There's plenty of how-to for adopting, bringing baby or young child home, parenting the early years. Once a child hits the 'tweens and teenage years...the issues become more complex. They have their own interest that likely do not include adoption. They are more independent. Those adoption issues that were at the forefront years ago, fade; new ones take their place.

For parents who are parenting children of different ethnicities, races, born in different country, the challenge is to provide the right resources for meeting kids like them.  It means that we sometimes go beyond the local playgroups.

When he was younger and went to daycares that had more Caucasian children, we actively sought out families and kids who were not, especially families who had adopted children from Guatemala. We wanted him to know that there are other families that looked like ours, that are other kids that looked like him (when we lived in communities where there were fewer Latinos especially). For the last year, he has been in daycare where most of the kids are not Caucasian. One of the other kids was also adopted from Guatemala. This fall, he's going to a Kindergarten at an elementary school that is mostly African American. At this point in our son's life, we tend to follow his lead in friends.

However, how to connect him to other kids who were adopted in Guatemala remains. Right now, he's not interested. Unless, of course, they love trains. I know this issue and challenge will still be out there as he gets older. Parents of children adopted from China are hitting this challenge big time: thousands of them are hitting the teen years now. In general, families with children adopted from China are very organized. Now, this organization is facing the challenges of connecting the teens and older children/young adults

Jennifer Jue-Steuck has created the first organization - Chinese Adoptee Links International (CAL) -run by and for Chinese adoptees. Her current efforts to network adoptees began with a pen pal program

"We're on a different journey than our parents are on," said Jue-Steuck, who will make a promotional stop in Philadelphia on June 3 and in Doylestown on June 5. "There are some things that would be meaningful for us to have conversations among ourselves."

For instance, if you're born Chinese and raised in a white family, do you see beauty in faces that look like yours, or your parents'? How do you handle racism? How do you live comfortably in a society in which some people, maybe even in your extended family, will forever see you as a foreigner?

CAL - whose board of directors includes Amanda Baden, a noted adoption researcher at Montclair State University in New Jersey - was formed to find answers, to foster sisterhood, mentorship and, eventually, advocacy. The group sponsors a newsletter, a Web site and social events, for now limited to California. CAL doesn't yet offer adoptees a way to meet online.

In the age of social networking, though, the organization still runs off-line and through face-to-face meetings.

"I'd like to have connections with other adoptees, as it might give us something in common, but I don't feel that it would guarantee a strong friendship," said McKenzie Forbes, 18, concluding her freshman year at Dickinson College in Carlisle.

"I'm not saying that we, as Chinese adoptees, should completely throw away or forget who we are," she said. "But it would actually be beneficial to treat us as simply Americans."

Sure, being adopted from China isn't enough to start a friendship. But maybe a way to forge a community -- through which friendships can be made. And their voices can be heard - long after their adoptions.