Anonymous wrote:PP 23:00 here. I'm divorced, shared custody, my child was a toddler when we split, and people asked me questions about our situation all the time, and it first it really bothered me, for the same reasons these questions about your daughter bother you, but I decided to be open about it (though not getting into details about how difficult my ex can be!). It is who we are, and to me not responding to questions that seemed to be coming from a good place might unnecessarily stigmatize the situation. Also, your daughter is too young to have a voice in this. She may be fine with your sharing her story! Adoption stories are always so beautiful to me. I never ask parents about a child who looks to be adopted, but I am curious.

As for tools of deflecting these questions, I don't know. Have you posted this on a listserv for adoptive parents?

Also this will end when your daughter is older.

I'm a single mom with a VERY uninvolved absentee father (almost from day one). I always get "do you hear from DC's dad," or something of the like. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable those unsolicited comments about my alternative family arrangement make me!!

Anonymous wrote:We have a child whom we adopted from China. It seems like whenever we as a family, meet someone new and engage in a conversation, one of the first questions/comments when our daughter is somewhere else is "is she adopted? is she from China? how old was she when you adopted her? etc. We understand people being curious, but her adoption status is not something we want to discuss. There are so many other things about her and things in general we would love to talk about. (as an aside, why do people think it is quite alright to grill a new acquaintance about their child's beginnings?).

We're looking for things to say that veers away from the questions and helpe make sure such personal questions aren't asked again (unless we bring them up) but we don't want to alienate our new acquaintenances.

It seems like you have it all wrong. Why would you want to ignore or hide this important and obvious aspect of your child??? If you don't like the song and dance aspect of this, you could always offer the information up front, as it seems you would want to get it over with quickly. It is really sad to see this way of thinking.

RE Donor Egg questions: those of us who are visibly over 40 (with young children) or who have other markers (well-known years of graduation from schools, etc., so the curious can put together the age factor) are often asked "why did you wait so long" "did you have trouble conceiving," "how did you get so lucky," etc.,. (We are also asked -- subject of another recent thread -- "what a beautiful grandbaby! Where's a picture of your daughter who had that gorgeous child?" -- trying to explain that said "grandbaby" is my later-in-life first-born is amusing, at best. . . .

Some of us (I'm one) are very public about fertility struggles. However, when I share our family's story, it is *always* with the preface "I'm glad to talk about this with you, but if it makes you uncomfortable as we keep talking let me know, and please know that many families prefer to keep these conversations within their family rather than discussing it with others."