Yesterday the local newspaper offered "three practical jokes to play on your kids for April Fools' Day." Coming in at #3: "Tell them they were adopted and now their birth mothers want them back."
Perhaps my perspective is skewed because our family has participated in the adoption process. But this idea of a "joke" struck me as hurtful and deeply offensive.
Other readers shared my view and took the extra step of taking the newspaper to the woodshed. Today the newspaper published a reply, "It's no laughing matter," acknowledging that "[m]any readers have let us know how unfunny and inappropriate that advice was." The brief article (cannot find link) quoted psychologist Muriel Meicler, who noted that "all children, especially younger children, view their parents as authorities," so kids will not take the comment as a joke. Furthermore, Meicler suggested that children "would have to understand irony in order to understand a practical joke. But irony is not a concept they get." She also observed that "[t]elling children they've been adopted ... is about as funny as saying a parent has died. It's not funny at all."
She's right. It's not funny at all. It's beautiful, and wonderful, and poignant, and emotional, and life-changing, and many other things. But adoption shouldn't be the topic of a rude, offensive, and potentially scarring remark to a child, even one made in jest.
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