I’ve heard people adopting transracially jokingly say, “Oh we’re not going to tell him he was adopted.” It’s a ha ha moment because the assumption is that children who look radically different from their parents will always know they were adopted. We who adopt transracially can’t pretend our children were born to us. We need to tell our children before someone else points it out. Nowadays, even if you are the same culture as your children or have a similar look, no one pretends their adopted children was born to them. The secrecy inherent in past adoptions was incredibly damaging to birthparents and adoptees. Adoption is out of the closet – something to be acknowledged and embraced.
However, as depicted in Kung Fu Panda, it’s not true that kids adopted cross-racially automatically know they were adopted. Kids see their parents as the people who care for them everyday whether you all look alike or not. No matter what your children look like, or where they came from, if they were infants when they joined their families, there is a period where they genuinely do not know they were adopted.
Father
and son.
Theo, now 26 months old, joined our family at birth. We have an open adoption where we see his birthparents regularly. However, he is only two and just beginning to talk. Thus far, I think he sees his birthparents as fun, nice people that we visit from time to time. He still does not have the words or the cognitive ability to process what adoption means and who these important people actually are in the scheme of his life. He also may not see that our looking different from each other is something unusual. It’s his norm, and we spend significant time with other transracial adoptive families or cross cultural families.
What’s surprising is how difficult it is for me to start introducing him to his lifestory. I’ve stalled out, lapsed into a reverie of regular family life. And while I used to tell him all the details of his adoption at night before he went to sleep, he couldn’t understand what I was saying and soon getting him to sleep took priority.
He’s on the cusp of grasping his history, and I don’t want to wait until he starts asking questions. I need to come up with a simple narrative that he can understand. Modern technology makes this venture very easy. We can create a photobook with pictures of him at the hospital, photos of his birthfamily and us, and go from there. But modern technology can’t take away a nagging feeling that we are taking away a piece of his innocence.
How and when did you introduce adoption to your child(ren). When do you think they really understood what that means? And how did they react?
I sort of share your dilemma. There’s some important stuff I need to share with my 8.5y old so that he learns without the shock of finding out from someone (a lot less informed or sensitive – his nana nearly let the cat out of the bag in a totally unhelpful way this summer) else. I’m struggling with how and when, as it’s info he needs to be aware of and also be aware of the stigma surrounding and thus not share it conversationally with all and sundry. I have no idea when is appropriate.
I have a feeling though, that both my Wee Guy and your Theo will knock us flat with their ability to cope with the news.
You are probably right! It’s really ME who’s having the difficulty.
LOL! it really is me too!
We have talked to Mea about being adopted from the beginning, now that being said she was 13 months when she came home so we don’t have baby photos of her with us. Honesty is the best policy. There are going to be much harder conversations that you have with Theo, sex, drugs, peer pressure etc. They are all hard, but equally important. Being a parent is hard, don’t make it harder by not starting the flow of conversation now. You will only make it harder for yourself later down the road.
Of course. It’s not a matter of being dishonest, it’s framing it language a toddler can understand. I can’t go into detail about the birds and the bees just yet!
Harriet Fancott harriet@karmavore.com
I wasn’t saying you were being dishonest, I hope it didn’t come off that way. I think you just need to start talking about his story. I think you’d be surprised by how much he actually understands. It wasn’t easy for me either, and there are parts of Mea’s story that she is just not ready for yet. But by having started some of these conversations early when we did, I will know when she is ready for more. You guys need to do what is right for you, for Theo, and his birthparents.
I found that just talking about the hard stuff is good. Just start. My daughter is very young (just turned 3) as well but it’s more for me to practice. Thinking about it in my head and actually saying it out loud is very different. I borrowed a phrase from Mama C … I talk about how I’m her every day Mommy. I’m her Mommy every day no matter what. And I talk about her birth mother. I use her name and talk about where she lives. All of these ideas are in the same conversation. The more you practice the less likely it is you will find it a struggle. I used to tear up every time I used her birth mother’s name .. but now it’s just something we talk about. It’s normal. It’s Ok and important but not daunting. Good Luck!
