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Welcome to The Foster Friendly Podcast. We’re bringing foster care closer to home by sharing stories from the front lines. We're talking with former foster youth, foster parents and others who are finding unique and powerful ways to dramatically improve the experiences and outcomes for kids in foster care.
The Foster Friendly podcast is brought to you by America’s Kids Belong, a nonprofit that helps kids in foster care find belonging in both family and community.
Courtney (00:01.518)
Hello and welcome to the Foster Friendly Podcast. I'm your co-host Courtney, I should say host, Courtney, co-host Travis. You know, I don't know. Does it really matter Travis, which way we say it? And we got one of the other, yeah, co-hosts, co-hosts. We have with us today, Isaac Eder, and we're in the middle of National Adoption Month. So it's kind of fun. Last week we had Pam Bauer on and she shared with us a fabulous conversation on the grief in adoption.
Travis (00:11.636)
No, one or the other.
Courtney (00:29.45)
She is a biblical counselor and just shared her findings and her research that she's done. And this is a great follow-up conversation because we're going to also talk a little bit about the grief and adoption, but diving more into translational adoption. So Isaac, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Isaac Etter (00:44.803)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Courtney (00:47.698)
Yeah, Isaac is a transracial adoptee. He's also a social entrepreneur reshaping how we support adoptive families. He was adopted at age two and he brings both lived experience and professional experience expertise to his work as the founder of Identity and Parenting Different. He's a sought after speaker and educator and sparks honest conversations about how to support adopted children while they grow up. He also equips parents and child welfare professionals with the tools understanding needed to build homes where adoptees feel seen, heard,
and truly valued. I love that. It aligns with our mission very much. So again, thanks for being here today, Isaac.
Isaac Etter (01:24.079)
Yeah, thank you.
Travis (01:26.363)
Yeah. Well, it's great to have you on. yeah. So before we get more into this conversation around transracial adoption and all the things in that space, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your own story?
Isaac Etter (01:37.605)
Yeah, absolutely. And so as kind of already mentioned, I am an adoptee and I'm a transracial adoptee as well. I was adopted when I was two. And I think that my experience, like many adoptees who were adopted when I was adopted, was full of a lot of love and a lot of support and all those things. But the conversation or the knowledge around how to...
navigate interracial placements, interracial adoption didn't exist. And so it wasn't a conversation or topic or truly recognized throughout my upbringing. And so, well, you might say like transracial adoption, that's a little bit hard. Well, I think that how race got mentioned was more trying to make sense of why there was one black kid in all white family, right? And so that was the most of the dialogue around race.
And so we never had any other conversations about what that might mean or how I even maybe felt about that. And so race was not a topic, though adoption was a topic. So my parents were really great about talking about adoption. I struggled from a very early age to understand adoption, to understand why I was placed for adoption.
I think those elements of grief and loss showed up very early for me. And I had to navigate them and struggle with feelings of abandonment and rejection from the time I was like six. And so it started that early for me. I think the more and more we learn about adoptees and how they start to think about adoption and about their kind of psychology is we learned that
Usually these curiosity, usually these things actually start around that time point. They're not starting, you I think a lot of us want to believe they're going to start later. But we are seeing more and more kids who are in that kind of kindergarten, first grade time period, starting to wrestle with ideas of adoption and curiosity and wondering. And so that's when it started for me. And race didn't really become a factor until I was a little bit older. And my initial feelings around race were not,
Isaac Etter (03:57.308)
were not about any kind of like political or like social issue, right? They were all about wanting to fit in, not feeling different, not feeling ashamed for not looking like my family or not looking like everybody else in our community. And I grew up around three other adoptees that were black and it was just us. There wasn't anybody else. And so we were figuring it out together and
It wasn't until I was almost going to college that I came across a lot of racial stuff online that was more about racial injustice, racism, bias. And that's when I started to just get an idea that there might be more to my experience than just feeling different or feeling weird for looking different. That's when I started to get an idea that maybe I would experience something different than my white peers.
And as soon as I went to college, was hit with that reality. I was hit with bias. I was hit with racism. I was hit with also confusing things like white peers in my dorm wanting to call me the N-word, wanting to say that casually. And as a transracial adoptee who was obviously not super aware of a lot of things, not knowing how to navigate that, not knowing how to make sense of it either.
and so this led to, me, ultimately bringing up race and my family at first, not really understanding. I ended up moving away, ended up dropping out of college and moving to Atlanta to try and go on my own kind of racial identity journey. and what a, what a better place than Atlanta, right? and so I went on this journey to find myself and find myself in the black community and
Travis (05:47.375)
You
Courtney (05:47.606)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (05:53.586)
And during that time, I got a lot of self-confidence, a lot of racial confidence as well, just understanding where I fit into being a black person. And while I was doing that, I was 18, 19 at the time, my parents were going through their own journey. My parents were reading things that they saw I was reading. were meeting with the one black professor I had at the college that I went to. They were trying to get an idea of like why...
couldn't they understand what I was experiencing? Why couldn't they relate? And they were going through their own educational process around what it was actually like for me as an adult of a different race, that my experience was not the same as theirs. And so when I eventually moved back to my home area in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I came back to different parents. I came back to parents who wanted to have conversations, who were apologetic, but who also wanted to dive deeper.
And that created a really powerful moment of healing, not only for me, but for us as a family. And I also think a very big step towards attachment. So the first time maybe feeling truly seen as more than just their adopted child, but as a black child as well who was going to have a different experience than them. And so that sparked a very long, like obviously healing is a lifelong journey, but that started a really long healing journey where a lot of conversations were able to come up onto the table.
Travis (06:58.181)
Hmm.
Travis (07:06.757)
Hmm.
