FamilySearch: How DNA Impacts Genealogy Work

okay you guys good news we're on facebook and youtube so thanks to everybody we had a little bit of a bump we've been we haven't been streaming for about a month so i'm so glad to be back with um these two talking about dna and rhett just gave the statement of the year which is family search is an education destination for dna and we work with and partner with fantastic resources like diane so i think for the first little bit today we'll talk about dna basics and then if you have questions you know please pop them in the comments and we will respond to them but um why is there a huge why is dna so popular now like you know it seems like everyone you know is like this is the best gift it's exciting yeah tell us why if they're one of you you can jump in from my perspective well i'm interested in your thoughts why do you think yeah wait i would just say that every time i turn on the tv i see a dna test commercial yes it is all over the media and those commercials are full of heartwarming messages of discovering who i am discovering my family making those connections and i think that message resonates with people yes each one of us wants to know who we are and we want to know where we come from and dna is a way for us to do that and that message is really just stressed in the messaging the marketing of these companies so i think that's probably one of the reasons um and diane well no i think you're totally right and i what's so exciting to me is that for how many eons honestly hundreds of years have genealogists been trying to get their family interested isn't this one of the biggest problems we have is that we feel passionate about this industry of genealogy but like we're the only ones or a lot of times we're one in our whole family right and it gets hard like nobody wants to talk about it like no no no i don't want to hear yes but dna everybody wants to talk about dna and that's the thing i feel like it's this wonderful bright interesting entry point i call it i call dna testing a gateway drug you know yes is like the gateway drug that gets you into the real drug of family history which once you're hooked well i mean forget all other hobbies right so it's like it's done something that we haven't been able to do it has captured an entirely new audience and hit that like button saying that it resin everyone wants to know who they are everyone but before family history didn't seem like a viable way to figure it out and now it does and that is so exciting oh yes i think it's a really easy entry point i mean you you take a cheap swab or you spin into tube and you started your family history eight weeks later you're going to get a lot of something information yeah if you think of all the um like the like you said commercials there's lots of media that talks about it and so it solves mysteries okay so let's dive into just getting a little bit more understanding of dna basics what is one of the most commonly asked questions diane that you get from people who have just gotten their dna results back almost every time hands down it's about the ethnicity results because that's what most people are interested in because like rhett said it's the easiest entry point to learn about who you are so it's this beautiful map and there's all these percentages and so they dive in and then a lot of times they a don't really know what it means and b sometimes they see things that don't look right um they're missing percentages or there's percentages from places they don't recognize and so there's all of these different questions that they have about is this accurate does this really mean that i'm from this place and lots and lots of questions about ethnicity and why why is it that the ethnicity can vary according to the dna company yeah so it's really interesting actually there's a lot of reasons but you can kind of boil them down to three different things so first of all it's reference populations okay so it's the population who is the pop who is the population that the company is comparing you against okay so wendy if you're from some outer mongolia place okay and the testing company hasn't tested anyone from outer mongolia well they're not going to be able to tell you you're from outer mongolia so they're going to tell you you're from somewhere else and that won't be right okay they don't unfortunately they don't have a category that says oh i don't know yeah mystery they're they're not very good at that they're good at well mostly you look like this and so they might put you in a really big category like northern european or something uh but still it requires a population of people that you come from to have been residing in their reference population for you to be from there so that's the biggest thing really because all of our companies have different reference populations and and and i just want to drop and jump in and say that familysearch.org dna is the education resources and diane you have tons of resources available so any of these things that you're talking about there is places to go to learn more where would we send people diane um to your website what would it be yeah let me yeah so it's i actually made a little slide to help us um let me just throw it up here really quick so that you guys can see it we're gonna get a lot of questions about that so i want to make sure people know that that we will include that information thank you your dna guide so thank you um and then if you do slash family search there'll be some really there's some a free download a free download so one of the other big questions like once you start getting into your research so you asked what's the first thing people ask it's ethnicity what's down the line the most i get asked is like okay well i found my dna match list and i'm excited about it but i'm writing to people and they won't write me back like i want to learn about them but they don't write me back and so i wrote this little guide it's called talk to your dna matches like a first date oh okay yes so you gotta go in easy yes you've gotta