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Is there anything else I could be doing to keep the lines of communication open? I want him to always be able to talk to me about his feelings, no matter the topic and no matter what those feelings are.

I believe the key is to being open about adoption. The more casual and normal you can be when talking about adoption or birth families, would make it easier. That may sound kind of strange but think about when we have “serious talks” , you have a different attitude, feelings and mind set. I am not saying there will not be serious talks about their adoption, at times there will be. I think to open the lines of communication, is keep... more

Some questions were raised from another blog that I have done. So I will post each question and answer below.

You said that you fear "hurting" your dad by raising the topic with him. Has he said anything to give you the impression that talking about the adoption would hurt him, or is this something you pick up on in his body language? Or does he rarely raise the topic itself, giving the impression that the topic might hurt him? I am asking for my own situation because, as an adoptive mother, talking about my son's adoption is not painful. I would hate for him to not talk to me about it to "protect" me from being hurt when; truly, the subject would not hurt me.

There... more

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The second way states things in a way a child will understand and how adoption was presented has a loving and positive view to it. So, think about what you will say, what your child will hear and feel. A little information in the beginning is better, than telling the entire story along with all the details. A little information is a lot for a child to process when learning they are adopted. As they become more comfortable with adoption, maybe waiting until they bring it up and then telling them a little more.

Older teens or even adults that do not know that they are adopted... more

Learning you are adopted can be a very confusing time for a child. Even if the child is aware that they are adopted from an early age, when they reach the age to fully understand, it can also be confusing at that time. Learning this when you are older, can be very damaging with the feelings of living a lie, betrayal, anger, the pain of being lied to by the people that love you and suppose to protect you, can be so painful for one to deal with.

The way and when one is told they are adopted can matter so much and will be something that they always remember. I was around 6 or 7 years old when I learned I was adopted along with my sister. We were visiting our cousin (she was around 8... more

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Three days after I finished the temp gig with his company, Mr. H was scheduled to meet with his birth family in order to play the biggest game of ‘To Tell the Truth’ that has, perhaps, ever been played in any of their lives.

I am fairly certain I don’t need to delineate the emotional upheaval Mr. H. was experiencing when we met nor the implications of the choices made by all the... more

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Mr. H went on to tell me that he had done something he thought was very bad. He was furious when he found out that he had suffered so much, so long with his ‘parents’ and that the whole thing had been a lie. He kept getting tripped up trying to explain how he felt to me.

What he did was to immediately sell his childhood home and use the money to search for his birth... more

She and I were talking before lunch when we probably should have been working. I had started temping for this major scholastic publishing company that morning, but the other secretary in the office, a Long Island, Italian-American version of the energizer bunny, had drawn me in to yet another gab. Good for “productivity?” Absoluetley not. Hilarious, especially in light of her thick, “Ow my Gooawd,” accent and bip-didi-be-bop-bouncing thought process. Absolutely.

The latest water cooler gab (without ever quite making... more

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Even if you manage to create the mother of all scrapbooks (uber-scrapbooking?), from my experience an equally important ingredient for helping your child become well-adjusted is to start to remember all the details the minute he/she enters your family ... and to verbally tell those stories often until they are a legacy in and of themselves. I believe storytelling, going over memories... more

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So many of the information gaps that can niggle and glare at an adoptee aren’t, at first, the biggest topics like “Who gave birth to me?” “Why didn’t they keep me?” nor are the gaps felt only in the lack of heritage, medical history and other nuts-and-bolts details. Sometimes the gaps can be felt just in the ‘normal’ stories that non-adoptees have that adoptees don’t. I think this is more... more

Children love, love, LOVE to hear stories about themselves. They love being told again and again how they inspired their mother to binge on chocolate covered pickles or dirt or chalk or toe nails or… whatever other weird thing the pregnancy that brought them into the world inspired. Children crave infamous tales of themselves: the mid-night dash to the hospital to have her, how he looked like a hairy little old man when he first came out, the intensity of his scream or the ooo’s and ahhh’s of the nurses... more