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The Best Policy
Talking Honestly to Your Child About Adoption By Heather V. Long
How come my eyes aren't like yours? Where did I come from? Didn't my mommy love me? These are some of the questions that adoptive parents confront when they open up to their children about the adoption.
How does a parent know when the time is right? What are the best answers? In the past it was believed to be in the best interest of everyone if all secrets remained secrets, leaving many adopted children in the dark about their adoptions. Today that has changed.
"The normal time for questioning is when a child is 6 or 7 years old," says Professor Rita Simon at American University in Washington, D.C. "They hear about it elsewhere and then they go to their parents. It's important that parents be the initiators. In cases of transracial adoption, the children obviously know they are different, but it's just as important to emphasize how much they were wanted and loved."
"That depends on the age of the child," says Arthur Becker-Weidman, director of the Center for Family Development in Williamsville, N.Y. "But generally, I'd say you begin at the beginning. So for children adopted as infants, you can begin weaving into your mono-dialogues with the infant words you want to use. You can begin talking about the story of how you came to adopt them. This helps you polish your story before the child really understands what you are saying. In addition, this ensures that the child does know from the beginning that he or she is adopted. It also ensures that the child's earliest experiences of hearing the story are ones of joy and pleasure on the parents' part."
"I started foster care in 2002," says Dia Johnson, a mother in Upper Marlboro, Md. "I recently entered my petition for adoption. This process was much harder than I thought. When I told Anthony [age 15] that the social worker wanted to change his goal to adoption, he was really, really excited."