like you don't talk about yourself on the first date never right it's always about them right yes so if you want to learn a little bit more about how to do that that's that's our free download okay this is so great um and i did they were getting a lot of questions which is really really exciting um okay so you said there were three reasons ethnicity okay so reference population that's okay fancy math is what i call the second one this is really complicated math this is not one plus one equals two and so it's it's like it's actually um the analogy i use it's like the weather so when the weatherman predicts the weather do we expect him to be right well no no right now it's very nice because it's very complicated and it's the kind of math that's used to predict the weather that is the same as the kind of math we use to predict ethnicity okay so we don't we shouldn't expect it to be like right on because that like the math is incapable of doing that actually so it's really interesting and i think what's so interesting too and i'm excited for you guys to talk about is the science that is behind this um which i think makes it so complex and seem mysterious okay so that's the second reason the third reason is timing timing timing so if you look at your ethnicity results and they say you're from sweden the next question is then when when are you from sweden yeah how far back right how far back and so if it's a place you don't recognize it could be that that place is so far back in your family history you may not even find a record that connects you to that place so they're they're getting better at helping us with timing as far as communicating that within their website about which places are more recent in our family history and which are more distant but still there's an issue of when when are you from that place wow okay so ethnicity thank you and thank you for talking about that guide and the resources and why people are doing dna and why it's so popular um rhett from your perspective how have you seen dna play a part in like solving mysteries for people and is this a thing well it is a thing so we host a space at rootstech each year called the dna basics learning center and that is a question that we get all the time i i have questions that i want answered and i think a lot of times people think the dna is that magic bulb that's going to get them that answer yes it can be a tool excuse me it can be a tool that gets us there but we've got to partner with traditional records and and research but yeah it definitely can help us to find answers to those questions and it's kind of okay go ahead diane oh i was just gonna ask rhett to tell us about the cool game that they have at the dna learning center that they're turning into a virtual thing which i'm super excited about so we have two interactive we call them interactive learning activities they're games guys and we have two of them i think the one you're referring to diane is our jelly jeans experience where what we've done is we represent uh how dna is passed from generation to generation using colored jelly beans and so each of your eight great grandparents is represented by a solid color of jelly beans and when they your great-grandparents get married they decide to have a child their jelly beans drop down and they combine to form your grandparents and so you've got a mixture of your great-grandparents colors of jelly beans and then uh those drop down and inform your parents and then your fair parents have you and so the the activity shows through color jelly beans how you are how everyone that comes before you is represented in you and we do it with tasty uh jelly beans so what we'll have with uh rootstype this year because it's virtual and i can't um um we've come up with another way to make it rewarding and fun for you so come visit us at the dna basics learning center at rootstec it's free to register if you haven't already done so rootstech.org and uh yeah it's a free space and no pressure to buy anything we're not selling anything but we're here to teach you yes and in a fun way must join us at rootstech.org you're going to be there as well and um we want to extend an invitation to everybody um you guys and we actually have a question that's kind of related to what you were just talking about so i'm just gonna jump in because that's what i do um i don't know who asked this but they said they've never done their dna but both of their parents have and they're wondering if they're over simplifying by assuming that their dna is a simple merge of their profiles how would you answer that it's whatever jelly beans end up because it is right no that's totally right in line with what we were just talking about so from a genealogy perspective because you've had both of your parents tested you are completely irrelevant so i'm sorry to break it to you but you really are just irrelevant you don't matter okay if you're going to be doing genetic genealogy research with dna you don't ever use yourself if you've got both parents tested okay but but from an experience standpoint from an investment in your own experience and your own genealogy it's totally worth it to have your own dna tested so you can see your jelly bean mix so you can see what you got from both of your parents and you can look at those things for yourself so i think it has value beyond genetic genealogy it has value for you personally but if you're going to do research you just use your parents okay can i ask a question yes of the person or a one of the common questions that we get is who should i have tested oh what you brought up makes me think that this is a good time to answer ask that question yeah no that's a yeah that's a perfect question so essentially the rule of thumb is if someone does not have both parents available to test they should test themselves ah okay that's a good tip is there any logic for testing the oldest living generation well yeah right because they would be the generation that doesn't have both parents tested so you definitely always want the oldest generation to test and as