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Some adopt, slot the child in place, and expect to move on without a ripple in the family pond. Some adopt and immediately look for therapists to deal with anticipated problems. Most fall somewhere in between. But almost all adoptive parents struggle with how and when to talk to their children about adoption. Should they wait for questions? Bring it up? Do the LifeBook thing? Should they have the story ready so there’s a pat answer when questions do arise? Should they duck it until some undefined future time when the child is “older?”
In her book, “The Language of Blood,” Jane Jeonga Trenka writes,
“My forehead scrunches up, and I feel something like a burn rise up out of my chest and into my throat, behind the jaw, making my chin quiver, behind the nose and into the eyes, and I start to drip.
‘Why did she give us away?’ I ask my mommy, my little mouth curved into a tipped crescent moon, show-and-tell triumph somehow twisted into a wet question mark.
The rocking stops. She stands up swiftly, like a reflex, shedding me from her lap. I wait, thinking she will come back.
… She does not return.”
Young children who have been adopted are like other children in many ways, and unlike other children in some ways.
Like other children, they ask questions. Like other children, they hear the answers. Like other children, they take their cues from their parents. When they bring up sensitive issues (sensitive to them, sensitive to parents, family, society) they do understand body language, they do notice hesitation or discomfort, they do hear tones and words that convey anger, hurt, or disgust. And on the other side, they also hear love, comfort, easy flow of language; they see smiles, feel hugs.
Unlike other children, they have questions about their histories that aren’t the same histories as their parents. They can enjoy and cherish the history and people they claim by law and name (through adoption) but they also have a history and people they claim by birth. No matter what age they join their adoptive families, even as newborns, they come with a genetic, ethnic/cultural, and biological history that remains uniquely their own.
If you negate that history, ignore it, or change it with your own perceptions, you deprive your child of something that belongs to her/him.
It’s important to take cues from your child. At the beginning, the adoption story is the parents’ story (the whys and hows of the adoption journey) – but at some point, different for each child, the child starts to take ownership and parents have to *relinquish* the child’s part to him/her.
It’s also important for adoptive parents (like ALL parents) to take notice of their child’s learning style (visual? auditory? role playing? etc.) and offer opportunities for the child to take over the story and/or ask questions in that context. It’s not easy and it’s not always comfortable to walk the very fine line between bringing it up too often or not often enough, between asking too many or too few questions about the child’s feelings.
Why some adopted children don’t talk to their parents about having been adopted:
- don’t know they can
- ’sense’ it’s uncomfortable
- hear negative words/tones in adoption story
- control issues – parents try to direct the story
- openly negative reaction to bringing it up
- parents don’t talk… children follow parents’ lead
- overkill – parents talk about it all the time
How do you keep an open dialog in your family? How has the telling of the story changed over time with your child’s participation? How would you help another family get started?
Powerful post Nancy. Thank you!
A Quilted Memory
Courage: 48 x 48 by Kathy McNeil
http://www.kathymcneillquilts.com
Dedicated to my youngest daughter and her birthmother.
I wrote her letters every year until my daughter started school. I still find myself whispering the latest news, hoping that somehow it will find it’s way to her. She would be so proud of this little one we share. A University sophomore, now, 5 feet tall, smart, beautiful, stubborn, and one of the world’s greatest procrastinators.
Is it 50/50? Nature versus Nurture? If so, then we would have a lot to discuss. What came from where? The stubbornness is up for grabs. Her beauty and charm, I definitely will have to concede.
I think about you a lot. Maybe more than our daughter does at this phase of her young exciting life. She is almost the same age as when you made this monumental decision. Would it have all been different if your circumstances at this age had been similar to hers?
The letters have never been read. When my daughter was twelve, we sent extra money to the agency asking that they try and find an updated address or contact. We were told that, after that first year, they had not been able to locate any forwarding information. At this time, my daughter says she is not interested in searching; but the connection between the three of us still exists.
A connection of courage and hope. That little one, wide eyed, trusting that love will help her become the best of whom God created her to be.
