How do you let a child know that they were adopted?

In My Humble Opinion
41

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
A stepdaughter is not the same as an adopted daughter so she might have been making that distinction. I used to introduce my stepdaughter that way, too, but only if people asked, otherwise I just gave her name. I think it would have bothered her–it would have looked like I was stepping in to take some kind of credit that wasn’t due.
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As a stepson, I can verify this statement. I always feel slightly annoyed when a step-parent refers to me as their child or some such. I love and appreciate my step-parents, but that doesn’t make them my real parents. They both married my parents when I was 13 so that has a great deal to do with it. If either had been there when I was an infant, I’d likely feel different.

42

[QUOTE=Shodan]
We celebrate the anniversary of their arrival as a sort of second birthday. Have a cake, show the video of them arriving, make a celebration of it. That way, they just always knew they were adopted.

But congratulations and best wishes - in advance.

Regards,
Shodan
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Our kids are both adopted from South Korea. ( son is 16, daughter is 14 3/4 ). We call it their Arrival Day. Funny I’m reading this thread right now. An hour ago, I drove daughter and her gal pal C. to the movies. C. has two cousins who are Korean adoptees. She said their parents call it their " Gotcha Day". I like that too ! :slight_smile:

With interracial adoptions, it’s obvious. I agree strongly with what Omega Glory has said. If it is always a part of what makes your family your family, then there will be no shock, no huge moment of revelation. He/she is adopted, it has always been a fact in the family and a gateway to talking about other adopted folks you may know. One bio kid and one adopted kid? Great- that gets talked about too.

We always joke about how we delivered our children the easy way- at the airport. ( more than a bit of covering up for 4 1/2 years of agonizing and psychologically destructive infertility.).

My mother recently shared a story. Basically, her friend had been married twice, but the first was very young and short-lived. It produced a girl, who was whisked away along her mom in the middle of the night ( literally ) to escape a violently dangerous husband.

She was never told. As far as she knows, my Mom’s friend’s second husband IS her father. Now, these people are in their 70’s, and the daughter is around 45. I mean, my god. At this point it would rend the family into pieces. I feel like there is no right time now, to tell her. ( see what Interface2x just said below ).

That is a shame. If only they’d found ways to let her know the story ( appropriately sanitized for a small child ). Her father, the only one she’s ever known, lives for her happiness and has never considered her anything BUT his daughter, biology notwithstanding.

Cartooniverse

43

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
I understand what you are saying, here, (having experienced it first hand with my son), but the trauma described by those I have known who discovered their adoption much later is of a separate sort. Beyond (in addition to) the feeling of abandonment, they have also expressed betrayal that everyone whom they knew and loved had lied to them throughout their entire lives. They expressed the feeling that their entire lives had been lies and that they could never trust any person ever again.
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I totally agree with tomndebb’s parsing of the words here. A baby who grows up knowing they were adopted would not likely feel betrayed as a child. They would slowly understand that they were surrendered/abandoned/given up, but that feeling of being abandoned is very different, I would guess ( adoptees, chime in here please?? ) than the feeling of being betrayed by the parents who raised you, then told you as an older person that you were adopted.

My children bandied the word " bastard " about for a while. It was a vocab word for son, I think in 9th grade. I tell you, it hurt to hear them using it but in terms of our language, it is applicable. No less harsh for the accuracy. I told them that typically, the word bastard was applied to the child of one person still in the picture, or a family member at least. The Royal Bastard was the example I gave.

They were abandoned, for whatever reasons and there is only so much glossing over that can be done with that fact. All I can do is love em as hard as I can, as their father.

At least 6 years ago, I went in to kiss daughter goodnight. She looked at me and said, " Do you think I have any brothers or sisters? " I said yeah, he’s right next door honey.

She burst into tears. Big serious wracking sobbing tears. Son walked right in, already crying. It was around the time of her arrival day, in the spring, and they’d obviously been talking about unknown siblings.