many as possible so if your parent has passed away do they still have siblings then you'd want to test them before you test you so even if both of your parents have passed away if there are still people alive on their generation you would test them before you would test you so how can siblings be different um we have sarah why is her dna report different and i think let's give a concise answer to that you may have already answered it but so is it the jelly beans go for it yeah so if so we know we get uh 50 of our dna from mom 50 from our dad and so we're a mix of of all of that so if you picture a big bucket of jelly beans and i reach in and i grab a handful of jelly beans and my sister reaches in and grabs a handful of jelly beans though we're getting the jelly beans from the same bucket her handful is going to be different from my handful um so we're both getting that 50 from each parent but the 50 i get from my parents is different from the 50 that she gets for mom and 50 that she gets from dad there's gonna be overlap but there are differences okay you guys this is great but they're just jumping in we're kind of going all over the place but to remind people participating um there'll be links in the chat and um there's education pages that we're talking about that i think diving in you can get lots more um information and so we're thrilled to have rhett from family cert and diane here as a special guest talking about dna explain the different types of dna tests and like there's words like i can't even remember but there's different types of [Music] dna right right okay so there's three kinds of dna tests okay for family history so you've got y dna which traces only your direct male line and only men can test because only men have the y dna okay you've got mitochondrial dna which is like its complement so y traces direct male line mitochondrial traces direct to female line so all siblings have the same mitochondrial dna they got from their mother and then only the females only the girls pass it on to the next generation so why dna mitochondrial dna kind of the bookends of our family history tree and then autosomal dna covers everything in the middle so you get as rat said half from mom half from dad so autosomal dna will represent your family tree all all over okay quick question from lucille about autosomal dna can it verify a common great grandfather if you come from one wife and another person comes from another wife or would it need to be the y dna no for sure autosomal absolutely yes yes the difference lucille is either you're not related right you don't share the same guy or you're related in the right way so if this guy is your shared great grandfather but you don't share great grandmothers are you ready for your relationship you are half second cousins half second cousins wow okay so i actually just posted a little bit ago on my instagram a whole explanation about removed and half cousins okay if you want a refresher you can go to my instagram but yeah you'll be half second cousins and that's a very specific very measurable kind of relationship with dna so either you won't be related because he's not the guy or you'll be related because you're half second cousins or you'll be related in a different way which would also tell us something about your relationship okay oh you guys this is great we're getting a ton more questions so i'm just gonna going to um you know we're appreciating our viewers participating and they all have questions and then if there's things that we forget we'll make sure and come back to um someone kathy is asking she has a lock of her i think it's her father's um hair and he passed away a while ago can that be tested can she do dna on something like that the short answer is no okay dang it so it's you can do genetic genealogy dna tests on living individuals right okay okay and there's more to that story but we're not going to get into it right now this isn't our area of expertise okay how um okay so then this is something that i think people talk a lot about is they think that they have a certain type of indigenous ancestry and then they get tested and they've been told in their family oh you're you know certain percentage of this tribe or this group and then the dna tests do not prove that does that have to do with the reference population or what is that how do you sorry i'm restating the question family legend versus the dna accuracy what's the gap about yeah so if you're looking at reference populations you're right to think that's the first place you should check again there there aren't huge reference populations for native american people in our in our in any testing company so that's number one number two is how far back is the ancestor so for autosomal dna it has a cap like you probably don't want to look for anyone further back than your three times great grandparent and even that is kind of a stretch okay so if your native ancestor is your three times or four times great grandparent the chances that you're going to have enough dna from that person to be detected and they would have had to have been full-blooded you know it's it's pretty variable my advice is always to turn to wire mitochondrial dna testing okay so why in mitochondrial don't have that cap of three times greats okay they go back and back and back and back so if the ancestor that you think is native was a woman you need a direct maternal line descendant you need her daughter's daughter's daughter's daughter's daughter to take a mitochondrial dna test this is also i've got some stories i guess it's on facebook and instagram actually but i've got some past posts about native american testing back from november okay so essentially there are very specific native american y and mitochondrial groups so if you're in one of those you're in my clin then that person was native american at some point in that direct line but if you're not well it means the direct maternal line wasn't that's all you can really tell you can't say no they weren't but you can say yes they were so it you know as people are making the