Five More Tips for Helping Your Children Become Comfortable with Adoption

In the previous post, I introduced five of Carrie Krueger’s “talking tips” for discussing adoption with your child. Here are the next five tips:

Don’t force your kids to become poster children for adoption. This is my favorite tip and one that all adoptive parents should heed. It is soooo tempting to want to tell everyone about adoption, particularly if you’re blessed with a wonderful situation. You may want to teach adoption awareness lessons in your child’s classroom or even, to lead a teacher in-service on adoption.

While these are wonderful things to do, I suggest first asking your child how she feels about it. Will she welcome the attention and notoriety that you talking about her adoption brings? If she seems to feel comfortable, I recommend starting small – read a children’s book about adoption to the class and have a short discussion about adoption – one that doesn’t even include the fact that you adopted your child.

Krueger suggests swapping schools with another (adoptive) parent “to get the adoption education done without forcing the personal connection on your child.”

Understand that adoption will come up when you least expect it. You may assume that you’ve worked through every possible issue with your children and that they are coming to a healthy understanding of adoption and its role in their lives. While that may be true, life always throws zingers at us.

Krueger mentions one example: your high school-age child may receive an assignment to trace a genetic trait through the family. Kind of hard to do when you’re adopted!

I suggest forewarning your kids that “zingers” will come. Pray about it together and encourage your children to seek God’s guidance when they feel confused, afraid, or at a loss for words.

Don’t rest on your laurels after one success. A child who freely shares his adoption story one year may refuse to admit that he was adopted the following year. That’s okay. “Adoption is a lifelong process,” writes Krueger.

Allow your child to experience a range of emotions surrounding his or her adoption. This is another critical tip. Krueger points out that while adoption may be the best thing since sliced bread for the adoptive parent, that doesn’t mean it is for the child. Kids need a safe place to express their feelings of anger, sadness and loss. Let that place be at home, with you.

Provide early, ongoing adoption education. All kids are different, writes Krueger. Some love to talk about adoption; others detest it. While the way you approach adoption may be different, even with multiple adopted kids in one family, it’s important that parents make a lifelong effort to support your kids and help them understand their adoption.

Source: Adoptive Families magazine