Completely heartbreaking to me. All i could to was listen to them as they asked all of the really hard questions for which I have no answers. That’s what an adoptive parent has to do, a lot of the time. Give them love and total support without truly being able to give full answers.

44

[QUOTE=Cartooniverse]
I totally agree with tomndebb’s parsing of the words here. A baby who grows up knowing they were adopted would not likely feel betrayed as a child. They would slowly understand that they were surrendered/abandoned/given up, but that feeling of being abandoned is very different, I would guess ( adoptees, chime in here please?? ) than the feeling of being betrayed by the parents who raised you, then told you as an older person that you were adopted.
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The feelings of abandonment are minimal for me. I’ve always believed that my bio-parents made the best decision they could have because I had two very loving parents. I’ll be forever grateful to my bio-parents for what I can only assume was one of the most difficult decisions they have ever made.

The betrayal of my parents not telling me and pretending to be my bio-parents would have been much harder to deal with. That kind of information usually comes out as a young teen when it’s hard enough to understand who you are without that kind of jolt to your system.

45

I was adopted at three days old, and like some of the other posters I have “always” known. My parents explained that my bio-mom and bio-dad gave me up for adoption so that I could have a much better life.

Can’t say I have ever felt any sense of ‘betrayal’ by my bio-parents - after all, they knew their own situation best, and my adopted parents were wonderful and did indeed give me a wonderful childhood.

/aside Thanks, Mom and Dad, for adopting me, and thanks, bio-mom and bio-dad, for letting them do so. /aside

46

I am not adopted, nor do I have any adopted relatives.

A friend of mine who is adopted found out when he was already married and had a child. He asked his parents for his birth certificate and stuff, to have all his paperwork together, and the certificate had the parents names cut out. They’re from the midwest and, while he doesn’t particularly look like his parents, he does look like them generally - all three are blond, blue-eyed, tall and thin. He’s just dandy with it, being of the notion that your parents are the people who raised you. Sends best wishes to his birthmom but has no particular interest in meeting her or anything.

Many of the adoptions in Spain are from out of country. With those kids it’s relatively easy: when they come home one day and ask “why don’t I look like you two?”, you tell them. The son of a friend came home one day and said “Mom, am I adopted?” She said “yep”. He said “oh, ok”. Later he came up with more questions. Mother and child are different colors, but have the same no-nonsense attitude.

47

[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze]
A stepdaughter is not the same as an adopted daughter so she might have been making that distinction. I used to introduce my stepdaughter that way, too, but only if people asked, otherwise I just gave her name. I think it would have bothered her–it would have looked like I was stepping in to take some kind of credit that wasn’t due.
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In Spain the “step” has serious negative connotations. In Italy too, from what I know. It’s like the first poster said… “oh, she isn’t my daughter, I just got her as part of the whole package!” You know, mods, we really need that pukey smiley.

The mother of one of my classmates died shortly after her youngest child was born. The father remarried pretty fast, to a very nice woman. I can’t remember my classmate ever calling her anything but “Mom”; I do remember her aunts telling her she should call her by her firstname and the scathing answer (that particular classmate would be at home with the sharpest tongues on the Dope). When my classmate turned 18, she asked for a legal name change - to make this woman’s he legal maternal lastname. The little sister, then 16, said she intended to do the same so they just had the whole adoption paperwork done. The parents hadn’t wanted to do the adoption “out of respect for the deceased” but heeeeeck! As my classmate put it, “my mother gave me her looks, but Mom gave me her heart and soul, when Momma couldn’t… eeeh… you know what I mean!” :smiley: Yeah, we know what she meant.

