C = Compassion

As a parent, you wonder what things can be taught, what traits your child will inherit from you as his parents.  Will he have daddy's intelligence or mom's common sense?  Will he grow up to be sweet and kind or tough and distant?

As a parent of an adopted child you constantly question nature vs. nurture or rather what you can teach your child vs. what they were born with.  You wonder what their biological parents were like - as people.  Is being a good and caring person genetic?  Will being adopted change his outlook on his life.  Will we do a good job?  Will he think we did a good job?

We spend a lot of our time visiting, chasing  - okay, borderline stalking our firefighters, law enforcement, and ambulance service and we have begun to discuss how even though it's really cool to see them go by with their light on and sirens blaring, they aren't doing this for our entertainment.

We're learning about compassion and I really liked this explanation from Wikipedia - Compassion is an empathy and sympathy for the suffering of others.

We try to explain why sometmes the ambulance passes with its lights and sirens but, comes home silent.  We do have a scanner and know some of the codes and we talk about what's happening, what we're hearing.

He's always disappointed in a disregard.  Sometimes downright angry.  We talk about it being a good thing because someone thought they needed help but, changed their mind.  He's still not buying it.

We often say to Jacob - even though seeing the fire engine/ambulance/police is the best part of your day, it's the WORST part of someone else's day because they need help.  Either they're hurt, or scared but, certainly something is wrong.  And you wouldn't like it if you were hurt and crying and someone else was happy because of it.  We also try to explain that it's hard on our friends because it hurts their feelings sometimes to see someone die or need help.  So when they're sad, we're sad for them.

I've learned that as a parent, all you can ever do is the best you can do - and then give the best age appropriate answer.  I only hope what I've learned is right!