Peaceful Adoption

I could have written all of that myself!! It's nice to hear that there are others who are at peace with their adoptions. It's working for us too!!

Beautiful. That's exactly how I am trying to do it with my children. (Our daughter that came to us as a toddler through foster care will be a little different, but we will continue to talk with her about it.) And I agree that it is nice to hear from those who are at peace with their adoptions. It's not what we mostly hear. I have to believe that is IS what is mostly out there, but it's not the most vocal opinion, and it gives me hope to hear it. I think, though, that the pendulum has swung a little too far in our home. Recently, a comment made by my 8 year old prompted me to tell her that MOST children are born into their families, not adopted. Her reply was: "Really? Interesting." ??? I know we've covered that before, but... :)

Glad to hear that y'all have been having such a wonderful time with post-adoption. I've read on adoption.com that the gradually telling of adopted children is a good way to go. [URL="http://library.adoption.com/articles/explaining-adoption-to-your-child-2.html"]Explaining Adoption to Your Child -[/URL] I also recently read a fabulous article by the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute, a major research organisation, about healthy adoptive identity formation and the factors that tend to contribute to it. [URL="http://forums.adoption.com/adoptee-support/374512-adoption-identity-increases-significance-we-age.html"]http://forums.adoption.com/adoptee-support/374512-adoption-identity-increases-significance-we-age.html[/URL] The study includes very useful empirically-based information about adoptees and adoptive families and their experiences. And the particularly interesting thing about this study is that, like Brodzinksy et al did in their studies, it includes longitudinal stuff that looks at adoption experienced over people's lifespans, i.e. not just in the childhood stages. Hopefully as our society becomes more informed about the intricacies and diverse experiences of adoption, we'll collectively have better ways to live happier, healthier more authentic lives. I recognise that even talking openly about adoption, let alone having it as a topic for actual (sometimes funded) research, is relatively new in our society. It is also my sincere hope that adoption as a topic, like the topic of 'blended families', will be included as a regular part of future training curriculum in fields of education, early childhood, parenting, psychology, pediatrics, etc; Until then, I'm glad that there are forums like these that enable people from all parts of the triad to share their actual experiences - I think it helps us all become more informed about the subtle intricacies of adoption and less reliant on often outmoded (and possibly damaging) societal stereotypes. I continue to encourage others to share their experiences and feelings - by doing so, I sincerely believe that we're all contributing to improving our collective understanding about something (i.e. adoption) that apparently directly touches 20% of the population in the USA, Australia and possibly many more countries. Cheers,Ripples

Thank you for sharing this. My husband has said he has always known he was adopted and that he thinks my ils had the right "balance" of talking about adoption (he also has two adopted sibs) but not making it a big focus. They're just family. I am lucky that I have them as role models as adoptive parents. I am happy they raised their son to be an awesome dad to our dd. I love telling a story that one day we were out with my ils and my then 2 yo at a restaurant on vacation. We were talking and laughing (my dd was being nuts) and I looked around and realized not one of us was related biologically but it was so obvious we were a happy family (I still have a picture that the waitress took that makes me smile).