I like that (Mama C is so wise) I know it’s normal but when I try to verbalize it, I have a hard time trying to explain that he has another mother when he is clearly not old enough to understand the biological nature of how life is created. And then, of course, I just find it hard.
Harriet Fancott harriet@karmavore.com
OK so this Mama C who is no wiser than any of you–and who learned “Everyday Mama” from wise Mamas before her… is so powerfully struck by your words in the post about the “innocence” piece. That just grabbed me around the heart Harriet. Because in some ways, I feel that I was so dead set on doing this “right” by all that I had read, and listened to that I wasn’t listening really to what my then toddler might have needed me to create as far as a safety net for his understanding of me as mother-everyday-mother mother first. Maybe I created that net beautifully?!? After some intense struggles this summer–that were all related–I have been asking myself many questions about how I might go about it differently if I could. Was my approach what was best for him, his first mom, and me? It was my best at the time, and of that I am certain. Time will tell.
I suppose most importantly is listen to Theo. (which you are, and that is why you are writing all of this…) I want to reassure you that he will ask for what he needs. As long as you are co-creating the opportunity for this relationship with his first family to grow–I believe Theo’s need to order the world and have language for all of it will evidence itself with great clarity when he is ready and needs it to. Have faith in that–because you are his mother–and you are listening.
Well, I’m no expert on open adoption, clearly, but I do know a little something about young brains, and I think a really simple photo book would be a fantastic place to start! And the more you talk about it, the more he will understand.
I have been struggling with the same issue for my 3 year old daughter because I really want her to grow-up feeling like she always knew she was adopted. I recommend reading the book: “Talking with Young Children about Adoption” by Mary Watkins and Susan Fisher. In particular, I found it helpful in understanding what children typically understand about adoption at different stages and the types of things children say at very young ages which may actually be part of their process of trying to understand adoption (e.g., telling stories, talking about their toys). Seeing your post makes me feel that it is time for me to reread the book as it was about a year ago that I first read it.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Wow, what a lovely, thoughtful post. Our son is 19 months old. I started writing the script that would go with a photo book, telling his story, a few weeks ago. But since then the document has sat on my desktop, taunting me. In PRIDE training, we saw a number of example lifebooks, but most were geared toward international adoption. We know so much about our son’s birthparents that I find their stories to be where I’m getting stuck. Please update this post when you start talking to Theo about it. I’ll be waiting to see what you found worked.
Our son is only 15 months old (also transracially adopted) and we see his first family fairly often. I talk about his first mom often, sometimes just to say that “when you smile like that, you look like [firstmom]” or similar comments. Lately I’ve been starting to say things like “you were in her tummy” and “she asked us to be your parents.” We look at their photos sometimes and when i recite the litany of his extended family members who love him, I include them.
I’m always trying to find new ways to reinforce his connection with his first family, even when we haven’t seen them in a few weeks. I just got a new app for our ipod that has letters and numbers and photos and lets you record names. What I’d like to do is take photos of his first family and record them each saying their name. I think it’s alphababy or something similar but I read about it on slate.com in an article on kids and electronic screens.
Thank you for the great ideas. I’ll check out that resource.
Wow. And I thought just getting them to stop eat cat food was hard! Lucky you seem to have such smart friends as well as your own intelligence and insight.
uggh I keep coming here wanting to leave a comment about how we are doing this, but I feel like we don’t really have a good plan. I have a book about adoption, “i wished for you”, that’s a little too old for him. I also have “the best for you”, and “the very best thing” books. He’s really not into either of them yet.
I also have an amazing shutterfly album that B’s birthmom put together of the hospital time. There’s a beautiful letter in there to him. He looks at this album all the time. He’ll say, “come on mommy, let’s read this ashley & B book”.
We tell him he’s adopted whenever we can…
and that’s kinda how we are doing it. hoping it’ll be just a part of his life and he won’t think it’s anything different. Since we aren’t a transracial family and B looks so much like my husband, very few people assume he’s adopted.
We just talk about it from day 1 in everyday conversation and when questions come up, we take the time out to talk. We have everything from the photo books for each kid to the story books about adoption on the book shelf. He’ll understand it in layers. And if he’s like mine, it’ll just be his normal.