48

A question – why do so many adoptive parents have trouble with the idea that their children might want to search out their biological parents some day? I’m not adopted, but I know several people who are, and they all say that their adoptive parents would be devastated if they tried to contact their birth parents. A friend of mine from college was telling me about his birth mom, how he wished he could find her, or at least know if she was looking for him. I asked him why he didn’t look into finding her, and he said he couldn’t until his adoptive parents died – they’d never understand, they’d freak out, they’d feel betrayed, etc. This I don’t understand. Especially if your child is an adult, it’s not like the birth parents can “take him/her back” or something. There’s no guarantee they’ll even find them, or if they do that the birth parents will want to meet with them. If they do meet, they might get along and they might not. But it might bring them some closure or allow them to answer questions about their past. Even if they do bond with their birth parents, that doesn’t take away the years that the adoptive parents spent raising the child, being the parents. I just don’t understand why the thought of their children searching out their birth mothers is so devastating for some adoptive parents.

49

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Yeah, but, dude…More cake! :smiley:

Struan, Hilarity, I feel the same way about my biological family, and I’ve lived with them since conception. Not adopted at all, but I have no great connection with anyone outside my nuclear family - one mother, one grandmother and one stepmother excepted. I’ve made a “family” of friends as I’ve gotten older. I just don’t understand why the accident of my birth means I should feel some sort of bond with people with whom, if I met them at a picnic, I’d have nothing in common and no reason to get to know them better. So it may not have anything at all to do with being adopted.
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Another reason, Whynot that if we ever meet, I’ll buy the first round. I wish more people could get over the ‘image’ of family and realize that sometimes Family ain’t all its cracked up to be.

50

[QUOTE=Mississippienne]
A question – why do so many adoptive parents have trouble with the idea that their children might want to search out their biological parents some day?
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I can’t answer from experience, (we’ve held onto all the paperwork we could so that we can help our kids track down their birth mom when they’ve grown–heck, they’re teenagers, I might be willing to hand ‘em back, now), but I suspect that some adoptive parents might feel as though they were mere placeholders until the “real” parents came back into the kids’ lives. It does not make sense to me, but since I don’t share those feelings, it wouldn’t.
There could be other reasons, as well. Many birth parents know something about the real parents (we do) and it is not always pretty. I would guess that someone who invested 20+ years raising a kid after “saving” him or her from a really bad childhood might feel their own sense of abandonment when the child announced that s/he wanted to find the birth parents.

I don’t think we can condemn the feeling; we are rarely in control of our feelings. I suspect, however, that if I encountered an adoptive parent who was blocking a search for a birth birth parent (either physically or through emotional blackmail) I might make at least one attempt to persuade them to reconsider. (I would not push it; they might come around on their own and it will not make it easier if they are put on the defensive about their feelings or reasons.)

51

I may not have been articulate enough, and for that I apologize to the last few posters. I didn’t mean to say that an adoptee would feel betrayed by his/her adoptive parents, assuming they had been honest and open as he/she grew up.

Similarly, I would guess ( since I’m not adopted ) that thinking about the birth parents and their difficult decision wouldn’t cause feelings of betrayal as much as abandonment, and pain.

I WOULD feel mighty betrayed, as was stated earlier by others, if at a more mature age the information were sprung upon me that the family I had grown up with was not my only family. That would be atrocious.

52

[QUOTE=Mississippienne]
A question – why do so many adoptive parents have trouble with the idea that their children might want to search out their biological parents some day? I’m not adopted, but I know several people who are, and they all say that their adoptive parents would be devastated if they tried to contact their birth parents. A friend of mine from college was telling me about his birth mom, how he wished he could find her, or at least know if she was looking for him. I asked him why he didn’t look into finding her, and he said he couldn’t until his adoptive parents died – they’d never understand, they’d freak out, they’d feel betrayed, etc. This I don’t understand. Especially if your child is an adult, it’s not like the birth parents can “take him/her back” or something. There’s no guarantee they’ll even find them, or if they do that the birth parents will want to meet with them. If they do meet, they might get along and they might not. But it might bring them some closure or allow them to answer questions about their past. Even if they do bond with their birth parents, that doesn’t take away the years that the adoptive parents spent raising the child, being the parents. I just don’t understand why the thought of their children searching out their birth mothers is so devastating for some adoptive parents.
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I’d say most people who would be devastated about this are imagining a best case scenario for the adoptee and the birth parents. In a more traditional view, there’s only room for two parents, and if that’s the case, then they wonder what will happen to them if their kids mesh well with their bio family. Even though people who adopted children knew that their kids had two sets of parents, some of them might have thought that their kid would be one of the ones who didn’t need to see their bio parents. Plus, a lot of people probably didn’t realize how much easier it would be for people to track each other down these days, than in past adoption cases (my sister and her bio parents only have to go to the adoption place and put their names into the computer, and when both parties are there, the info will be released). The internet has changed a lot of things.