Isaac Etter (07:21.213)
and my parents and we talked through a lot of things. And in the midst of those years of conversations, I was asked to speak at a cultural training for a local adoption agency. And I kept doing it, like she kept asking me to come back, the social worker who asked me. And eventually she pulled me aside and said, I don't know what else you're doing, but you should just do this. And I was just a, you know, was still a kid at the time. I wasn't sure what I was gonna do with my life.
Courtney (07:43.502)
Hmm.
Travis (07:47.557)
Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter (07:49.646)
And that started me in the journey that I guess I've still been on now. This is maybe second phase of the journey, which has been adoption education, building stuff for parents, recreating the experience that adoptees have in homes and trying to equip parents with the knowledge, language and tools to really support their children through each phase.
Courtney (08:12.514)
Wow!
Travis (08:14.521)
Yeah, well, thank you so much. That was really a great, know trying to do a flyover of kind of your, your journey and adoption and, know, in that whole story, it was a great, contextual flower. Just kind of set up your story, but also kind of where, you've been learning and growing and your parents, let's go back to, your parents, which you already did mention, and sort of, sounded like college error era where they really were doing their own work and sound like that was, yep.
Isaac Etter (08:19.471)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (08:25.425)
Thank you.
Travis (08:43.501)
a part of some real new growth together. What else kind of, as you look back, maybe it was earlier in the childhood, or would you say that you saw them do well when it came to being a transracial family? If you could look back.
Isaac Etter (08:57.497)
Yeah, well, I think some of the things that my parents super well was understanding that adoption was complex. And so I would say that there's, and even they would say, you cause I do a lot of this work, if you've seen any of my content, you know, I do a lot of this work with my family now. And so even they would say there's probably a limited number of things that we might say just in the trans racial category.
but there's a lot of things we would say in the adoption category, right? And it's transracial adoption, so we'll put them together for this. my parents were always very good at understanding that adoption was complex, that it was full of grief, that it was full of loss. And because of that, when I struggled early, it wasn't like taboo to mention adoption. It wasn't taboo to mention my birth mother. It wasn't taboo for these things to come up.
Not to mention I was adopted when I was two, so I lived with my birth mother for those first two years. So it wasn't like I was in foster care for those two years. And so I did have a little bit of a different story, which I think added to their understanding that it might be more complex for me. So I would say that they did a really great job of recognizing that adoption was more than how they built a family. It was more than just me joining their family. It was going to include these other elements for me.
and I was going to have to navigate those and they were good about doing their, what I would consider their best at helping me navigate that with the tools that they had, with the knowledge that they had. And, you know, we all know that adoption education has not been like the most robust part of the adoption world historically. And so they were also dealing with less information, much less information than parents are having today. I mean, you go on Instagram now and find
Courtney (10:41.539)
you
Isaac Etter (10:44.281)
a wide array of opinions and education, but you can also just find a lot, right? And so whether it's all good or bad is beside the point, you'll find a lot. And that didn't exist when I was growing up, right? And so my parents, I think, did a really good job for what they did know, what they did learn from the adoption agency I was adopted through and the adoption agency my brother 10 years after me was adopted through. They did do a really good job of recognizing the complexity of adoption.
Courtney (10:45.294)
.
Isaac Etter (11:13.977)
And then as we kind of think about some elements of transracial adoption, my parents do talk about ways in which they recognize me being treated differently because of my race, like, you hair policies that I was told to pop. They were, they were told that I had to follow, but you know, other white peers did not have to and how they had to advocate for that. And one of the elements that I think comes up in that is that they often advocated for me, but I didn't understand what was happening.
And so, or I didn't know about it at all. And so in one sense, great, cause parents protecting great things, but it also left me without language or a framework of why it might be wrong that the, you know, the choir director wanted me to cut my hair, but the other kid could have an afro, right? And so I think there was a lot of things that were like, maybe like half good, right? And that's, I think just again, due to, especially in transracial adoption,
the limited knowledge on how to really cross that bridge, how to have that conversation with your child.
Courtney (12:20.302)
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Travis and I both are transversal adoptive parents. So I'm sure Travis is nodding along as I am of like, yep, we've been down this road. There are things that I know as a parent that I definitely have gotten wrong and things I look back on things I'm still apologizing to my kids for. And I still have some in the home who I'm still raising. And, you know, I've learned through our kids who are now adults have been like, hey, mom and dad, these are some things that would have helped me, you know, that we can do differently now.
Travis (12:20.377)
Makes sense, yeah.
Isaac Etter (12:28.143)
But
Travis (12:28.421)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Travis (12:47.344)
you
Courtney (12:49.902)
So I love that. And I love to see that, you know, you're often doing these trainings and things with your mom and getting her perspective as well. I've heard, yeah, it's just great.
Isaac Etter (12:56.345)
It's powerful perspective. It adds so much context to things. I've spent a lot of time trying to understand and study and figure out how we can help adoptive parents understand what adoptees might be feeling and how to translate that into their parenting. But I think by me doing these trainings with my mom, it also humanizes the adoptive parent experience in a way that I can't, right? Because...
Courtney (13:00.184)
for sure.
Isaac Etter (13:23.523)
you know, I don't usually get seen, like even though I am a parent and I'm not an adoptive parent, but I am a parent, I usually get seen as more of an adoptee than a parent, right? And so I do love doing these trainings with my mom because I think that we work together very well to send a message that I think coming from both of us gets more well received than coming from one of us.
Courtney (13:46.733)
Yeah, yeah, it's great. And it is good to have that, the bird's eye view of all the perspectives because when we get into the lane, like one lane, it's just really hard to get, it's easy to get stuck there and not to see. So yeah, so also what are some things, you know, maybe now looking back that your parents could have done differently or things that you coach families to do differently that maybe would have helped you as you were growing up?
