The Ethiopia Adoption Blogger wrote a post about her Korean son needing glasses and I read it with some nostalgia. After all, I was given my first pair of glasses right before I started kindergarten. I also made the comment that I hated going to the eye doctor because he always used to tell me to open my eyes wider. I have Korean eyes and they just don’t open as wide as the average Caucasian eyes. It was frustrating.

So, I started thinking about other ways that Korean adoptees weren’t made the same, like we’re generally shorter... There is no science to this post – just my own rantings. Sometimes, as parents of Korean adoptees, we have to be prepared to think outside the box for the professionals in our lives.

Think about it…Owlhaven on the Ethiopia Adoption Blog has remembered that there was an article about the correlation between eye sight and orphanages. The eye doctor didn’t know about this study and why should he? My eye doctor worked mostly with Caucasian eyes so it didn’t occur to him that my eyes couldn’t open any wider. Later, the size of my eyes would create more problems when they tried to fit me for contacts.

When I was in grade school, the dentist told my parents that my jaw wasn’t shaped correctly. I went through a year long process where they stretched my upper jaw – ugh. It was not the best time of my life. I actually have more trouble with my jaw now than I did before they stretched it.

When it was my sister’s turn for orthodontia, they went to a different place. My mother told the orthodontist all about my experience and he told her that the big problem is that orthodontists learn on a Caucasian model and that they try to make everyone look like that model. Different races have different structure and you always have to keep that in mind before you make any adjustments. Ten years too late for me.

What this has taught me is that I need to question what professionals tell me about myself and my son. It’s easy to trust doctors and other professionals and to want them to always be right, but it doesn’t mean they always are. My son’s doctor is very good at questioning things. She saw something that she had never seen before and it worried her. However, she did research and called me at home to tell me that it was okay because it was something very common in Asian males.