An advocate

When you become a parent there are so many facets to the job that no one has told you about. One of them is being an advocate for your child.

Whether it's at the doctor when you argue parents-intuition vs the pediatrician's 30 years experience because you JUST KNOW that something is wrong or when you defend your toddler against the sandbox bully in the park, advocating for your child becomes a part of your job description.

And so it is that I'll be wearing my advocate's hat tomorrow.

After the "incident" with Liam's school project, I had the opportunity to speak to the head teacher. Not to rat out Liam's teacher, but to offer some articles and insight into how schools can better handle projects when there are kids in the class who were adopted. She was very pleased to get my input and asked me to speak to all the teachers on their next curriculum night. Of course I agreed.

And tomorrow night it is! at 4:00 another parent and I (also a Lesbian parent with one adopted son and one son through donor-sperm) will be addressing the teachers. We will be covering both adoption and same-sex families, but hopefully we will be getting teachers to think outside the box completely as many families today no longer fit the standard mold.

So I've decide to dedicate this week on my wee blog to school projects, how they can suck when you are the adopted kid in the class and how teachers can make them better! I hope you follow along and spread the word. Also, please share your own experiences with school projects and how they affected you or your family.


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• Baby Pictures