When Brenda Ontiveros takes her two youngest children to the park, she keeps a careful watch over the wood chips.
    It's not because she's obsessed with slivers. It's their hair.
    "If that gets in their hair, you just about need a vacuum to get it out," says the blond, blue-eyed mother of two adopted black children.
    Ontiveros had much to learn after adopting a child whose skin, hair, culture and background are so different from her own. That's why she and several other mothers of adopted black children get together every Wednesday at a park or McDonald's.
    "It's so important to have a group like this. There's a pride [the children develop] that comes in no other way," the Sandy mother says.
    When parents adopt, they bring home more than a child. They also inherit a host of special concerns, everything from simple hair-care questions to more difficult issues such as attachment problems, developmental delays, grief and loss, perhaps even serious medical or emotional problems.
    But often there is no formal support system to help, and Grandma, the old standby, can't answer some of these questions.
    Parents can take two important steps to make their family strong and happy, said Jean MacLeod, author of Adoptive Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections.
    "One is to read, read, read. Let themselves be prepared for the worst, even if the worst doesn't happen," she said. "And two, build a support network, whether online or through adoption groups.
    "Just knowing that there's information out there at your fingertips is so important."
    That's why you'll find people like Carrie Miner and her friends decorating gingerbread houses and celebrating the Moon Festival together.
    The Salt Lake City mother said connections they've formed were especially important when her two daughters, adopted from China, were young.
    "You just need it. You want it. For me, it was about being single and needing other mommy friends who got it, who got the concept of: I'm working, and I'm a mother, and we're trying to get the culture," she says.
    For years, she and a half-dozen or so families have met for barbecues, Chinese language classes, tai chi, and holidays.
    They were there for each other when one woman's daughter decided she hated her eyes and wanted blond hair. After talking to friends, the mother plastered the girl's bedroom walls with pictures of Mulan and Lisa Ling. They made a trip to San Francisco for Chinese New Year.
    "It just turned it around for that little girl," Miner says.
    Song Stott, 29, said the Korean-adoption community that her parents joined was a tremendous support to her as she became an adult. There were activities every month with a local group, and a Korean camp with other adopted kids every summer.
    "We made lifelong friends over those five days in the summer," said the Salt Lake City woman.
    It was easier with them somehow. No one had to explain why their parents were Caucasian, or why their siblings looked different. And the counselors - college students who were native Koreans but also very American - gave them a rich insight into the language, arts and history of their birth culture.
    "It builds pride and self-confidence," she says.
    Those are important for any kid, but maybe more so for children adopted from another country or race. In a predominately white state, they are bound to run into uncomfortable comments.
    Ontiveros' 3-year-old daughter Sirena was recently stopped at a soccer game by three boys who said, "Whites only."
    "She didn't get it, but it taught me that I need to prepare her," she says.
    Shocking as the words were, they are unfortunately common.
    When Kristin Richardson adopted her first black child, an older woman asked, "Why would you take one of those home?"
    "I chalked it up to her being ignorant and old," she says.
    Even so, it was important to be able to share the moment with the group.
    "It's so affirming to have someone else say the same thing happened to me," Ontiveros says.
    It's crucial for the kids, too.
    "At my daughter's school, she's one of only three black children, says Stacy Farmer, the North Centerville mother of an 8-year-old
    adopted black girl, and leader of the Davis County group Families for African-American awareness.
    "It's really important to give the kids a sense of normalness. That it's OK, that they're not so different."
    ---
    * JENNIFER BARRETT is the mother of a daughter adopted from China. She can be contacted at jbarrett@sltrib.com or 801-257-8611.
   
   Web site devoted to adoption issues
   
   The Utah Division of Child and Family Services has a Web site devoted to adoption issues. It provides information for those considering adoption; lists of books that can be checked out; contact information for support groups; and a calendar of adoption-related events. Visit www.utdcfsadopt.org.
   
    The Utah Adoption Council will hold its spring conference on May 1-2 at the Southtowne Expo Center, 9575 S. State St., Sandy. Keynote speaker is Maris Blechner, an adoptive and birth mother, as well as a social worker, adoption-agency founder, and educator. Topics to be covered include infertility, attachment and trauma, infant adoption, drug-exposed infants, and the film "First Person Plural." Details are at www.utahadoptioncouncil.org.
   
    Adoptive Families, a national magazine devoted to providing information before, during and after adoption, has a Web site with articles, outlines of adoption procedures by country, an adoption guide, news, and lists of agencies and support groups. Find it at www.adoptivefamilies.com.
   
    Suggested reading
   
    * Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building a Connection, edited by Jean MacLeod and Sheena Macrae ($29.95, EMK Press)
    * Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents, by Deborah D. Gray ($24.95, Perspectives Press)
    * Love Like No Other: Stories from Adoptive Parents, by Pamela Kruger and Jill Smolove ($15, Riverhead Trade)
    * Raising Adopted Children, Revised Edition: Practical Reassuring Advice for Every Adoptive Parent, by Lois Ruskai Melina ($13.95, Collins)
    * Talking with Young Children about Adoption, Mary Watkins and Susan Fisher ($19, Yale University Press)
    * Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, by Sherrie Eldridge ($14, Delta)