Honoring the Child's Family
by Sara Lively, M.S.Ed.
From the time that he was a toddler, six-year-old Patrick (who was adopted at birth) has explored his world through rhythm. He usually plays with toys not by building things, but by banging them together to see what sound patterns he can create. He spontaneously drums using water jugs, wood sticks, or keys – anything he can get his hands on. He’s enchanted by the percussion sounds he hears in world music, jazz, and rock and roll.
Recognizing their son’s passion, Patrick’s parents found a professional percussion teacher who was willing to work with him starting at the age of four. Over the past two years, Patrick has rapidly developed unusually advanced skills playing drum sets, congas and bongos.
But Patrick’s parents have taken their son’s talents to another level. They tell him it is his birthfather, Craig, who gave him the gift of rhythm.
Armed with the knowledge that Craig for many years played drums in a well-known jazz band, Patrick’s parents honor not just Patrick’s emerging skills, but also the important role that his biological family plays in his life. By freely sharing positive information about Patrick’s roots, they nurture his sense of self worth.
Most adoption professionals agree that it’s beneficial for adoptive parents to seek opportunities to talk about their children’s birth families – even when children seem uninterested. It’s normal for adoptees to wonder about their birth families, whether or not they have met them. As Dr. David Brodzkinsky, author of Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self, puts it: “In our experience, all adoptees engage in a search process. It may not be a literal search, but it is a meaningful search nonetheless. It begins when the child first asks, ‘Why did it happen? Who are they? Where are they now?’ “
The child inevitably has a relationship with her birth parents in fantasy or in reality, whether or not she tells her adoptive parents. As the child is developmentally ready, it’s up to her family to encourage the “search” (literal or figurative) as a critical process in the formation of identity. The child is, after all, a unique blend of the traits and talents both of the biological and of the adopting family. As the child explores the origins of her ethnicity, temperament, artistic or athletic ability, she uncovers her natural endowments, some of these cultivated through nurture.
When left to their own fantasies without adult support, all too many children struggle to make sense of their stories, without the cognitive or emotional skills to do so alone. The struggle might be exacerbated by the losses associated with adoption. One adopted boy whose birth mother kept a respectful distance to allow the adopting parents to “bond” with their child assumed that she had abandoned him forever. A girl who was adopted from foster care believed that she had caused her birth father to go to prison. A young boy adopted from Russia without information about his birth family imagined that he had left behind a brother and sister in unmarked graves in his home country. These are children who need their parents’ help (with professional intervention if need be) talking about their fantasies and fears.
Barriers to Keeping the Discussion Positive
In preparing for adoption, some prospective adopters ask me for advice about how they’ll cope with a difficult history such as prenatal drug exposure, abuse or neglect. “How could I possibly say anything good about a birth mother who harmed my child?” one of my clients asked.
I encourage adopting parents to keep the child’s needs central, even when these parents feel uncomfortable or angry. Adopted children have been known to internalize negative perceptions about their birth families as if they are reflections of their own unworthiness. Conversely, when they have help becoming aware of the gifts that their first families offer, they are more likely to feel better about themselves. A 50-year-old adult adoptee who’s a friend of mine still talks about the road trip he took across the country twenty years ago to meet the birth family that his adoptive family had criticized over the years. “What a wonderful experience it was,” he says, “to find out at last where I got my bushy eyebrows!” Even the access to shared physical attributes, medical history or ancestry can be very grounding to the adoptee.
I have yet to meet a birth mother who maliciously set out to hurt her child; most love their children, and (like all of us) make mistakes. Even human beings with significant challenges have positive traits they pass on to their offspring – and those offspring benefit immensely when they know what those traits are. If you find yourself reluctant to speak positively about your child’s birth family, it might be worth getting the ear of a good friend or therapist to unload those negative feelings.
Even if you know nothing about the birth family, there are creative ways to help your child imagine their presence. When brushing your daughter’s hair, for example, you might ask: “I wonder if your birth mother has smooth, black hair like yours?” You might encourage your child to talk about what interests the birth parents might have, or invite him to draw a picture of what they might look like. Certainly, there are concrete ways you can talk about their country and culture, while showing compassion for the circumstances that might have prompted them to place the child for adoption.
It’s not uncommon among adoptive parents to avoid talking (positively or negatively) about birth families at all. As Sherrie Eldridge points out in Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, our greatest fear is being rejected by our children. We fantasize that as our children come to know about their birth families, they’ll leave us to live again with their first families. People who adopt after suffering through unsuccessful fertility treatment are especially susceptible to the fear of another great loss.
In reality, almost all adopted children are deeply devoted to their adoptive parents, and should not be made to “choose” between one family or the other. All have two sets of families: those who give them life, and those who raise them. A marvelously eloquent definition of the “real mother” was provided by Dr. Betty Jean Lifton in Journey of the Adopted Self: “For me, a real mother is one who recognizes and respects the whole identity of her child and does not ask him to deny any part of himself.”
Copyright 2008 by Sara Lively. All rights reserved.