of berries?  He needs lots of berries?  What about dried fish, I'm sure he loves dried fish?  Does he eat lots of white fish?"  Which is fine, ask away lady even feel free to tell us about something we might not have heard of and where to get it or how to prepare.  And present in a sharing way, not a 'you are taking his culture away from him by not tracking down some seal oil' kind of way.

Then it evolved into, "How are you going to make sure he's proud of his culture and gets to experience his culture?"  WHAT????? We've been grilled on that repeatedly by social workers, lawyers, tribal council members, birth parents, the judge, etc.  We dealt with that for 2 years straight and our answers and actions were deemed acceptable and he officially become OUR SON in June. 

In our state, there are commercials that are asking Native families to step forward to become foster parents because the percentage of Native kids in foster care is extremely high and disproportionate to the percentage of people that are Native in the state.  I understand wanting the kids to be able to experience the culture and honestly, if there had been an available Native home when AJ was placed with us, he would have been moved.  If a tribal member had wanted to adopt him over us, that would have most likely happened.  But there was no one that stepped forward and we wanted him so bad we did everything we could to make sure he didn't go to yet another family.

And then she drops the bomb, "Are you his foster dad?"

Husband : "No, I'm his Dad."

Rude lady: "No you're not."

I know my husband and I know how he sounded on the phone right after he quickly packed up the boys and left.  He was crushed.   After we talked about it I told him it's perfectly okay to tell someone, even a woman, that she was being rude and that the comment was completely inappropriate and left it at that.  I didn't want him to get into a verbal battle but it really is okay to tell people they are being rude. 

I'd say 90% of people that we come in contact with say things like, "Oh, he has dark hair like his dad, and this one has blonde hair like his mom!"  And they leave it at that.  The other 10%  of people dig a little deeper and start asking about their ages, are they brothers, etc.  I feel that I'm pretty good at reading people's intentions so if they are still asking appropriate questions then we will say we were lucky to be able to adopt our oldest this past June. 

I doubt this will be the last time my husband or myself encounter someone who makes inappropriate comments in front of our kids but it is a good reminder that we need to talk more about how to handle those situations and how we are going to start talking to AJ about adoption and where he came from. 

But in better news, AJ turns 3 this week!!  I can't believe it!  I brought that chubby cheeked cutie home as a 5 month old and he's a little boy now that carries on conversations with me!  We are very lucky to have him in our lives.