Saturday, September 26, 2009

Things That Make Me Go Hmmmmm . . .

Some friends of ours in the adoption world have two beautiful children adopted from China.  They decided to go eat Chinese food last night (we did too - Mongolian Beef - YUM!).  They bumped into an acquaintance, who was obviously not too familiar with their family dynamics.  This person they bumped in to said to my friends that he was here to 'get slant-eyed' then asked 'should I have the dog or the cat?'  Obviously the adopted children were not in sight or, hopefully, this man would have held his tongue.  I'm not sure what the parents said, but I'm pretty sure they wanted to punch him in the nose a few times.  Once this person realized what he had said and who he had said it to they could see that he realized his mistake.  Thankfully, the children were not within earshot of this person's insensitive comments.  

Just thought I'd share because it has been on my mind.  We go through some training and read articles and books on how to handle things like this.  I wonder what will come out of my mouth?  Hopefully whatever it is it will have love in it and be a good example for our beautiful daughter and all of our children.  But I'm not making any promises :), you know how I get sometimes and there's that whole 'Momma Bear' thing!

4 comments:

Faith, Hope, and Love said...

I can't imagine anything but consideration coming from your mouth. :) Okay...you've got my curiosity going about Tuesday?? :)

Blessings,
Robin

Anonymous said...

Good grief. I just can't imagine thinking like that much less SAYING it. I could come up with some unflattering things to say about people that say horrible things like that (They would involve words like 'uneducated, insecure, shallow, sad',) but I won't:)

Gael said...

Out of the heart the mouth speaketh...it makes me sad to hear such things. Maybe they should have smiled and said how glad they were that he was trying to improve himself.

Missy said...

As the mother of 4, like I am, I am sure you get plenty of the obnoxious comments about having too many children.

I have decided that the best way to reply is to say "Why?"

For instance, here are some of the things I have wished I had said:

"I just told you I was pregnant. Why aren't you saying Congratulations?"

"Why would you say, 'good for you, I guess'?"

"Why would you ask me if I know where babies come from?"

That way you don't say anything rude, in fact you say it with a smile and perhaps a sweet, if not ditzy look on your face, but they are the ones put in the hot seat.

Can you imagine if your friend had said, "Why did you say dog or cat? Why did you say slant-eyed?" I mean, talk about AWKWARD. It really makes the person realize how stupid they are.

We are adopting a baby from Ethiopia - oh, boy. I don't even want to think about the comments we are in for.