decision of which test or which company to do they need to look at what they're trying to learn or discover reference population timing and and not a capture cap all super great information this is why um we have you two on here talking about uh learning about dna basics and we're gonna have a whole section at roots tech for everyone to participate in and i think we mentioned that a question we get a lot of um is is this idea of how far back and i know you've talked about the three generations but how far back is dna useful um how far back can we go yeah so it's really i feel like it's really three times great grandparents right now that's all do you see unless you're doing why are mitochondrial uh yeah i do actually um i think we're at the very beginning of this still and there's so much more we can learn and there's so much more technology to be developed i think yes we'll be able to get beyond that eventually if not soon for now when you're doing it think about that three generations reference point these things are all um very important okay what about and i feel like we had this question because diane we had you on instagram and it was so fascinating we had to do this again with rhett and right you can jump in here too as well yeah feel free um people always ask about like identical twins or triplets or you know is the dna going to be completely the same yeah i mean yes with a little asterisk there are differences measurable genetic differences between twins but they probably will not be picked up in this kind of test so they will be the same and i think what we talked about that's the most important thing about this is that if you're looking for an ancestor who may have been a twin you need to think about your dna matches differently because descendants of a twin like so if you have if you have um two cousins first cousins and they're descendants of sisters that are twins okay those kids will look like half siblings they're first cousins but they're going to look like half siblings so it it throws off your analysis completely if you don't know about something like that in your ancestral past how interesting okay thank you thank you for that um how how like we talked about like people and wanting to understand their identity to solve mysteries the different types of dna a little bit about you know kind of the different relationships that it shows up why do things change over time why do the results change i mean you may have spoken to this but i think this is a a question as someone who's done their dna and i'll get like an email and it will say oh log in to see tell us what the reason is for that yeah so i tested uh in 2016 and um i got an email from the company in 2018 and my results had changed and then i got another email february of last year that they had changed again and uh diane talked about fancy math and reference panels and as those reference panels grow and as we refine that fancy math results are going to become more specific and they're going to be more accurate and so you'll see those changes there what's interesting for me when i look at my results from 2018 versus now um they're more specific but if i add up the categories that have now been split out it equals what it did before it's just more regionalized okay so it's just more people are getting tested okay um we have uh what about how people have been using dna um tests to connect living family and that whole piece of it do you want to tell us anything about that and it seems like it's been used to solve mysteries and and there's maybe that's part of the glamorous piece of dna but let's speak to how dna can connect you with maybe family you didn't know you had and then maybe a little bit about some of these mysteries um who wants to take that one first okay diane um okay so yes i think this is adding to the glamour as you said um and the appeal and i've talked to people who are disappointed that they didn't find out anything unusual and most of the time i just say just wait no because it it seems like many if not most people that i talk to eventually come across something and it's not their dad or their grandfather but you get back to a two times or great grandparent there's a lot of people involved in that relationship and there's certainly chance for things that you didn't know or understand before um but i think more what you're talking about is more recent family and i've talked with lots of people i do what we call mentoring where i get online with people and we go over their dna test results and i tell them how to go about solving their mystery and i've been online several times like live with someone and i've had to tell them hey your your dad that you grew up with is not the dad that's showing up in your dna and it's a really hard conversation to have and you know we're both kind of being put on the spot and it's hard and i i really highly highly recommend that anybody that is taking a dna test you have to understand this is a possibility you will find out things about your relationships that you didn't know before and you need to be prepared and especially if you're asking other people to test who aren't interested it's really important that you let them know you don't have to say hey if i find your missing dad do you want me to tell you i mean you don't have to like scare them or anything but at least say hey there's a chance we could find stuff that we don't know do you want me to tell you about it or not so that you know in advance what to do because that's a big problem so many of us genealogists are getting our family members tested then something comes up and we don't know what to do like it's not our family even it's their family and now we have to navigate a situation for our cousin and it gets really complicated so kind of up front having that conversation in advance is really valuable oh that is a great recommendation and i appreciate that studying setting those sort of expectations that they're made with the prize and if there is a surprise how do you want to you know handle it um rhett what do you think about