Isaac Etter (13:57.904)
Yes. Thank you for that.
Isaac Etter (14:09.797)
Yeah, mean, just in the vein of transracial adoption, just thinking, I think a lot of times, well, let me just contextualize it with my parents first. My parents didn't have a framework for racial conversations at all, and were even advised to not talk about it, right? And so limited context, poor advice, right? And so...
That was how they walked into transracial parenting. And so that was a byproduct in my upbringing. My upbringing voided that being a topic and the goal was to try and make me feel just like my white siblings, just like peers in the community and for that element of my life to ideally be as little noticed as possible. What we find through this, which is kind of like the colorblind approach that we kind of all...
recognize now is not the best way to approach racial conversations is that when you do that, you tend to leave your child to navigate it on their own. So instead of them not navigating it, they navigate it on their own, which is usually not what we want. Or I think it's never what we want, to be honest. It's never what we want. We don't want our kids to try and wrestle with complex things on their own, especially as children.
Travis (15:35.515)
Hmm.
Isaac Etter (15:36.346)
And that was my experience. I learned a lot of stuff about race from the internet, which was probably not the place that I should have learned it, right? I was reading very extreme statements on the internet as a young teenager, and that was becoming the context for how I was learning about race in America. And that is not the context in which we would want our children to learn about race in America.
Travis (15:43.035)
Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter (16:02.301)
We would want them to learn about it in a framework that is the truth and that sets them up for success, but does not, you know, polarize them. And when we think about the internet in general nowadays, that is how the internet is. The internet tries, it goes to its sides. And I think one thing that I talk to parents very often about is thinking about conversations about race as an ongoing thing. And, and
Travis (16:26.907)
Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter (16:29.201)
to reframe how you might think about talking about race. So in the book that I wrote, one of the last chapters is a framework of the best things to do at each age group. And so it goes zero to five, five to 12, 12 to 18, and 18 and beyond. And in zero to five, what we advise is just like normalizing and embracing like their differences. So it's like the kids books you have, the TV shows they watch, art in your home, right? Or they are in their room.
But then it's also how you talk about taking care of their skin and their hair. And a lot of people don't view that as a race conversation because we're just thinking about conversations about race within the framework of like bias, racism, like heaviness. But that is not like, that is not the encompassing of race, right? The race part of my life is not just that side of it.
It is also like learning to take care of my hair and learning to take care of my skin, which was different than my parents. And so during these zero to five years, even though in your mind it might not be having a conversation about race, it really is because it's a conversation about self-worth, self-beauty and caring about themselves. And then when you see them walk into this next stage where they're going to school, having friends and their own curiosity is going to come up.
This is where we can, I think, introduce small ways of talking about difference, especially when it comes up when kids ask them why their parents are white, right? This is a transracial adoptee question. You're gonna get this one if you're a transracial adoptee, right? I it's because it's beautiful moment to talk about race in a very simple context, right? Which is that some people look different than others, and because of that, we have different cultures and different things. And again, it's not a heavy conversation about, like, racism and...
Courtney (17:57.741)
Yeah.
Travis (17:58.863)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (18:02.51)
you
Isaac Etter (18:18.405)
It's just a conversation about race being a factor in life. And it acknowledges you recognize that that is their experience. And then as you start to get into more complex things, you can start to weave in these ideas that some people have biases. Some people have biases and you don't agree with those biases, but they're going to happen. And when you slowly start to introduce these ideas and have conversations that are more simplistic rather than...
Courtney (18:27.137)
Hmm.
Isaac Etter (18:47.055)
like heavy all the time, I think you create a lot of safety around talking about race, which is something that all transracial adoptees are thinking about to one degree or another. And it also takes the pressure off of you to like have like one big talk that answers all the questions. I jokingly say that like a lot of adoptive parents, transracial adoptive parents think about talking about race, like they think about the talk. And so like they think...
Travis (19:13.487)
Yep.
Isaac Etter (19:14.927)
You know what mean? They think they're gonna have like this, like it's gonna come to a head and there's gonna be one big moment where they're curious, privately peaked and you can't avoid it anymore. And it's gonna be like this one big thing that answers all their questions. But it's just really not like that, right? You know, it's an ongoing part of their journey. And in the information that children need about race changes as they get older. When your kids are teenagers and they're spending time with their friends and alone.
Courtney (19:19.15)
.
Travis (19:20.527)
Haha
Courtney (19:23.918)
if
Isaac Etter (19:44.046)
they need to be mindful about different things than they did at five. And so it's really thinking about this as a continual conversation and not always a heavy one, not always about the heaviness, but also about the beauty of race and
Courtney (19:48.226)
Hmm.
Travis (19:48.667)
Mm-hmm.
Courtney (20:03.31)
That's great. Yeah, I love how you break it down into different stages and ages as well, because I do know, I mean, just in research I've done in both trauma and in race, there's different stages where kids think about things or things are brought up. You when they first go to school and then they turn nine and they start to have more questions about their identity and then 16 and 18, you know, it's like all those different ages where we need to be prepared and we need to be willing to have those conversations and start, like you said, at a young age. you know, I...
Travis (20:03.44)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (20:21.701)
That's a big one.
Courtney (20:32.814)
I know people who have held the fact, obviously not transracial, but held the fact that their children were adopted until the kids were a lot older. And I think that used to be pretty common. And I think we've seen how much hurt that caused for adoptees in the past. And I think it's the same thing when it comes to race or it comes to anything else. When we hold back those conversations, it causes more pain in the future.
Travis (20:53.774)
fires.
