classy

So we went to our class the other night. We were worried about 2 things before we went. One, that there would only be like, 1 other couple there (awkward) and two, that their would be role-playing games (the most awkward.) Luckily neither of these fears came to pass. The room was packed, and their was only a brief period at the beginning where we were forced to converse with complete strangers :-)
So the class was Talking to Your Children about Adoption from the Adult Adoptee Perspective. That last part is the key. From the adult adoptee perspective. We had a panel of 3 adult people who were adopted as babies. Two of them were white women adopted by white families and one was a black man adopted by a white family.The biggest thing you take from this class is that you start talking to your child about their adoption from birth (or from when you first get them.) That way it is never strange, never a "gotcha" moment. It's just something they always knew. Side note: we were talking to a girl last night whose boyfriend found out he was adopted when he was 35! Can you imagine?
The other thing we took from this class is that, while it is important to talk to your children about adoption (and specifically in our case, to keep their Ethiopian heritage alive) you don't talk about it every day of their lives. I think that is something that gets a little lost in this adoption process. You're not going to spend every day considering how adoption has affected your life. You just live your life. For the people on this panel, they all said that yes, they knew they were adopted, but it wasn't like they sat around thinking about it all the time. It just is what it is. And to them, as children, it was no big deal.

Useful class, good information, no role-playing games. All in all a success.
Now we just have to take 4 more classes to complete our homestudy.