Now that our daughter is nearly home, we feel it is important to remind our family and friends of a few important adoption etiquette guidelines.
1) Our daughter's story of her life before she came to us is just that, HER story. When SHE is ready to share that story, she is free to share it with whomever she wishes, but please remember that it is not our story to tell, it's hers. This means we will respect that and not be sharing those details with anyone.
2)You are free to ask us questions about our adoption and our daughter, however we might have to respectfully say that the answer is none of your business. Our role now is to protect our daughter both physically and emotionally and therefore we may not be able to answer your specific question. Please, don't be offended, it's hard for us too to keep our mouths shut sometimes (if you know me, you know I love to talk about everything), but it is the right thing to do for our daughter.
3)Our intent is for NO family or friends to know more about our daughter and her background than she does. Please keep this in mind when you want to know something about her background.
4) The fifth commandment in scripture is to honor your father and mother. Now, it doesn't specify birth or adoptive here, but considering that God was the birth father of Jesus and gave up his Son in adoption, but still had to be honored, we're going to assume God means both birth and adoptive. It is our responsibility as parents to raise our daughter using scripture as our guide, so we will be raising her to honor her birth family as well. That's about all you'll get to know about them for a long time, and we ask that you remember this if you feel the need to make a comment about birth families.
5) Yes, we will teach our daughter about her birth culture and yes, this is the right thing to do. It is human nature to question your identity and where you came from. It is our job as parents to fill in those questions just like any other parent would do with their bio kids. Ethiopia will always be a part of that answer.
6) You are free to love on little A all you want!! But, one important thing to remember is that she will be searching for someone that will take care of her basic needs. She needs to learn to trust Bryan and I to do that so we will be the ONLY people taking care of her basic life needs. i.e. feeding, changing, sleeping.
WHEW! I'm glad that's done with! Now let's get this baby home so we can ALL do some lovin' on her!
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