Isaac Etter (20:54.961)
Absolutely. Yeah, our goal is connection, right? You know, and adoption. There's all these, we're constantly talking about attachment and bonding. And to me, this is like a part of that. Like this is, you wanna build attachment and bonding with your child. This is a part of that when it's transracial adoption, because this is the scene and scene heard value. I mean, there's a lot of ways that we could take the scene, but one of the ways that we would interpret the scene and scene heard.
Courtney (21:05.006)
Hmm.
Travis (21:18.853)
Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter (21:22.277)
valued is seeing them as their full self. And in the case of transracial adoptees, that includes their racial identity.
Travis (21:31.16)
Right.
Courtney (21:31.81)
Yeah. So shifting gears a little bit, you talked about the transracial through the years. For your own journey and story, grief in adoption is real. It's part of the journey of adoption, right? It's something parents need to, same thing, have conversations early on, recognize it, talk about it. What are some things in different stages of your life that you experienced the grief side of adoption?
Isaac Etter (21:53.84)
Yeah, great question. Well, yeah, grief is such an interesting part of adoption because it shows up so differently in different seasons. And as a child, I think it showed up through depression and anxiety things, especially in those elementary years. I mean, of course, it showed up behaviorally. And this is, I think, this is probably one of the most common ways grief and loss is showing up in adoption is through behavior, right?
Travis (22:02.491)
you
Travis (22:22.341)
you
Isaac Etter (22:23.235)
And this is one of the reasons I love things like TBRi and things that help us reframe behavior in kids that have experienced trauma because behavior is a symptom, right? It's a symptom of something. And that was certainly true for me. It's not like I was the craziest worst kid, but I definitely struggled and was rebellious. And I think a lot of that was due to
having complicated feelings about adoption, but as a byproduct of having complication feelings about adoption, having complicated feelings about myself and my own self-worth and what adoption meant about me. And that made me experience like really heavy, feelings of grief around it. And then as I transitioned into adulthood, I think grief got connected with a lot of moments that
like just didn't exist or may never exist. You know, I'm a parent now, I've had a biological child and my birth mom wasn't there, my birth father wasn't there, right? And so grief translates now into different things and into heavy, into big transitions. When I go through big transitions, it shows up there. When I accomplish things, it shows up there. And it's not like paralyzing, right? It's not...
Travis (23:21.435)
Hmm.
Isaac Etter (23:47.408)
It's not like it's like all I can think about, but I do think that grief is interesting, at least adoption grief is interesting in that way in which it tends to find you at these turning points in life. And yeah, don't know many adoptees who that isn't when it shows up. I'm sure there are some that maybe never think about it, but
Courtney (24:12.172)
Hmm.
Isaac Etter (24:16.781)
I know many adoptees who, at least to some degree or another, at the big transitions in life, it also spurs curiosity, wondering about what their birth parents are doing. Because you to think about your wedding, birth of a child, graduations, first jobs, promotions, all these things that you share with people close to you, like your family and like your parents.
Travis (24:35.301)
Hmm.
Isaac Etter (24:44.303)
they do almost remind you of who you're not sharing it with. I think that's realistic way that grief shows up for not just me, but for many adoptees.
Travis (24:48.667)
Wow.
Courtney (24:57.486)
Thank
Travis (24:57.595)
That's really real and honest. I, what I really love too about that for people that aren't adopted or especially there aren't in a trans racial adoption situation themselves being that child, that's really, can, that helps anyone kind of feel what that might feel a little bit like in that, because we've all faced loss. So, you know, I've lost my dad three years ago. And so to your parallel of looking at those major vent points and going,
What would have been like if dad was here? But for you, I mean it is a severing of that biological parent that you so in that way it is that parallel same type of a grief then that person that's not there So that was really powerful how you said that I'm Switching gears again in this conversation This is a fascinating part we're gonna talk some about comparative differences in culture because obviously your lens of being
Isaac Etter (25:39.089)
100%. Yes.
Courtney (25:43.842)
Hmm.
Travis (25:55.845)
you know, an African-American guy and a white, predominantly white family and white contacts and a lot, it sounds like growing up. I'm laughing to think about this because my wife and I go to almost a half and half African-American and white church. And it's been amazing and really fun also to have those types of conversations where I'm still learning a ton, even recently of where I realized how white potlucks are. So when we have like that, that's like, my black friends like, man,
Courtney (26:21.482)
Yeah.
Travis (26:25.699)
I love you dude, but I ain't eating your food. I don't know who made that. And so, but even those conversations of like, you know, no cookouts and this is why we do that. And you know, so anyway, if you, yeah, walk us through just some of your experiences of just what you've seen culturally different beyond just some of the obvious things that we can think about with hair and food and things like that, but just in the white and black communities.
Courtney (26:29.038)
you
Isaac Etter (26:47.601)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think some things you might think about culturally is confidence in identity is a big one. so also this might, maybe this is not the best way to say it, but like uniformity, whereas like,
Courtney (27:02.712)
and
Isaac Etter (27:13.859)
same conversations happening in black homes here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, probably happening in your city. And so it's like, I think that's very interesting cultural difference. And I don't think you just find that between black and white communities, but all communities of color and then all white communities, I tend to find that like how my friends who grew up in those homes grew up.
the normalization of like the seasonal learnings was very different. And so that would be one that I think is like really clear how it doesn't tend to distort.
which I think becomes an argument of transracial adoption about how we talk about race. It doesn't tend to distort their racial identity or confuse them, but how conversations about race and behavior and how they might be perceived are normalized conversations and conversations that wouldn't or maybe not even need to happen in many white homes.
And so that's a big one. Some other ones, I think the Cookout example was a really good one. I know you've said outside of some of these ones, but I think that's a really good Yeah. think another one that I think I hear a lot, and I don't want to use all the things you don't want to talk about, but I think sometimes when we think about hair, hair stuff, we think about like just like a barber shop.
