"WISE Up: Empowering Adoptees to Manage Adoption Discussions"

The first session I attended during the adoption conference was a workshop on the W.I.S.E. Up! Powerbook developed by the Center for Adoption Services and Education.

Sadly, the actual facilitator of this workshop was not very good with managing time or managing people who tried to veer from the topic. Because this was the first session, I think some prospective adoptive parents saw this as their first chance to ask an expert their adoption questions, so people let loose with all sorts of questions, few of them that actually had anything to do with the WISE Up method. We basically lost the workshop portion of the session, but still were able to get all the information.

The W.I.S.E Up! Powerbook and method was developed to help children deal with conversations and questions that might make them uncomfortable. The actual workbook is specific to adoption, but can applied to more general situations and is recommended for both adoptees and siblings (bio or adopted). Additionally, the method works equally well for parents. The workbook is best used for children ages 8-12, but the method can be introduced in a more basic form to children younger and definitely used for children older.

Basically the method asks the child to memorize the following acronym.

W: Walk away or ignore what was said or heard (you have no obligation to respond and have total control over your information)
I: It's private and therefore I don't have to answer it.
S: Share some information about my adoption story (this might be the hardest one for kids to learn what to share, when to share, and with who to share)
E: Educate others about adoption in general (general facts will deflect from personal realm)

The idea is that when a child is presented with a situation where they are being asked personal or offensive information, they might get overly emotional or confused. The hope is that this method will give them some automatic and safe ways to handle a variety of situations by allowing them to choose one of the four types of responses. Families should practice this method together to have some general responses. (e.g., "I don't want to talk about that, but you can ask my mom." "Did you know there are 5 million adopted people in the United States? I'm surprised you have never met anyone adopted before." "I'm from [insert hometown USA], but I was born in Korea.")

A great idea to help younger kids learn the system is for parents to model it. As an example, after responding to a woman in the grocery lane who asked "how much did it cost to adopt him?" right in front of the child, a parent could later say to their child "What did you think about that question. I didn't think it was phrased very well, but I didn't think she was meaning anything mean with it, so I used the "E" and educated her by saying that "we paid an agency for the care and legal paperwork that was needed to bring our son home, just like you might have paid the hospital and doctors to deliver your child. I think the costs are probably similar."

One of the hardest things to teach kids is how to discern the intentions of others. Modeling and talking through your reasoning will be key to helping your child make those decisions.

The other issue that was brought up was the issue of secrecy versus privacy. Secrecy is often associated with "bad," especially to children. It is important to explain to your children that the personal details of their adoption story are not a "secret," but rather are special and should be guarded and shared with those who are special enough to know. The analogy was made that those details should be "guarded like treasure" to be shared with only a select few. I don't love that, but it works until I can think of something I like better for us.

Anyway, overall the method seems solid for both adults and kids. The powerbook is $15 and from all accounts, well worth it when your child gets to the appropriate age. I'm glad I attended this session and plan to implement this method in our family immediately.