To give an example from my family’s case, even over twelve years later, some people will wait until my sister is out of earshot and ask about her “real family”. You can’t make other people consider your family a “real family,” but if your child starts talking about wanting to meet his/her bio family you might wonder if the kid feels the same way as those people on some level. It’s not really a rational process. Hopefully people who feel this way can work through it, so they can be supportive.

If the child doesn’t fit in with his bio family, or they don’t even want to meet with their child, that hurts the kid, and of course no parent would want their son or daughter hurt like that. According to some of the things I’ve read, no matter how the reunion goes, it can cause lots of emotional trouble if the person is too young (the thing I read recommended waiting until about 25, since a person’s teens and early twenties are all ready stressful without adding anything else) or has unrealistic expectations. So some people might be worried that their son/daughter just isn’t ready yet too.

53

On finding birthparents:

What if my child likes their birthparents better than me? What if they both decide the adoption was a mistake? What if I get cut out of my kid’s life? What if it goes badly and my child gets hurt? What if the birthparents are never found - will my child always feel incomplete? Why aren’t I enough? What if they discover they were the result of rape or incest? What if the birthmom isn’t truthful - and what if she tells my child lies about me (I tried to get in touch but your adoptive parents wouldn’t let me)? What if she IS truthful and its not positive (I didn’t give you up because I loved you, I missed the window for an abortion)

54

I’ve had this question too. Dangerosa’s excellent answer made me think of a rather clumsy analogy that might help.

What if your husband came to you after 20 years of marriage and said, “I just discovered I was married and had a family before I met you! I had an accident, conked my head and forgot all about this woman and our children, but now I want to try to find them and see what they are like. I feel like there’s this unknown part of me that’s missing, and I won’t be happy until I find them.”

Gah. I *want *to be supportive and help him, but…gah! What if he loves her better? What if he leaves me and goes back to his “real” wife and kids? Then again, what if they’re a nightmare? What if she blames his head-conkin’ accident on me? What if his kids are liars and thieves and drug abusers who drain him emotionally and financially? And so on.

I would eventually come around to a place of support (my own son hasn’t seen his biodad since he was 5, but I’ve told him if and when he wants to, we can get in touch with him.) but it would be hard, no doubt.

55

Whether you were born only because your mother couldn’t afford an abortion – whether you were born to parents who were bad people – whether you were born from rape/incest – these are all things people may have to face regardless of whether they were adopted or not. For that matter, the lying isn’t unique either; divorced parents or parents who are at odds may lie to their children about the other parent. People may become estranged from their families regardless of whether the family is adoptive or biological. Parents may reject their biological children that they raised, too. These are all painful things, yes, but no one gets a reprieve from pain in this life. But I understand how overwhelming emotions can be, especially when it comes to a person’s child.

56

I’ve always known that I was adopted - I’ve even seen the home movies of them bringing me home from the foster home. It’s on my baby book - “An Adopted Child’s Baby Book” - the parents read me a book when I was a kid about adopting a child - it was called The Gift or something - I really don’t remember. When I put my daughter up for adoption, I met with the adoptive parents and they said they’d bring her up always knowing. As for being a birth mother myself, I don’t know how I’ll feel if she comes looking for me. It’s a very confusing/distressing/emotionally charged/tough issue and I try to avoid thinking about it.