Travis (28:35.95)
or inside too, but...
Isaac Etter (28:52.773)
But I think another part of it is some of the cultural context in the community that has existed within silos like that, within communities of color. And so it's like the barbershop might be one example, but also it also might be like the park in your community. And it might be, you know, where certain people get their hair braided. It seems to be like very...
There's a lot of like cultural community built that way that I found living in Atlanta. Like I found living in Atlanta a very different way of life than I grew up in. Even though my upbringing had its own sense of culture, Like my, you know, I grew up as a homeschooled black kid in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. So you might not say it's like a crazy culture, but you know, my,
The way that I grew up had its own rhythm and routine and its own things. But I did find that when I lived in Atlanta and now having a more mix of community, the leaning on a community side, it looks very different. Another example, which I think can be really powerful just in the context of adoption, because one of the conversations that comes up a lot is around people of color adopting and fostering.
And another thing that even I found from the outside living in Atlanta, but then have grown to understand even more is the sense of community around children. And I think that's a really interesting part of communities of color, which is like obviously due to a lot of like systematic things. But the idea that a lot of foster care has existed within
communities of colors, but it has never been formal foster care. And I lived in a neighborhood in Atlanta. I was working with this nonprofit. And so I was intentionally living in a low income community. And it was very interesting how normal it was for kids to stay at different homes on the block. It was very normalized. And I remember how interesting that was. You know what mean? I would have never like, there were kids that lived down the street. would never.
Courtney (31:04.343)
Hmm.
Isaac Etter (31:13.201)
My parents would have never just dropped me off at their house. And so it feels like there's some interesting things there that I think are cultural. And I think that you actually might even find going to a church that's half black, like you might find yourself in the mix of that culture.
Courtney (31:15.522)
Yes.
Travis (31:16.901)
Hahaha.
Travis (31:28.347)
Yes, 100%. Everything you're saying, like, I've now seen that lens of what you're exactly saying of like, even things around like, maybe the election, maybe, so many things that feel much more, from what I'm seeing in their culture of, of community feeling like the us, us language. I like so many of us in our white evangelical space or whatever, know, it's I, you know, much more, you know, and the
kids coming in to a church service, much more of an awareness of like how Dre got his new haircut or what clothes he's wearing compared to like his experience in a previous white church where it was just like, those things weren't necessarily embraced by his community of like people that he looks like, you know? So I've just, it's been beautiful to see that. That's been very different.
Isaac Etter (32:18.799)
Yeah, I think it's a very beautiful part of culture and, you know, I think it's such a benefit to transracial families to be in these settings because I think just like how I can see how you're expressing, it's like, it's been a joy. And I think that a lot of transracial parents, at least on the front end, are nervous about these things.
and maybe even scared, right? Like, you know, stepping outside of our own lens and our own community is scary at times. And I have yet to find transracial parents who have stepped out of their community and felt like it did not have many joys. It did not have many gifts. Was it hard at times? Maybe. Was it complicated at first to explain why you're the white family at the black church? Maybe. But I have yet to find transracial parents who have not.
just found endless personal joy and growth from being a part of those spaces outside of all the benefits that are gonna come for their children, right? There's gonna be a ton of those. We can talk about it on almost every degree, how it's much easier to navigate transracial parenting with communities that look exactly like your child. But I find that more than not, there's personal joy in embracing, even if it's going to the barbershop, just excitement.
Courtney (33:22.702)
Thank
Isaac Etter (33:42.607)
that parents themselves find, which is an additional gift on top of the gift of being a parent and raising across cultures and all the gifts that come with adoption.
Courtney (33:54.671)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Good things to talk about. Let's talk a little bit about code switching and ghost kingdoms, because I think these are very common things for transracial adoptees to experience. As I said, am a transracial adoptive mom of six kids who have been adopted. Two of them are Hispanic, four are Black. So I've walked this in a couple of different lenses. Yeah, we do.
Isaac Etter (34:17.329)
I was gonna say, you have fun home.
Travis (34:20.475)
hahaha
Courtney (34:22.126)
But we have a son who always tells us that his friends tease him that he's the whitest black person they've ever met. And the first time he said this, it was kind of like this, you know, we didn't raise you hoping that would be the outcome, right? It was like we went into this thinking, oh, we're going to raise him to be white. But it is a natural happening of being in a white home. And we do have to recognize we did raise him in a white home, you know, like we tried to incorporate things. We talked about race. We did the things we thought we should do, but it's still...
Isaac Etter (34:27.867)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (34:34.896)
Yes.
Courtney (34:52.142)
He talks like us. He dressed just like us when he first left our house. And he's now 21. And I see this concept of code switching coming out in him more than ever. Again, leaving the house, being in college. Explain what code switching is and how you've seen it play out in your life.
Isaac Etter (34:54.897)
Yeah. Yeah.
Isaac Etter (35:04.209)
Of course.
Isaac Etter (35:10.341)
Yeah, so code switching is when people basically switch their demeanor and oftentimes vocabulary. And it can show up in other ways like how you dress too, I think. But I think most of the time we think about vernacular and we think about kind of attitude when you're in one setting versus another. And we commonly see this described as black people.
in a sense, acting black with their black friends and then acting white with their white friends. It can be depicted on social media as kind of like how you act at work versus how you act at home, which is another way that's how to describe code switching, which might be relatable to a lot of people, right? You don't let your home life enter your work life. And so with people of color, code switching has often been a safety net.
Travis (35:46.363)
you
Isaac Etter (36:03.185)
And so if there's a lot of slang or if there's accents, if there's, you know, even just vocabulary, know, y'all, yo, right? I go from saying yo to everybody to saying hello, sir. That's a good sign of code switching, right? And so we've seen this commonly play out in communities of color who...
