Our Guest Blogger today is Paula, an adoptee and an adoptive mother. Paula’s blogs about adoption and adoptees are insightful, thought provoking and at times heart wrenching. You can read more of her outstanding blogs at Heart, Mind and Seoul.

A conversation I had a few days ago with one of my daughter's friends reminded me how far we still have to go in deconstructing the negative association that so many people have about kids who are adopted. The recent conversation with this particular 10 year-old boy pretty much mirrored the several dozen other discussions I've had with children about adoption. Sure, there is always a little variation on the words and how things are phrased, but the overall message is essentially the same. First - a little background about the impetus of this particular conversation, just in case people are wondering if I go around grilling random kids about adoption. My daughter's friend, let's call him Sam, knows that my son and I are both adopted, and he asked me some very pointed questions about my "real" mom and dad. Before I addressed his questions, I first asked Sam for his definition of adoption. I often do this whenever I'm talking to kids about adoption in an attempt to gauge where the child's level of understanding is about the concept. Here was Sam's reply when I asked him what he thought it meant to be adopted:

"Well, being adopted is when the kids that nobody wants are put into an orphanage and then if the kid is really good, someone rich will pick them and buy them to have in their family."

Now, to be sure, whenever I hear someone talk about a child being bought, I cringe. And yet Sam's understanding of adoption was so familiar to me - including the part of a child being available for purchase. His succinct albeit limited understanding of adoption was wholly consistent with virtually every other conversation I've had with kids about adoption. In fact, based on my own personal experiences, the recurring themes that that eventually emerge from just about any adoption conversation I've had with a child between the ages of 4-16 are the following:

Adopted Children:

1) Are unwanted

2) Can become more desirable when they exhibit good behavior, i.e. being the perfect child

3) Are thought of as a commodity; they are a good that is exchanged in a transaction typically received by someone considered rich or well-to-do

4) Are disposable; their permanence in their adoptive family is always conditional

5) Deserve pity, because they are the kids who no one wants