I always enjoy reading your thoughts about adoption. I sure don’t have any answers but I like to think about your questions.
Love your use of the Kung Fu Panda and his papa – so funny! I don’t remember even twigging on that when I watched the movie.
I was largely raised by a step-dad and his second wife – from age 7 on – so I’ve often felt connected to the idea of being adopted. I’m reminded of a comment that a teacher in highschool made to me after parent-teacher night, about how much I looked like my (step)mom. I am still surprised that I just said thank you, rather than blurting out goofy truthy things.
Oh that’s hard. I think maybe leave it up to him. Don’t bring it up until he starts asking the questions himself? Or maybe when he’s starting to ask more complex questions. I think you’ll know when the time is right.
Hello. To start, I wanted you to know that I am one of your constant readers (but have never posted) and always find your blog to be insightful, funny and thought provoking.
But to get to the point of this post – my partner and I (two white women) adopted our child (black) at birth. So for many reasons, our child is ‘obviously’ adopted. Because of this, and like you, we have fielded many many questions since our child’s birth, appropriate and otherwise. We expected this, and thus decided to start talking to our child about adoption from the very start.
That worked for our family, and I don’t think that there is a right or wrong way overall. I do believe that, however you do it, every adoptive parent has the obligation to arm their children with not only the ability to understand their own adoption, but with the tools to answer the very personal questions that others will ask of them. Theo may not be ready to ask too many questions about adoption, but dollars to donuts one of the older kids at daycare/the park/school will start asking him ALL sorts of questions all too soon and you might not always be there to answer for him.
From the start, we have found that the most useful tool in talking about adoption with our child (3.5 yrs now) is her birth book – essentially a collage of pictures and narrative beginning with the two of us (plus dogs!) as a family, through our thoughts of “how bout a child??”, through the application process, the waiting, the last ‘grown up holiday’ we took, our child’s birth and our arrival home as a bigger family.
We have met the birth mother and have pictures of her and her other children, and so have included that as part of the narrative. However because we do not have ongoing contact with her, it was natural to keep it a small part of the book. However our child knows her birth mother’s name, those of her half siblings, and even uses the term ‘birth mother’ when talking about relationships between the baby and mother cow at Maplewood Farm!
So although she has not started asking any complex questions, I am hopeful that when she has them, they may be easier for her to ask and for us to answer because she has the vocabulary, if not the full meaning.
Reading these responses with so much interest. Our little foster guy is 30 months old and we may be able to adopt him within the next 6 months if things go as they should, so I also think about how we will explain his adoption to him. We talk about his “Mommy Lizzie” and always mention her when we talk about his family, but he’s made it very clear he thinks of us as his family. I hope by continuing to talk openly about this complicated and loving family it will make it easier for him to start to grasp more of his story as his cognitive level allows.
Yes! I think it’s the way to go most definitely. Congratulations
I want to be clear that this is just MY opinion. Theo DOES NOT have another mother. YOU are his mother. He ISN’T old enough to cope with the idea of ’2 mommies’. Don’t even introduce the idea of a second mother. He has birth parents, but he only has one mom (you) and one dad (your husband).
My son is 11 yo now, and we have an open adoption with his birth mother. That being said, when he was 6 yo, he went for dinner with his birth mother and her family. His bio- grandmother told him that his birth mother was his “real” mom. She then proceeded to argue it with him when he said no, I was his real mom. This has been an ongoing problem for our family- don’t allow it to become one for yours.
My son has a biological parent- but he only has 1 mother, 1 mom, 1 momma etc. And it’s me. Every single day of his life- it will always be only me. His biological mother knows this, and she appreciates it (it’s her family who cause our particular issues). My son loves his biological mother, and speaks to her almost weekly (she lives overseas)- but we never call her his mom. She’s Chantal- and that’s what he calls her; they have a bond- but it’s not the bond of a child to his mother.
I just believe that confusing a toddler with extended explanations is a dangerous game to play with your future happiness. A special bond exists within an adoptive family- and there are enough people who will try to pingeon hole your family. And there are still people out there who believe a ‘stigma’ is attached to adopting. Don’t confuse the issue with too many mommy’s and daddy’s.