Travis (36:18.789)
Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter (36:31.695)
you might see them outside of work and it's almost like they're a different person. And so I think this has really gotten popularized over the last couple of years, especially through TV shows and media and now more kind of conversational things. And it happens a lot in transracial families. And for many transracial families, it is a very confusing time. Me and my mom actually did a whole podcast episode about her experience with me code switching and how it was actually offensive to her at first because
Travis (36:35.867)
Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter (37:00.655)
She didn't understand why I would act differently with one community versus another. And so I think in transracial adoption, code switching is so easy for transracial adoptees who end up finding a community of color. Because once we're in those communities, like when I was living in Atlanta, I was totally like, I totally learned to be a different person. I totally had a different, and even coming home for breaks, would,
you know, in many ways I would code switch a little bit, but I would still have parts of that with me. And so I think a lot of times transracial adoptees end up in communities that look like them, especially as young adults, and they find comfort, safety, understanding in that community, which allows them to relate to it more and embrace more parts of it. But then when they come home, they also still have those parts of.
And so they also naturally fit back into that mold as well. And so we find ourselves between those two worlds very easily. And when one side sees the other side, it tends to be like interesting or confusing. And so when transracial parents see the code switching or the switch back into maybe black vernacular, slang, dress,
Travis (38:03.536)
Mm-hmm.
Travis (38:18.16)
Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter (38:27.505)
comfort and maybe, and I think that's usually what's most offensive or offensive might not be the right word, but most confusing to parents is actually the comfort that they see in the code switching is what they find to be the most confusing part of it. It does throw people into, I think a discomfortable position because in a sense you would hope that that comfortability was what you raised them in, right? And so it becomes, I think another lesson for
Travis (38:37.413)
Hmm.
Travis (38:50.757)
Right.
Isaac Etter (38:55.003)
transracial parents around the importance of race and culture and how the racial experience that your children will inevitably have will push them to find areas where it's safe for them to feel like their full self. And so that is typically going to be in those communities and they'll code switch back and forth. I'm not sure I'm answering the question because I might have gotten a little bit of a tangent there. But I will say that parents
Courtney (39:18.785)
No, it's great.
Isaac Etter (39:24.525)
should not be offended by code switching, because I code switching is a little bit of an inevitable. I think all people in one sense or another code switch. And so I think people do tend to act differently around their culture versus their like culture of origin versus another culture, because there are relatable factors within that. And those can also go down to cultural things like
So it can happen within a race too, whereas a country white person would feel less, would have to code switch to a city white person. And so you know what I'm saying? And so there is also code switching within racial cultures. And so I would look at code switching as usually is inevitable for your child. And it's also gonna show up in various forms within people of the same race.
Travis (40:00.997)
Right.
Courtney (40:03.459)
Hmm.
Isaac Etter (40:19.741)
And it's usually, if you're finding it in the transracial context, it is usually a good thing. It's usually a sign that your child is finding safety, finding comfort in their culture and their racial identity. And unless you feel like they are like a dramatically different person with these people versus you, it is usually just a sign that they found
comfort and safety within people who understand their context and experience in life. And if they're like seemingly normal and not like...
like a Debbie downer to code switch into your family. That also usually means that they still find comfort in your family as well. Which means that like when I go home, I don't like, I still bring a lot of my personality to it, but I'm, I know that I'm different than I am with my friends. And that doesn't bother me at all because like I grew, I love my family. I enjoy my time with my family. There's no, me code switching back and forth in that context is not for safety. It's just for, it's just for the environment.
Courtney (41:17.57)
Hmm.
Travis (41:17.786)
Right.
Isaac Etter (41:31.185)
And so that was a long way of talking a lot about code switching, but I think there's two sides of it. There's like culture safety side of it, whereas like, you know, from in the work context, you might code switch for safety, but in a personal context, it can just be about comfort and community.
Courtney (41:49.679)
I'm going to ask you a question off the cuff. So kind of related to this. So we have a adult child who I wouldn't call it code switching necessarily because it just completely has changed their vernacular. They're like completely has adapted to the black community, which on one sense, that's wonderful. We love to see that finding themselves and all that. But has really struggled because the their grammar has gotten really poor.
Travis (41:51.279)
Yeah, I was.
Isaac Etter (42:04.123)
Yeah.
Courtney (42:18.902)
And again, like, I think there's part of that with the people she hangs around with. But then when she tries to get a job and she's really struggling making ends meet, because she can't get a job. And like as a mom, I want to say, well, you know, when you're having these interviews, let's try to use proper grammar. But then I feel like I shouldn't say anything because then am I saying that she's not smart? But she is. So like, would you say anything as a parent? Would you kind of coach her? that it? you're like, is that stepping on toes now because that's like what she has found is her identity.
Isaac Etter (42:43.642)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (42:49.423)
Yeah, so I guess maybe what I would think about in this context, because I could see the conversation going badly, I would think about a broader lens of what it means to be their race. And I think this is usually...
sometimes the challenge is that sometimes transracial adoptees like cling to, and I'm not saying this is your daughter's experience, but sometimes they cling to their first representation of it and that becomes all they understand about it. And I would say that you probably have many other black people in your community and in your life that do not talk that way and do not, you know, are able to have ranges of dialect.
it actually might be more helpful than anything to push her in that direction, to push her in the direction of still finding confidence in herself and seeing herself represented, but in a way that would push her in the career direction and in the life direction that she should go on, that she should want to go on. And I think it can be really hard, transracial adoptees really often.
if they have limited or if they feel like they have limited perspective on like how to relate to their racial identity. And so finding exposure, mentor, communities where she can see like professional versions of herself is probably the better thing to do in this instance. And I'm not sure how old your child is, because that also plays a different role. But I'm assuming if she's trying to get a job, she's old enough to...
like not like that you said that. I could see it just being, it could be better coming from somebody else. Like it could just be better coming from somebody else. And sometimes like that's just the parent game in general, right? Aren't we like often playing that game in all areas? And so yeah, just like it's probably better if that comes from somebody else, but it might.