Each mother filled with a different type of courage.; hoping that love will conquer many of the obstacles in her path. We share this amazing young woman. I wish there was a way to reassure you that she has thrived with our love. An image of that connection came to me in a way that words could not express. So I made a visual verse from hundreds of scraps of fabric. A quilt that holds the courage and love that all three of us share.
Soon it will be my turn to let her go off into the world. Her wings are strong, her character solid, her choices wise. I will borrow your courage. She will continue to thrive. The 50/50 we have given her will be enough.
Kathy is the mother of two Korean born adopted children. She is an internationally award winning textile artist. The quilted image she made for her daughter is available as a limited edition print. For details contact: http://www.kathymcneilquilts.com
Okay, that blog post was beautiful, and so what ofen happens.
I want to thank the person who wrote this blog.
And for Kathy up above, oh how I wish I know you when I placed my baby for adoption – people like you are the ones that will take adoption out of the black, closed era and into a new, loving light…..
Your words helped to close a crack in my soul around adoption and aparents. Thank you.
This is a great piece Nancy.
Would it be possible to reprint ‘Telling the Adoption Story’ in the ARCS newsletter?
ARCS (Adoption Research and Counselling Service) is a Perth (Western Australia) based independent, non-profit organisation working with all those involved in adoption (all parties, across the life-span plus relatives, friends, and those with a professional interest in adoption issues). ARCS publishes a quarterly newsletter which is circulated to clients and professionals working in the field, in Australia and overseas.
Sincerely
Billy West
billy@adoptionwa.org.au
A lovely story Kathy. I can totally relate. I gave my daughter up for adoption when I was twenty after living with her for three months and deciding it was not good for me or for her. It was a decision that was one of the hardest of an already hard life, but I was convinced it was the right thing to do. My family had a history of children out of wedlock which could be traced back through the immediate past three generations. I was the first to give a child up for adoption.
I wrote a book based on the experience. This is an excerpt.
“I forgot everything I had ever thought about giving you away when you were placed in my arms. I wept all over your sleeping face. You were so tiny, so fragile and helpless. I drank every detail of you until I felt dizzy and giddy with the pleasure. I memorized every puckered expression on your face. I was your mother and it didn’t matter what was in front of us. We would be together. We would make it work. I could feed you, change you, work night and day to keep you. You were mine.”
Thirty years later I needed to know if that decision was truly the right one and went in search of the answer. I discovered that it was.
My daughter wrote me a letter describing her family, her schooling and the life she was living now. She was happy in what she was doing and happy to have had the family she did. She thought it was noble of me to give her up. For me, that was the greatest gift of all. I had no need to go further than this, and neither did she. We both were satisfied with the decision taken when my options were much less than they are today.
I now have three lovely daughters and a son and all are doing great. That’s the biggest source of happiness for any parent.
Thanks for posting this. It is an inspiration. Kalil Gibran, the Persian poet wrote, “Children are part of life’s longing for itself.” We are the slings from which the arrows fly. We do the best we can. That’s all we can ask of ourselves.
Jacqueline Wales is a motivational coach/consultant of Fearless Fifties. A midlife transition company.
It’s refreshing to read articles/stories such as this one. I hear so many stories where adoptive parents believe it is better not to tell, and I see the effects. I can really relate to adopted children needing to ask more than other children about where they came from, how they got to be where they are. As an adopted child, it was my favourite bed-time story to say to my mother: ‘Tell me again…tell me how you got me”. Half way through the story, I would take over, putting in my own version, taking control. I realise now that this was a comfort for me, that I needed to keep asking, to keep being reassured. I’ve written about this in my autobiography, ‘Beyond the Red Door’ as one of the many issues I faced growing up as an adoptee. So many years later, it is so good to find out why I needed to keep asking for the story. Thanks for publishing this article, Nancy.
An adopted baby adoption can take some characteristics from its adopted parents, studies have shown that the longer you are around someone the more you tend to act like them and favor them. Children adoption will of course begin taking characteristics of their adopted parents once they have been about them for some time. After trying unsuccessfully for years, a lot of couples decide to look into infant adoption.
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