How toTalk About the Birth Parents – Part 2

Here is Part 1.

Second, it is good for children to believe that maybe their birth parents might be proud of them. It might indicates that their birth parents love and care about them. Few birth parents do not love their children, even those unable to parent due to neglect or abuse. Love and the ability to parent are two distinct and separate issues. I know, you might believe if their parents loved them enough that they would be good parents. Sadly, that is not always the case.

Third, that the people who created them care about them will help a child’s self-esteem. Some adopted children have an irrational idea that to be relinquished there must have been something wrong with them. Letting a child know that their birth parents care about them could help help counteract this thought.

The thoughts planted in a child’s head during their growing up years will affect how they feel once they are adults about their birth parents. If they grow up with only fantasy birth parents never mentioned, there are two possibilities. They might they shape their birth parents into heroic and misunderstood saviors who will rescue them someday (if they feel that they need to be rescued, not all adoptees do.) The other possibility is that they will believe that their birth parents are horrible, awful people. It is possible that they might worry that those terrible people might try to reclaim them. Even if their birth parents are people with serious issues, there is no need to plant the seed in a child’s head that they are bad people. Some adoptees identify with birth parents and if you reinforce the thought that their birth parents are “bad,” they may believe that about themselves.

Adopted children need to know that in all likelihood their birth parents are relatively normal people, neither fantasy rescuers or evil people that they must be protected and kept from. Although some adoptive parents may feel a need to paint birth parents in one light or the other, it can and often does back-fire if you are untruthful. Some adoptees do reunite and find out the truth. If you mislead or lie to them, at reunion they may not take it well if they know that you intentionally deceived them.

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