Travis (44:41.829)
Ha ha ha.
Courtney (44:42.06)
Yeah.
Courtney (44:49.112)
Yeah, for sure.
Travis (44:56.011)
Mm-hmm. With all kids.
Isaac Etter (45:04.465)
come a little bit more naturally if they're also like getting the depiction, understanding how they can both be this and that without it feeling like if I'm that I'm white and if I'm this I'm black, right? Which might be how she's siloing it.
Courtney (45:17.408)
Yes, yeah, yep. Right, yep.
Travis (45:20.667)
Well, and that's, I wanted to add too, because to this of like, you already alluded to this Isaac as well, but I think it's, worth mentioning, especially for those of us who are white coming from sort of the dominant culture, because there's a lot of stuff my wife and I have learned through the years on kind of our own blinders are not realizing to give us more compassion. I think beyond just the trans racial adoptees experience of code shifting.
What's leading to that is, and you alluded to this, but is the identity that comes before that. There's an internal conflict that I think a lot of black people would say already exists already for them, not just even into a new family where they're a different race. It's that idea that I'm already navigating a gap between my own racial identity and then having to conform to the bigger.
dominant cultures norms. So that's already there. I think a lot of our African American friends would say that in their own life. So then on top of that to be adopted, another layer, right? I mean, is that fair? Like that's another layer of that.
Isaac Etter (46:26.565)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (46:31.257)
Yeah, would say that's fair to say. Yeah, mean, adoption brings so many layers, transracial adoption even more. And so I would say that's 100 % correct that how many layers do we expect young people to navigate well? And how many layers would we have navigated well as young people is maybe another question.
Courtney (46:53.485)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (46:56.271)
That's I think that's a really real transracial adoptee and adoptee struggle is there's layers of who am I and those layers are hard to navigate through and they're like teenage adoptees deserve so much more compassion and grace than we give them even if they've grown up in great homes because like it's just it's just a hard transition like being a young adult adoptee.
a young, a late teenager is just like a really complex thing. And you are navigating so many things on top of the understanding that like, as soon as you turn 18, like your whole birth world can find you. You can find your whole birth world. So like on top of all the other things that are happening, you also understand that on your 18th birthday, your whole life could change. And I know many adoptees that turned 18, 19 and
they got messages, they got things. adoptees think about that on their 18th birthday. They think about having access to information. And so that becomes another complicated part about being a young adult adoptee. And so, yeah, I agree with everything sad. And I think we can all do better about compassion for young adoptees, even in trying to steer them in the right direction.
Yeah, life is a long road and I want to set them up for the best success early on, but sometimes, sometimes just they got to walk a different path. I had to walk a different path. And I'm sure there's many other adoptees who had to walk different paths and unique paths to really get, get to the place where they could feel like successful living young or adults in general.
Courtney (48:21.858)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Travis (48:25.786)
grew up.
Courtney (48:35.671)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (48:50.869)
And yeah, sometimes I think we have to let go of our preconceived idea of young adult success with adoptees and figure out what are the wins. And this is a TBR thing, which I'm sure you guys are very familiar with, which is the idea of what if my child doesn't act their age? And I think actually this goes into adulthood. It's not just your 10-year-old or your 12-year-old or your...
Courtney (49:02.894)
Thanks.
Isaac Etter (49:19.793)
Like this is your 22 year old who cannot process their emotions yet. And so it's just a real part of trauma. It's a real part of loss and yeah, doing whatever we can to keep moving adoptees in the right direction with grace and love, I think matters.
Courtney (49:38.927)
Yeah. Yeah, and I do want to just quickly encourage people that might be listening who are adoptive parents or adoptees even who have just struggled and for the unsure, we have three adult children who are black who are in our family. They were all adopted at older ages, 10, 12 and 15. So a little bit older. So I had experienced a lot of life and we went all through them. We went through seasons of them running away, leaving the family, not knowing where they were, some of them for months and months.
you know, getting into that adulthood and just pushing us completely out. But all three of them have come back around and we are, it was a healing journey they needed to experience, which sounds like very similar to you. And I'm sure that's very common. And just, just to love them. Did you keep showing them love no matter what through all of that. And there's a good chance that they will eventually come around and come back to be like, I value family and the family that you have given me, even though you might've made mistakes. We've all made mistakes, but recognize that too. Cause I think that's part of the healing journey to say, Hey,
Dad and I, know we've not got this perfectly. Like we love you and we failed. We fail all of our kids, but we're always here, you know? And it's just been fun to be able to see that on the flip side of them all coming back around.
Travis (50:36.325)
Mm-hmm.
Isaac Etter (50:47.441)
Absolutely. To me, those are the most heartwarming stories in adoption. I know we all like the perfect stories, but those to me are the realistic, beautiful, heartwarming stories of struggle, loss, and adoptees finding themselves, but also feeling safe enough to always come home. And that's just such a beautiful gift, I think, adoptive parents can give adoptees.
Travis (50:51.131)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (51:15.057)
Probably the most beautiful gift adoptive parents can give adoptives is that feeling of unconditional love in the midst of however their grief might show up.
Courtney (51:28.494)
Yeah, we don't have much time to get into it, but I just want to mention what ghost kingdoms are, because I do think it's common too for these kids to go through, like they're being raised in a transracial home and then they see somebody on TV or they see the mailman or they see a teacher who looks like them and they might be like, I'm going to now envision that person to be my dad or I'm going to make up the story in my mind where they play that they're their dad or imagine it. Did you experience that growing up, like seeing people that you thought maybe or even just told yourself that's dad or that's mom?