the mysteries and the things that happen with dna and have you had an experience connecting to family that you didn't know through no i haven't and so i'm i i don't know that i'm saying i'm looking forward to it but you're ready but i'm ready yeah and i need to better prepare my family that because of what i do for a living i am the de facto genealogist of the family and um um so yeah having those conversations in advance letting them know that hey there may be some family secrets out there that we need to be prepared to at least recognize that recognize and talk about and it seems like there's um like i think a relative race a byu team yeah yeah do a lot of dna kind of reveals and so how how is it that um you know i think one of the appeals is can you find you know family that you didn't know you had how common is that is it and what's the most common relationship i know for mine it's like fourth cousin um but when people do do their dna with some of these bigger companies they're shown people they could be related to what does that experience look like and how have you seen that be a benefit well so i think the biggest benefit that i think people need to be taking away from this kind of unexpected relationship situation is to recognize that at one point all of our ancestors were 19 year old girls and boys and they had real lives and they acted and talked and behaved like a teenager and i think that when we see our gra i've had so many people say oh my grandma would never do that well it's because you knew your grandma when she was 70 right you know and it's just it's such a wonderful thing to expand your perspective about the people in your life and that in turn helps you expand your perspective about yourself you know and think oh my gosh good i'm not always going to be like this i can grow up i can mature i can overcome things that i that mistakes that i've made i mean surely if you you look at your grandmother and she gave up a baby when she was 17 like that's a hard thing to go through and you think the reason she is the person she is is because she went through that and then if i'm going through something hard i can think you know what grandma did that and she made it and she made a successful life and family and i can do that too and i just think people miss that they they're quick to judge and and quick to cause cast blame and we just need to be more open-minded about ourselves and about our family i we could end right now with that mic drop moment diane i agree and i love that you said here's an opportunity to understand somebody differently and go into it with respect and grace and um curiosity right yes curiosity shame and judgment and um okay so we've got a couple more questions did you have anything you wanted to add to that rhett i was just gonna say that um what we've seen from grandmother's life and the wonderful life she's made that stuff is all part of us as well grandma's pay is passed to us and her strength i'm i grew up with my grandma and i learned a lot from her and not only do i carry her dna i carry all the lessons that she passed on to me and if she if she there was something she'd done in her past it's not going to change my perception of my grandmother she is a just an incredible woman both of them oh wow yes yes i mean we all are a mix of everything we've done and experienced and if we didn't make mistakes we wouldn't be these awesome people we are right now totally tons of mistakes today okay um this is a question from dorothy and i'm just going to read it so i'm not um yeah it says we are looking for my brother's father he has done the ancestry test it shows almost all of my mom's side how do i know if the people on his close match dna list are actually related through his biological dad do you follow okay okay yeah totally all right we're here for you okay dorothy the best tool in genetic genealogy is the shared matches tool it is magical okay so whatever company you're at they have a shared matches tool so you can see on the on the test like log in as your brother right you see yourself showing up as a half sister you use the shared matches tool on you and all of those people have to be related to him on your mom's side on his mom's side right so it's like you go through your list you cross off everybody that shares with you anyone that's left over unequivocally that's like a first second or third cousin not everybody but first second or third cousins okay are related to his dad okay everybody okay okay if you don't have those closer relationships no first cousins no second cousins no third cousins then usually what that means is that either a this dad was from a different planet not likely b this person was the only child of an only child of an only child and only child possible but still not really likely or three this person was a recent immigrant to the united states so these databases are still heavily u.s based and so when i see someone who doesn't have very many matches oftentimes it's because they're a descendant of a recent immigrant so that could be a clue and you can see that in your ethnicity also okay um as we are you know we've got a few more minutes here if you have any more specific questions drop them in the chat for diane and rhett we've talked about i mean dna is just a huge like you talked about growing genetic genealogy is a growing field and diane where do you see genetic genealogy going in the future like just green yeah well it's been like really we call it this like tipping point happened about [Music] 2010 2011-ish when the databases finally autosomal dna databases finally got big enough to where we were finding matches so that we could piece together family relationships and so that has just skyrocketed for people in the u.s and that's the problem right if you are from a different country you are kind of back in 2010 you're like 10 years behind the united states because you're getting matches but there a lot of them are with people in the u.s who are your distant cousins and so what we need are databases around the world to grow we need international