Still no news, by the way, but here's a different kind of post, having to do with beeswax. Yeah, you'll have to stay with me for a couple minutes.
I mentioned a few posts ago about the fun time we had at the Guatemalan heritage weekend hosted by our adoption agency. It was fun, fun, fun, and educational too! They had some sessions just for kids, some for adults, and some for the whole family. One of the family sessions was entitled "WISE UP." The lady running the session, who was a social worker with our agency, explained (mostly to the kids) that some people know more about some topics than other people. People that are on a soccer team, for example, know more about playing soccer than people that have never played the game before. Kids that are in third grade, for example, know more about cursive writing than kids in kindergarten. People that have adoption as part of their family history, know more about adoption than those that don't. It doesn't make them better or smarter, just that they are more educated about it.
Sometimes when people don't know about something, the questions that they ask about it can be all over the board. Sometimes, they might ask easy questions. Sometimes they ask hard questions. Sometimes they might ask questions that don't make sense. We learned that just because someone asks you a question, it doesn't mean that you have to give them an answer. We learned that there are at least four options that a person has when they are asked a question. Enter "WISE UP."
First option, W: you can walk away. Plain and simple. Some questions just do not need to be answered. It doesn't matter if it is a stranger, a friend, an aquaintance, whatever. If a question makes you uncomfortable or you just don't want to say anything, it is acceptable to walk away.
Second option, I: "It's personal. It's private. It's none of your beeswax." As you can imagine, most of the kids in the session thought that was a funny one! To my knowledge, my boys had never heard the beeswax expression before, and the rest of the night they were repeating this answer and giggling. Just so funny to watch them! But seriously, this is a very real and legitimate option, as is the previous one. It is important for kids (and adults for that matter) to remember that their story is their story. It doesn't belong to anyone else, and other people are not entitled to answers to questions of a personal nature. Furthermore, kids (and adults for that matter) shouldn't feel ashamed to give this answer, or the previous one.
Third option, S: Share. Sometimes, you might want to share a little bit of information in response to a question. A partial answer. That is fine too.
Fourth option, E: Educate. You can choose to educate the person with a more in-depth answer.
Finally, UP, as in Give up, or throw your hands up in the air. This one works well when someone asks you a really odd, or way-out question. You can say, "I can't believe you just asked me that." And that is all you have to say.
Since we started down the road toward adoption, several years ago now, I've received all sorts of questions. Some I feel completely comfortable giving a full answer to. Some, I don't want to say anything to. And of course the whole gamut in between. Furthermore, there are lots of occasions when I just don't have the time or the attention to respond fully to a question. When the boys were very little, I used to get all sorts of questions at the grocery store. Mostly, I was just interested in getting out of there as quick as I could before one of the boys starting grabbing the candy or the Hotwheels cars from the checkout line or stood up in the cart or started hitting his brother. In general, I think of myself as a polite person, so at first I had trouble responding "It's personal" or giving some rendition of the "I can't believe you just asked me that." Later I realized that it's just not necessary to share every bit of information with everyone that happens to ask you a question. Adoption has been so wonderful in our lives, and I want to be open to people about it's beauty, but then again, really, it's not my job to be the adoption encyclopedia, and a lot of questions are probably just instant curiosity rather than a real desire to know the answer. It is important for me to be polite -- oftentimes the adoption-related questions are asked right in front of one or both of my children, and I don't want them to think it is ever ok to be rude to people. Also, they take lots of cues from me as far as how I respond to certain questions.
It was incredibly helpful for us to be part of the WISE UP discussion as a family. It gave the boys an opportunity to role play being asked adoption-related questions, seeing that they indeed had a variety of ways they could respond. Since that time, I've noticed that we've talked about it several times, which has been a helpful reminder for all of us that not every question asked by every person at every moment needs to be fully answered .
And you know, I am just waiting to say beeswax to somebody! :D