Isaac Etter (51:32.017)
Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah.
Isaac Etter (51:56.112)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Ghost kingdoms are really interesting. I was not as much of a ghost kingdomer as many other people. I certainly had ghost kingdoms where I thought my birth father might show up out of the nowhere. It's funny how many of them are around money and around fame and around things like that.
Travis (52:19.931)
Nah.
Isaac Etter (52:21.627)
birth father is like a famous athlete or like TV actor or like Prince somewhere, which were a lot of like, which were a lot of mine. And so I don't know, I'm sure somebody much smarter than me who spends a lot of time thinking about ghost kingdoms could tell us why that's the case. But I do find that to be an interesting part about ghost kingdoms, along with the fact that they can be like seeing somebody who is the mailman who looks like you. But yes, I did have ghost kingdoms.
And ghost kingdoms to me are just a representation of curiosity unexpressed. And so I think that ghost kingdoms are not bad, but I also don't necessarily like find them to be like overly good. I think ghost kingdoms are normal experience for adoptees, but if adoptees have ghost kingdoms for like their whole...
Travis (52:56.987)
Hmm.
Isaac Etter (53:17.251)
childhood into their teenage years, I would view that more as a sign of curiosity unexplored, which meant that enough conversations weren't happening about their birth parents and birth story. And that might not always be the adoptive parents fault, but I think a lot of adoptive parents can open up dialogues that help their child process their story. And I think what a lot of adoptees have done
with their ghost kingdoms, it's found them as security to make sense of a story that they didn't understand. And I personally don't find that to be like a healthy or great way for adoptees to experience that. Though again, I don't think that they're wrong. And I think every adoptee has a ghost kingdom of some sort throughout their time, but I would.
Courtney (53:52.174)
and
Isaac Etter (54:11.121)
I would always suggest parents to be on the front end of trying to make sure their child could come to them with curiosity around who their birth parents are and their birth story. Because I think ghost kingdoms are also not a necessary part of the adoption journey. That adoptees could grow up in homes where they didn't wonder whether the milkman was their birth father because they trust that if the milkman was their birth father, their parents would have told them.
Travis (54:38.563)
Alright.
Courtney (54:39.214)
Such a great morning.
Isaac Etter (54:41.133)
And so I think that, yeah, it's not a necessary part of adoption. And so can we promote open conversations? Can adoptees grow up in homes where their curiosity is encouraged and parents feel comfortable having these conversations? I think yes. And that's a lot of the work that we do. A lot of the work and guidance that we provide, resources we create, help parents open conversations up. And I think that's a more powerful thing for adoptees.
Travis (55:12.911)
love that so much. mean, it's almost like the ghost kingdoms or maybe training wheels that just come off through coping and growing and healing. So, and then they're left behind.
Courtney (55:19.256)
Yeah.
Isaac Etter (55:20.609)
Yeah. Yeah. There's been some great people. I know Angela Tucker talks about Ghost Kingdoms really well. I'm forgetting the other lady who wrote, there's a lady who wrote a book about Ghost Kingdoms and if I find it, I'll send it to you guys. But there's a lot of great people who've done a lot of great stuff around Ghost Kingdoms. So again, not like knocking them, but just thinking of them as very like, as like something that should be happening in the mind of like a five-year-old, not a 15-year-old.
Courtney (55:49.314)
Yeah, yeah.
Travis (55:52.059)
Well, as we kind of close this episode out, we'd like to finish with sort of a closing line sentence that you fill in. So the one for you today is how would you finish the sentence? What youth who are adopted really need is.
Isaac Etter (56:09.713)
The youth who are adopted really need is...
Isaac Etter (56:16.761)
I wanna say unconditional love, but it feels too simplistic, if that makes sense. But like my overwhelming answer would be like unconditional love, maybe plus open conversations about adoption. And that could be a whole nother podcast.
Courtney (56:33.998)
That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Isaac, this has been a wonderful conversation. I know our listeners got a lot out of it and just encouraged as well by hearing stories like yours. you have a lot of great things to offer. So tell us a little bit about the Tools Resources book, where people can find you and follow you and all the good stuff.
Travis (56:35.899)
You're right.
Travis (56:39.759)
Be continued.
Isaac Etter (56:40.729)
Yeah, exactly.
Isaac Etter (56:58.481)
Absolutely. So on Instagram, you can find me at Isaac underscore Eder, I-S-A-A-C underscore E-T-T-E-R. If you're a parent, we send out free resources every week through our newsletter. It's www.parentingdifferent.com. It is an absolutely free resource. We make a bunch of content, we make resources, and we host multiple trainings every single month. And so...
Join that newsletter to find out all those things and then the Instagram for that company is parentingdifferent.
Courtney (57:32.473)
And the book he wrote?
Travis (57:32.699)
Very cool.
Isaac Etter (57:34.217)
the book I called is called A Practical Guide Trans Racial Adoption. If you join our newsletter, you'll find out it immediately. If you go to my Instagram, it's in my bio. It is on Amazon, but if you get it from my Instagram bio, it comes with a bunch of other free stuff, like trainings from me and my mom and other resources we created. So would suggest there if it's something that you
Travis (57:55.515)
awesome.
Courtney (57:55.79)
Awesome.
Isaac Etter (57:57.337)
Yeah, thank you guys.
Travis (57:59.003)
Thank you. It's been really fun. Good conversation.
Courtney (57:59.939)
Yes, thanks. Wonderful. Have a good day.
Isaac Etter (58:02.139)
completely.