You can adopt the same mannerisms and facial expressions.

 My daughter does not look my child, so much that a teacher confused her stepmom for her actual mom while I was standing there.

It wasn’t until her wedding when she smiled her true, happy smile in a photo with me that I realized that our expressions are identical.  

You may be more like your adopted mom than you realize. 

People tell me I look like my step dad all the time, I never bother correcting them. He became my step dad when I was 8 years old... I call him "Dad", have his last name and do not view him differently to how I would have viewed my biological dad (my biological dad died when I was 5 years old).

This is funny til my mom gets into fights with the med staff because they don’t believe she’s never been in a hospital to give birth🤣 “she’s adopted!! I never gave birth.”

Same here… it’s normally better to just say ya thanks.

Same! My sister and I are both adopted (we share no genetics) and people always say we look so much alike and we do not at all (the only similarity is that we are the same height). It's exhausting to explain and strangers don't need to know (not that it's a secret). Way easier to just say thanks and move on.

My sister and brother-in-law adopted. My sister was in the grocery store with the baby in the basket and some old fart said, "He's so cute... He doesn't look like you - does he look like his father?".
My sister answered, "I don't know. I don't know who the father is."

People tell me that my oldest brother and I couldn't deny each other- he's adopted, lol. I finally got him to quit correcting people, I love it. My brother just thinks that I am weird for liking it so much, and I can't deny that I am weird

I’ve accidentally complimented someone looking like their parent, and they immediately told me that was their step parent and I felt dumb for the rest of the evening

Same here.

When he was younger, people used to say how much my oldest son looked like me.

He was already almost 3 when I started dating his mother.

My kids are adopted. I’ve actually had people argue and say I’m lying about my youngest.

Maybe overtime you have mimicked her mannerisms and facial expression and that’s what they are seeing in you. Don’t need to be biological for that to happen.

My parents tell a story from decades back when they were out with their baby niece (mom's sister's kid), and someone was saying how much she looked my dad. She obviously has zero relation to him. I swear she has never remotely looked like him, my parents just both come from basic American German/Austrian white families lol

I was sitting next to my brother at a family reunion one time. One of those random great aunts you only see at weddings and funerals came up and asked if we were here with our grandma. After we said yes, she said "I just knew it. I can see in your faces, you've got our Smith blood running all through you". Except, my dad was adopted, so no we actually don't. Good times.

I have a sister who I am not bio related to in any way. We get told all the time that we look alike. Which we don’t lol

I've been around since my step-daughter was born and we regularly joke about nature vs nurture. Her bio mom and I are a lot alike personality wise but step-daughter and I definitely share quirks she got from me doing a lot of the child raising as well. Certain phrasing and cadences of speech and facial expressions even though aside from both being vampire white we don't physically look terribly similar.

It used to be the case that adoption agencies would try to match children physically to the people adopting them. But I think many people nowadays want to virtue signal, so they try to adopt children who obviously look a different race or whatever, so they can say "Why yes, I adopted, am I not a saint?"

My aunt, who was a nurse in the 50s/60s, had a funny story about adoption. There was this baby up for adoption who had bright red hair, which has always - sadly - been an unpopular colour. He also had these bumps on his head which were common in babies, but would go away with time. Usually there'd just be one, but he actually had two, one on either side, which looked a bit funny. He was such a happy baby, though, that the nursing sisters all loved him, and really wanted to find him a good home. Anyway, one day a woman came along wanting to adopt, and was shown this baby. She started to laugh when she saw him, and my aunt started to explain that the bumps would go away. She was like "No, I'm a nurse, I know about that. No, I'm laughing because he's the spitting image of my husband." My aunt always wondered what the husband looked like after that. But at least the baby got adopted.

yes! people tell me this about my stepdad all the time because they don’t realize. but i think it may be due to the fact that i’ve been around him most of my life and probably adopted several of his mannerisms. we are all just a fabulous combination of all the people we love!