DUMB FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS and more.........

(updated 1.06.10)

Prospective parents of children from China know that a great big world of wonder and joy awaits them. They should also know that a smaller world awaits them that involves acquaintances, co-workers and total strangers asking ridiculous and/or tactless questions as well as making thoughtless and/or bizarre statements in a wide range of inappropriate situations.

What you will read on this page are the Top of the Line, Hit Your Head Against a Wall and Drink Anti-Freeze kind of affairs. Some are classics. Some are ripped from today's headlines. Some come from a strange and mysterious place in the human psyche we neither know or understand. But ladies and gentlemen, they are all....the Champions:




DURING THE ADOPTION/WAITING PROCESS

Suggested Answers:

"I'm sure the children had their reasons."
or
"Not a problem with their homicidal urges now that we know you. Let's trade addresses!"




WHEN YOU RETURN FROM CHINA WITH YOUR CHILD...
.




>
Is anyone ever really prepared for the unmitigated thrill of
DFMS - IFOYC (Dumb Frequently Made Statements - In Front of Your Child)?

Should you ever find youself in this situation, hurridly get out a calculator and start crushing numbers frantically. Make sure you're heard muttering things like "2 girls for 1 boy? How about three girls and a chihuahua?" "What can I get for my grandmother and a day old challah?" Then kick the guy who said it in the nuts and run like hell.

BEING MALL-ED

"I am an adopted Korean. I was in the mall with my friend and a woman stopped us and said to me, 'You are so beautiful for being black. How did you get your hair so straight?'There were so many wrong things with this statement, i could only turn and walk away."




Let's All Relax and Just Enjoy a List of Random Stupid Things People Have Said to People Whose Kids Were Born in Foreign Lands



An Addendum

Ah - memories - may be beautiful and yet..........not.

It was ten years ago this autumn that I became engaged in this prize-winning DFAQ Dialogue with a woman at the Children's Museum with one of my kids who was no longer a toddler, still - within hearing distance. She was a little kid and she deserved, as all our kids do, a simple day at the museum with her love-struck mother:

Her: "Is she yours?" (after observing my daughter and I for about 20 minutes laughing and doing Children's Museum stuff.)
Me: "Yes"
Her: "Is she natural?"
Me: "She looks pretty natural to me."
Her: "Is your husband Chinese?"
Me: "Don't think so."
Her: "You don't look Chinese."
Pause.
Me: (silence as I gather our stuff to take our leave .....)
Her: "Are you?"
Me: "Me? No. No, I'm don't think I'm Chinese"."
Her: (exasperated and yelling as we walk away)"Well, SHE looks Chinese, you know!!!!"








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