My brother is 3 years older than me, we'll call him Alex for the sake of this article. While he's in his 30's now and has a career working at Yelp, growing up was a struggle for him every day.

I remember grade school through middle school, kids would tell me that there's no way I could love my brother because "he wasn't my real brother". They would pick on him too because while interracial adoption is hard enough, it's very different being white and growing up in an Asian American family. I remember my brother would hide in the back seat of the car on the way to school or ask to get dropped off blocks away from school so kids wouldn't see him get out with my very different looking parents in the front seat.

I always stood up for Alex, even when the teasing carried over to me because at home, we were just as any other brother and sister. I honestly can't think of 1 day that my parents treated him any differently than myself. Alex even learned and spoke Korean at home. I think that's the key to making interracial adoption work. It starts at home and everyone has to be treated the same. After my father's passing (kidney failure), Alex admitted to me that for all the identity issues he went through, he could never thank Dad enough for treating him as any other child, with unconditional family love.