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When Mark and Terri Riding take their three children to the park where they live in Baltimore, they're usually met by lagging stares, obvious whispering and even people bold enough to come up and question them as parents. Their children are all healthy, normal-looking individuals, but it's their 9-year-old adopted sister/daughter Katie O'Dea-Smith who draws all the attention.You see, the Ridings are Black and Katie is White. The Ridings actually co-parent with Terri's 66-year-old mother, Phyllis, who took in Katie when she was 3-years old and legally adopted her last year. Now that Phyllis is getting older, Terri and Mark have Katie every weekend and she'll be living with them for the entire summer. As a family, they've decided to send Katie to a predominantly Black school and a Black church, and with all those differences, they've noticed she rarely ever talks about race. In a candid interview, ESSENCE.com spoke to the Ridings about why they adopted Katie, how they handle all the misguided attention, and how they plan to have an honest conversation about race with their White daughter.

ESSENCE.COM: How did Katie come to be a part of your family?
TERRI RIDING: When she was 3 years old she was brought to my mom in temporary placement in foster care. Katie had gone through 12 homes before she came to live with my mom. We could never understand why because she's really a delightful, obedient child. Having Katie in our lives just happened naturally.

ESSENCE.COM: Do you ever bring up the topic of race with Katie?
MARK RIDING: She doesn't really talk about race. I'm not saying she's colorblind. she just avoids talking about it in any context so we don't really know for sure if she has any feelings about being so isolated because of her race since her friends, her school, camp and church are all predominantly Black. She did ask us once when my wife was pregnant, what color the baby would be. When we told her the baby would be brown like us, she looked a little disappointed, but that's the only time she's ever brought up race.

ESSENCE.COM: What kind of relationship does she have with your biological children?
MARK: They are siblings, but she loves to pull out the fact that she's their aunt. They yell, scream, fight but they always look forward to seeing each other.