people to grow and that is going to explode this technology for everyone and i think that's what we can definitely expect to see happen here in the near future even okay i think that's great rhett what what would your wish be or what do you think is going to happen with genetic genealogy i don't know what's going to happen my wish would be is that i could from my dna just um have a way to reconstitute my tree just from spitting in a tube that would be amazing and i honestly think that's not impossible it's not either like a source yeah yeah like a source um okay so i would love diane for you to just tell us a minute about what you're doing at roots tech and some of the classes that you're teaching and then rhett would you kind of just give us an overview of some of the classes for people who are wanting to dive deeper into dna because like we talked about at the beginning this is a huge you know industry field so diane take it away okay yeah so there's lots of places you can find me at rootstech so number one is i have two classes in the main roots tech lecture series that they have and you can find those classes just by searching by my name or by searching dna honestly but the two classes i'm teaching are the top questions that i get asked about dna so kind of like this but with actual slides that are beautiful if i do say something like our chatty faces yes and the second one is four next steps for your dna test so i really try to just walk you through what should you be doing next what's one two three four things that you can do so those are the two classes and then rhett is in charge of the dna learning center which is in the exhibit hall and i have three classes that you can take there and those are like actually on a schedule so the ones that roots tech proper on demand so you can go and watch them whenever you want during those three days that roots tech is up the demo booth at um that rhett's running is on a schedule so you have to go check the schedule and see when my classes are but i also have a booth your dna guide has a booth in the exhibit hall so please come and visit us there we have coupons [Music] yeah so coupons and downloads and videos and tips like tips and tricks videos we've got eight of those like different like quick tips about your dna test plus there's a chat so you can just sit there and talk with me online like all day awesome yes you don't have to have retina in there [Laughter] rhett tell us about the what you're what what you're going to talk about and then we have a couple more questions before we wrap up okay go ahead so diane um introduced it we've got what's called the dna basis learning center in the expo hall at roots tech uh and it's a space that's dedicated to those of us who are new to genetic genealogy we're focusing on those basic questions such as who do i test what test should i even take whether it's autosomal why mitochondrial um i've taken a test what do i do with my test results so we'll have those interactive learning activities the games that we talked about earlier we will have um presentations talking about these very basic topics um we've got those scheduled every hour 24 hours a day through the course of the conference and diane mentioned that they are at scheduled times we'll have a posted schedule but once the presentation presentation is aired it will be in an on-demand library where you can go watch it anytime anytime yeah cool this is great so we're really excited about that and then in addition to the activities and the presentations we also have uh knowledgeable people that will be in a chat where you can go ask questions and get help with your basic genetic genealogy questions so if you want some guidance on which tests to take or what next steps you should take after testing come visit us and we'll help you answer those questions and then drop by diane's booth and get just a little bit more detail on that insider tip is take advantage of the chat yes i'll just give a plug for diane in preparation for roots tech i've been going through all of the dna videos that have been submitted and so i've had the privilege of watching diane's tips and tricks and her two sessions plus the three classes for the dna he is an incredible presenter check it out thank you okay okay you guys we're gonna do a handful just a few more questions um and thank you to everyone um okay betty has a cousin who was recently found that she was adopted and their first cousins how do i narrow down which cousin was her dad i'm not sure say that again okay betty says she has a cousin who was who recently found out she was adopted so maybe adopted yeah um we are our first cousins how do i narrow down which cousin was her dad i'm not sure if you can but okay so genetically your first cousin's with this person that is adopted yeah okay yeah so right so you can't without more dna testing like if if um so let's say there are three brothers okay without more dna testing you wouldn't be able to tell which one was the dad but if us a child of one of them attested and that person is still a first cousin well it's not him right so you can you can kind of parse it out with people that have been tested you might be able to eliminate people but in the end a lot of times that's all you're left with it could have been one of these two people and yeah okay okay um steven is saying and this is i think more of a clarifying question the three generation cap for dna is really for paternal only maternal does not have that cap okay so when you say three generations what i mean is three times grates so it's actually five or six generations back if you're counting from yourself parent grandparent okay so that's just for autosomal dna okay so you think of autosomal dna as broad and shallow in your tree why didn't mitochondrial dna are narrow and deep that's a great reason that the autosomal is only good for those fibers so generations is because you're getting half and then it's half then you get half of that and half of that so when you get back five or six generations it's pretty diluted okay we're