Telling the Adoption Story

Some adopt, slot the child in place, and expect to move on without a ripple in the family pond. Some adopt and immediately look for therapists to deal with anticipated problems. Most fall somewhere in between. But almost all adoptive parents struggle with how and when to talk to their children about adoption. Should they wait for questions? Bring it up? Do the LifeBook thing? Should they have the story ready so there's a pat answer when questions do arise? Should they duck it until some undefined future time when the child is "older?" In her book, "The Language of Blood," Jane Jeonga Trenka writes, "My forehead scrunches up, and I feel something like a burn rise up out of my chest and into my throat, behind the jaw, making my chin quiver, behind the nose and into the eyes, and I start to drip. 'Why did she give us away?' I ask my mommy, my little mouth curved into a tipped crescent moon, show-and-tell triumph somehow twisted into a wet question mark. The rocking stops. She stands up swiftly, like a reflex, shedding me from her lap. I wait, thinking she will come back. ... She does not return." Adoptees are like other children in some ways, and unlike other children in some ways. Like other children, we ask questions. Like other children, we hear the answers. As children, we take our cues from our parents. When we bring up sensitive issues (sensitive to us, sensitive to parents, family, society) we do understand body language, we do notice hesitation or discomfort, we do hear tones and words that convey anger, hurt, or disgust. And on the other side, we also hear love, comfort, easy flow of language; we see smiles, feel hugs. Unlike other children, we have questions about our histories that aren't the same histories as our parents. We can enjoy and cherish the history and people we claim by law and name (through adoption) but we also have a history and people we claim by birth. No matter what age we join our adoptive families, even as newborns, we come with a genetic, ethnic/cultural, and biological history that remains uniquely our own. If you negate that history, ignore it, or change it with your own perceptions, you deprive your child of something that belongs to her/him. It's important to take cues from your child. At the beginning, the adoption story is the parents' story (the whys and hows of the adoption journey) - but at some point, different for each child, the child starts to take ownership and parents have to *relinquish* the child's part to him/her. It's also important for adoptive parents (like ALL parents) to take notice of their child's learning style (visual? auditory? role playing? etc.) and offer opportunities for the child to take over the story and/or ask questions in that context. It's not easy and it's not always comfortable to walk the very fine line between bringing it up too often or not often enough, between asking too many or too few questions about the child's feelings. Why some adopted children don't talk to their parents about having been adopted: - don't know they can - 'sense' it's uncomfortable - hear negative words/tones in adoption story - control issues - parents try to direct the story - openly negative reaction to bringing it up - parents don't talk... children follow parents' lead - overkill - parents talk about it all the time How do you keep an open dialog in your family? How has the telling of the story changed over time with your child's participation? How would you help another family get started?