she looks so much like you!

[sharqi]

we constantly get comments that our daughter looks so much like us--either me, or my husband, or a combination of us both. i usually say THANKS! but, sometimes if it is someone that i am going to have an extended relationship with, i might add, "actually, she looks exactly like her birth mom. she's adopted." i know it's no one's business, but i feel like i'm fibbing some if i don't say that. however, i certainly don't tell just anyone, like strangers i meet in the store.

does this happen to anyone else? our daughter is amazingly beautiful. it really astounds me sometimes. i'm nowhere near cute, so it's weird for me to have cuteness around all the time. hub says cuteness is growing on him! i guess that's why it's so strange to me that people think she looks like us!

[ja mama]

I have a friend with three daughters, the oldest is adopted. When people say the girls look alike, or that does the oldest look more like her Dad?... My friend says things like, yeah they're all pretty special, or she looks like both her parents, and thank you.

Marie Osmond once said in response to being asked which kids she'd given birth too and which ones were the adopted ones "I love them all so much I can't even remember. They're all mine"

That always seemed to be a good answer. Adoption is a part of her story and past, but what is the benefit of sharing that part of her story and drawing attention to it, except making you look like a wonderful person for 'rescuing' her. As they grow older, even if you focus on the "we chose you' aspect, there is still an underlying reality that their biological/birth parents chose not to keep them.

I also have no first hand experience with this so feel free to say I'm wrong and that sharing her story with other people is better. My opinion though, is to share the story with her and let her choose who to share it with.

[EFmom]

Dh (brown hair, green eyes) and I (auburn hair, blue eyes) are caucasian and our two girls are Chinese. We have had many people tell us that they look like us, including some local Chinese people we met while we were in China. :LOL They do, in the sense that we all have two eyes a nose and a mouth, but that's about it.

I don't know why people do this. Maybe it's just a need to make conversation?

While I agree that our daughters' adoption stories are theirs, sometimes you can't avoid the issue, and keeping it brief and general is about all you can do. We have total strangers want to talk to us about it all the time.

[Laurel]

We had a really funny experience with this. When ds was about 3 months old, we attended a gathering sponsored by our adoption support group. Everyone there was involved with adoption in some way, so you would think people would have a clue. A woman came up to me and said, "That baby sure must look like your husband because he sure doesn't look like you!" The look on her face when I replied, "Actually, he looks like his birthmother" was priceless! And then, not two minutes later, another woman came up to me and gushed on and on about how much ds looked like me!:

We get told all the time that ds looks like us (which he doesn't in the least), and it's mostly by people who already know he's adopted. I think people are just trying to help us feel connected, not that we need any help.:

[sugarmoon]

Well, people tell me all the time how much my foster son looks like me. And people said that before I had ever thought about becoming his foster mom (I worked at the group home where he was living). I think we just *do* look alike. People close to us know that he is not biologically ours, and they comment on our similar appearances anyway. We just smile and say "thank you".

I don't see any reason to mention the adoption relationship when someone makes those comments. If your kids think it is weird, I'd maybe talk with them about it, and about why people might say that even if you don't look that much alike. But most of the time, something *is* alike (same color eyes, same color hair, connected or dangling earlobes ). IME, as a post-adopt support worker, adopted kids like having these physical similarities w/ their parents pointed out/acknowledged. It is a big part of our culture to talk about which parent a kid looks like, and IMHO, doesn't hurt a bit, even when it is a bit of a stretch, to include adopted children in this ritual.

Of course, I am also highly in favor of talking about kids similarities w/ the appearance of their birth parents as well.

[kama'aina mama]

I made a good friend of mine laugh the other day over this very subject. She and her DH are in the final stages of foster to adoption with a sweet little girl who is of native Hawai'ian descent. They are both white. The other day we were hanging out, cleaning her kitchen and watching the kids play and I had to tell her I had just caught myself trying to decide if the toddler looked more like her or her DH! My mom always said if you feed someone long enough they start to look like you. I don't know if that's true but it is certainly a testament to how clearly a part of their family she is that even though she is of a different race it is easy to forget that there was a day or two at the beginning of her life when she wasn't yet in their family.

[feebeeglee]

My BIL and SIL's oldest DS is adopted and is African American while they are Caucasian.... and yet when only one of them is with him, they get told "He looks like you!" I think people assume that white parent + black kid = black other parent (who, presumably, Charlie looks even MORE like :LOL)

Now my cousin who birthed her 2 children who are multiracial gets asked if her kids are adopted.... all the time! : Crazy I tell ya. My theory is people see what they want, be it a family resemblance, wrong gender in the face of OVERWHELMING gender cues, etc.

[mamacrab]

You know what I think it might be? A child often naturally picks up the gestures, facial expressions, etc of his family. So, even in the case of Chinese children adopted by Caucasian parents, there can be an uncanny resemblance, which is summed up (somewhat innacurately) by the phrase "He/she looks juts like you!"

[Laurel]

I agree with mamacrab, but what about a child who is a baby? We've been getting told how much ds looks like us since we brought him home as a newborn. He does have one or two features in common with dh and I (he has my bushy eyebrows ). I think part of it for us is that he looks so much like his birthfamily and that's what I see when I look at him. HIs resemblence to his birthmom and grandma are overwhelming. But people outside our family have never seen them, so they don't have that picture in their heads when looking at him. The one or two people to whom we've shown pics of his birthfamily agree with me that he doesn't look like us.

[Dakota's Mom]

We've been told a lot tht DS looks like DH. I don't see it at all. We we've gotten this even from folks at our adoption agency. Weird, DH is Polish nd DS is fom Guatemala.

Kathi

[sarahtar]

I am adopted and still hear "gosh I could tell you were mother and daughter, you look so much alike." I usually respond by saying "that's strange, I'm adopted." This makes my mother cringe, but I prefer to just take the straightforward approach.

Mostly because people who make those comments to ME are either blind or just fibbing - I look NOTHING like my mother. (She's very pale, I'm olive-skinned. She's got dark dark hair, I've got mousy brown hair. Her hair is curly, mine is stick straight. Our facial features look nothing alike. We have complete different body types and frames. We both wear glasses - maybe that's it.)

[SingleDad]

I hear the same things with my two boys, and I have brown hair and green eyes and they are both blonde haired and blue eyed. I just make sure they're comfortable with whatever I say to the people saying that. Usually they take care of it for me. My 9 year once smiled real big and said "Me and my Dad picked each other out, he didn't birth me". He's pretty outspoken, and it's great to see a 9 year old render an adult speechless.

[Piglet68]

Growing up my mother and I got this all the time, simply because we both had very long straight hair. Never mind that she's half Asian with dark skin and almost-black hair, and I'm white and blue-eyed with brown hair. Whenever people said that my Mum and I would give each other this knowing look and smile so wide. It was like our own private joke, and it always made me feel very special. I rarely bothered to correct anybody.

Mind you, it always comes up when I mention that my mother was born in Hong Kong, etc. the first thing they do is look at my blue eyes, lol.

Now that I'm a mother myself, I'm amazed at how obsessed people are with "who she looks like". I'll admit a curiousity simply b/c genetics were not a part of my family, but I'm always amazed at how every single person seems to comment, or ask me "who does she look like more"...I just don't get it, lol.

[Leatherette]

I was in the grocery store with my daughter yesterday, and a lady asked me how old she was. When I told her 4 and a half months, she said, "Wow, you look great!". My daughter is African American and I am Caucasian. She does not look bi-racial at all....

I said, "Thanks! She keeps me busy!". It made my day.