gonna end with this question from barry um because i think this is so and everyone who's watching thank you for joining us back here on family search live we won't be here next week but we will be here um and we have some really fun things planned so we hope that you you will join us and if you're interested in a specific guest or topic let us know um but this is going to be our last question and a super shout out thank you to our moderators and to our guests um rhett and diane so very little put up my contact slide again really quick while we're answering the last question yes yes yes okay um barry says he learned that his dad was not his biological father a few years ago and it's been a challenge with family members especially for three new half siblings and the three siblings he grew up with have been tested as half siblings any suggestions in helping him help his family understand especially his children and grandchildren so i think what he's asking is they had a situation like you described diane which was a surprise and it looked like what the relationships they thought they had biologically weren't and so i suspect there was some commotion about that and now they're trying to say how do we move forward with this different um sort of understanding right right and i'm gonna i'm gonna make sure we've got your link and everything in the chat and then i'm gonna go back to our screens this is a great question yeah you want me to stop sharing there we go you got it um okay it's it's tricky one of the best things that i've i've learned um because my mom was adopted as well and so we've navigated similar situations we were the ones you know explaining to half siblings who we were and and it's difficult there's no question i think number one is it's important to remember that dna does not reign supreme and what i mean by that is as dna is gained in popularity we tend to think of it as the ultimate measure of our relationships and it's not okay a family is not made by dna family is made by love by relationships by experience by time okay so so you you don't lose anything when you gain a biological relationship so that's the first thing to understand or to try to understand um the second thing is this is hard and it's okay to feel like this is hard it's okay to take a while to reel and to just try and ground yourself don't expect to just take it in stride like this is a really hard thing to go through no question next is you personally have a right to understand your heritage you have a right to know your ancestors but you don't have a right to relationships so if you have a biological relationship that you've discovered but that person is not ready to accept you that's their choice and you have to be okay with that and you shouldn't be angry or upset because that doesn't do you any good so it's really important to recognize family history is important you have a right to that information that you don't have a right to relationships and i think the best choice for children moving forward is to be totally up front and say this is these people are all our family aren't we lucky aren't you lucky that you have two grandpas or three grandpas instead of just two other kids have two grandpas you have three um and i think that just the way society is now a lot of people have three or four grand applause and so it's not that unusual to be a kid in this kind of situation but to to not be ashamed and to to own it and to accept all of the people that our ancestors were yes oh i diane that's powerful and barry thank you for asking that question and i think regardless of what you learn from dna or otherwise accept all the people that our ancestors were right um did you want to add anything to barry's question i would just say be sensitive to the situation and diane said you don't have a right to that relationship be sensitive to that other person's needs they this may be it is most likely something that is a pretty sensitive maybe even a painful part of their past and they may come around they may not and that's okay oh thank you okay what a wonderful conversation with the the two of you and with our guests and um as we wrap up diane what would you like to say to everybody watching i mean i feel like we've just like we've got them all excited and now it's like now what um my my now what is that i really 100 believe you can do the dna that is like our logo our tagline of our business like if you want to you can learn how so don't shy away from science don't think that you can't because you never liked science before it doesn't matter your past relationship with science has nothing to do with your future relationship with dna you can do this you can learn you can that's my message oh i love that rhett what about you i've learned that from personal experience i am not a scientist but i have learned and i'm still learning and i'm learning how to apply these things um what i would just say is that during rootstech i'm going to plug that again um a lot of these dna testing companies are represented and oftentimes they offer discounts on their test kits so if you are thinking about testing come visit us and um most likely you'll find some good deals on these tests so yeah for sure they will org discover your dna if you haven't yet at roots tech and so much more with all of the classes thank you rhett thank you diane and thank you everyone for joining us we appreciate it

Channel: FamilySearch

Views: 11,188

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Keywords: family tree, family history, genetic genealogy, dna testing, dna results, dna family tree, getting started finding ancestors, series, youtube live, getting started, dna, dna basics, unknown ancestors, family search, how to use familysearch, genealogy research, familysearch tutorial, how to do genealogy research for free, familysearch family tree, how to find family history, totally free genealogy websites, family search family tree, family tree dna, familysearch basics

Id: uwW8IPvdQhY

Length: 47min 18sec (2838 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021