Amy and I have always worked hard with our adopted children (oops, even I get it wrong sometimes) “children who were adopted” in an effort to help them avoid feeling offended. We are not sticklers for political correctness. We try to prepare our children for questions or comments that they might encounter and have them ready to understand what people mean, or what their real question is, rather than getting their feelings hurt.
Even so, there are times when people with the best intentions say and do things that make it difficult for our children. Knowing that such friends only want to help, I decided to share these points that will assist well intentioned friends and acquaintances in helping adoptive families like ours.
1- This one is the hardest for me to remember. Try to avoid words that apply labels (like my slip, above). Our children feel more comfortable being referred to as having been adopted (something that happened to them) than they do when people say that they are adopted, or call them adopted children.
2- Please try to avoid the word “real” when talking about families. No matter how hard we work at trying to help our children understand that they can and should feel comfortable with feelings toward first parents and families, they struggle with how they should place their loyalties. When people talk about “real families,” our children feel like they need to choose which parents are “real.” The truth is, all parents are real and children shouldn’t feel like they need to pick certain parents that go with the most prestigious labels. Our children have real first parents, real adoptive parents, real biological parents, real Russian parents, real American parents, etc. Almost any descriptive gives them less consternation than the word “real” parents.
When clarification is required and someone can’t just say “parents,” (our children’s preference) our children are most comfortable with referring to their first parents as their Russian parents and Amy and I as their American parents. “First parents” and “current parents” are also safe descriptives. The same applies to “real” brothers and sisters. Our children consider all of their siblings (whether adopted into our family, biologically born in our family, or biologically related and not adopted into our family) as “real” brothers and sisters. They are much more comfortable with others asking them which of their siblings are biologically related to them than a question about who their “real” siblings are.
3- Don’t stop doing this one, but please tread lightly. Please understand that feelings are tender. OK… here goes. Baby picture day makes our children sad. When groups get together and share baby pictures, some of my children don’t have those. The entire event is spent with those children in horrifying realization that they are different from everyone else at the event. They are also painfully aware that a part of their life is missing and will probably never be retrieved. I am not against baby picture events, but if you have a child who was adopted in your group, please spend a few minutes, alone with one of their parents, to find out how to best work with their child. The parents may have some creative ideas (Amy sends a picture of baby feet sticking out from under a baby blanket) or they may decide to keep the child away.
4- Talking to our children about their adoptions and referring to them as being “lucky” or even worse, “blessed,” digs up all kinds of negative feelings. Who are really the lucky ones? My children believe that I am far luckier than they are because my first family never failed. I never had to go through the pain of my family being shredded. They really don’t feel lucky. And if you tell my children that they were “blessed,” their minds run wild. If God blessed them with a new family, was it He who cursed them with the failure of a first family? This really causes our children confusion. And to remind them of others who were left behind causes them more pain than you might ever imagine. They know that others were left behind, far better than anyone else. Their friends (and sometimes, as in our case, family members) didn’t get families. They will never forget it. They still have nightmares. My daughter, Sarah, suffers from Survivor syndrome because of friends who never got families.
5- Try to avoid asking people who were adopted how they feel about aspects of their adoption. Sometimes they don’t know how they feel. Often the feelings are paradoxical. Regardless, the feelings are confusing and personal enough that they don’t feel comfortable in talking about them to anyone but the people closest to them.
6- Remember that the person you are talking to is more important to you than your curiosity. You don’t ask a guy in a wheel chair where he lost his legs the first time you meet him. The two of you decide to be friends, or not, based on anything but what happened to his legs. Maybe one day you’ll learn about what happened. Perhaps he’ll tell you what it’s like. But is it really that important? I would argue that the less you try to talk about the tragedy (unless you’re a close family member or therapist), the better. Watching my children, I’m not sure that losing a part of you that we call family is easier than losing a part of you that we call body.
Everyone who has been adopted is different. Every family that has adopted is different. Some are more comfortable with talking about adoptions than others. Some are more sensitive to careless speech and labels. But make no mistake; the need for an adoption always involves tragedy and anytime we approach talking about a tragedy, we need to be cautious and contemplative. Perhaps the best advice would be to consider how you would feel, approached with such a subject, if the shoe were on the other foot. Often that’s not enough. Other’s feelings are often far different than how we might feel in the same situation. Think before you ask and always put people before your own curiosity. That will always keep everyone the safest.
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