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 or 9 years old) playing outside, in the evening and she told us that her mom and dad had brought her as a baby because they could not have babies. We told our parents in the car ride home what she told us. They explained that you do not buy babies, that if moms and dads cannot have babies then they adopted children. Then they went on to tell us that we both were adopted and that the mother that had us, could not take care of us, and she wanted a better life for us. So, she wanted them to be our parents to love us and give us a better life.

This shows two very different ways to tell a child that they are adopted, the impact of what is said to the child and the feelings that are portrayed to the child about being adopted. For a child to think that her birth mother sold her and then that her adoptive parents would buy her, was traumatic for her.

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