Adult Adoptee Blog, Adopted Adult Blog - Adoptees and Adoptive Parents

03/25/07

Adoptees and Adoptive Parents

Posted by : Abby in Adoptee Blog at 08:23 am , 295 words, 163 views
Categories: Ages & Stages, Adoptive Parents

So much can affect how a child deals with being adopted. I believe that the adoptive parents have the greatest impact on this.

As the adoptive parents, you set the foundation of your child’s journey. Wording can be everything. Telling a child the reason that their birth mother gave them up was because it was an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, may cause negative feelings. Yes, this is probably a pretty common reason, which I do understand. What a child may hear is that they were unwanted which might also mean unloved to that child. I do not believe most adoptive parents want their children thinking this of their birth parents, they are trying for the most part to be honest with the child. You may just be honest but think about your wording. It is so much easier for a child to believe and hear that their birth mother wanted to give them a better life and was unable to care for the child at that point in her life.

When you hear something negative, or something that could have a hurtful meaning, it can be the one thing that you remember and think of over and over. The more you think about something then it is easier for you to start believing it.

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Even children that come out of the foster care system need to feel that some small part of their birth mother loved them. I do understand that there are some cases that their birth mothers do not love them. This is something that the foster child can decide is a possibility when they become an adult and make contact with their birth mother. It just can be so damaging for a child to think that they are unloved and unwanted.

5 comments

Comments, Pingbacks:

Comment from: Jan Baker [Member]

· http://birthfamily-search.adoptionblogs.com/

Abby, just want to point out that unplanned and unwanted are two totally different situations. Most adoptions are due to unplanned pregnancies, but our children are not generally unloved or unwanted. It is a important distinction.

Permalink 03/25/07 @ 09:22

Comment from: John [Member]

You are right Abby, it is so important to help the child see his mom in as positive a light as possible. In older child adoption, usually the rights were terminated for cause, and the child remembers what happened. Again, it still doesn't mean that the mom didn't love the child, but that they did some very bad things due to their problems. You still have the job of helping your child have some positive feelings about his mom.

It is nice to have the time to think carefully how you will cover this with your child, but older kids have a knack for bringing mom stuff up at the worst possible moment, and you have to improvise on the fly.

Thanks for the topic. John

Permalink 03/25/07 @ 13:49

Comment from: Abby [Member]

· http://adoptee.adoptionblogs.com

Jan,
They are two different situations but there are both situations in adoptions. I was talking about how it is explained to an adopted children about the reason that their birth mother gave them up. I know someone that was told her birth mother was a teenage mother with an unwanted pregnancy, which created her to feel unwanted and unloved. I was addressing the way and reason adoptive parents give the child for their birth mother giving them up. How it is explained to the adoptive child can impact if that child feels loved or unloved by their birth mother, as it did with the person I talked about above. The wording adoptive parents choose is very important, how the child views their adoption, birth mother, and her feelings about them.

I do believe that the large part of birth mothers love the child that they have given up.

Sadly, with dealing with foster care and adopting children through foster care, I have seen a lot of unwanted children and they are also part of being adopted. What is heartbreaking a lot of these children do not have a birth mother that loves them and cared enough about them to do the right thing.

So, children that have birth mothers like yourelf are truly blessed.

Abby

Permalink 03/26/07 @ 00:31

Comment from: Abby [Member]

· http://adoptee.adoptionblogs.com

John,
Older children would be more difficult to help through this. Also children that come to adoption through the foster care system with abuse or neglect issues can make it more difficult for adoptive parents to be positive about birth parents. I will be faced with the difficult task with my younger daughter to come up with a positive about her birthparents. Sometimes you are not given positives from the birth parents to work with but we as adoptive parents have to find a positive to benefit our children. I adopted an unwanted child, which is stated through out my daughter's case file. It is not something she will learn from me.

Abby

Permalink 03/26/07 @ 00:40

Comment from: csatory [Member]

All children are much smarter than we adults usually give them credit for. I can understand the difficulty for adoptive parents trying to explain the "whys". Putting a positive spin on the reasons doesn't really work either. My adoptive mother's explanation what positive, but the adoptees I've known over the years agree with me in saying that the typical positive explanation: "She loved you so much she gave you away. Or, She couldn't take care of you and though she loved you very much she wanted to give you a better life.", doesn't get understood the way it was meant.In many adopted kids minds It still means "my mother didn't keep me. Something was wrong with me." I would have preferred honesty: "I don't know sweetie why your mother couldn't take care of you. I'm sure it hurt her but I wasn't there (or I don't know all the things that made her decide to have you adopted.) but I'm sure glad I'm the one who was chosen for your mother!"

Permalink 04/03/07 @ 16:42

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