Common Issues Among Adoptive Parents

Before You Adopt
Common Issues Among Adoptive Parents
Distance Learning Offers New Options for Adoption Preparation
Making the Psychological Transition to Adoptive Parenthood
Twelve Skills for Successful Fostering and Adopting

You Don't Have to be Perfect and Other Adoption Myths

1. Infertility

Most adoptive parents have difficulty talking about loss in general. The better adoptive parents deal with/resolve their own losses, the better they will be at helping their child deal with the grief/loss/anger that confronts adoptees between 6 and 18 years of age. The longing to know is always current in the child wanting to search. This can make parents anxious since they are very uncomfortable re-experiencing their losses or talking about them.

2. Feeling Entitled to be Parents

Do I have the right/ability to parent a child born to another? Can I claim the child as mine? Feelings about Home Study can impact on parents' ability to attach.

3. Parents Feelings about Birthparents

You need to balance the negative view with a positive one. If you paint a picture that you "rescued" him from horrible parents, you prevent him from loving them for giving him life (and other talents). You cannot protect your child by withholding information that is rightfully his. No information, the unknown is far worse than any "bad" information would be.

As they get older and can understand more complex thoughts, they need the complete truth - no matter how uncomfortable it is - in order to begin the process of coming to terms and integrating the information. Give him the answers you have when he shows a need for it, on a level he can understand (share about rape, incest, siblings in adolescence). When you have more information on one child than the other, do not withhold information because you want to be fair and give each child the same amount of information. Each child deserves to know all you know. They will deal with the differences in the amount of information. For kids who don't ask for information, you can say "I'm really confused; I'm not adopted and maybe you could help me understand how that feels. I would wonder about my birthmother, what she looks like; what she's doing, etc. Don't you sometimes?"

When they do bring up their birthparents, it is good to go from general more specific information. Brainstorm with the adoptee all the possibilities/reasons that come to mind why she couldn't raise him. Only present truth after you've rehearsed/discussed all possibilities first.

4. Expectations

If there are unrealistic expectations on the parent's part, they will be disappointed when their child doesn't perform the way he expects, or doesn't make them 100% happy. Get realistic information about child
development as well as resolve your own loss about infertility, etc.

5. Issues of Identity

What does the idea of identity mean to you? Are you a "real" parent even if you didn't "have" the baby? How do you help your child develop a positive, realistic identity? How would you feel if the only way your child was to resolve/understand their identity was to complete a search for their birthparents? How will you incorporate your child's culture into a "celebration of differences" in your home?