CASE:eNewsletter

E-Newsletter - June 2009

In this issue

SUMMERTIME!!!! And the living is…
Well, it’s never EASY, but at least it’s slower!

Adoption Stuck Spots: REASON for PLACEMENT!

Take this time to Talk About Adoption

School is over and for many of us, the long days of summer promise relaxed schedules, lazy weekends and miraculously, some extra TIME. We all know how important it is to help children with the normal questions they have about being adopted. Why not target July and August to find ways for bringing those feelings into the open?

Ordinary family conversations are a great place to start. Another possibility is to create activities that lead to opening communication about being an adoptive family. Here are a few suggestions:

Bring out photos of the first days with your child and retell her adoption story.
Do something with your kids that you loved to do during the summertime and tell them stories about your childhood. Pass on family traditions.
Help your kids connect to their early history by writing letters and sending photos to people who were part of their lives before they entered yours: foster parents, foster siblings, orphanage directors, social workers, etc.
Build stronger connections to their generation of extended family members by visiting or contacting cousins.
Go beyond tourist parenting and find a way to understand your child’s heritage. Check out resources at the library and activities in the Washington-Baltimore area that you don’t normally have time to attend. If your child was born in the U.S, learn more about the area of the country where he or she was born.
Help your child or teen practice the W.I.S.E. Up! Program and assist him in finding ways to use it in the more relaxed environment of camp or neighborhood. Call C.A.S.E. if you need some pointers!
Watch a movie together… However, it is strongly advised that you, the parent, see the movie first to decide if you feel it is appropriate to share with your child, to be able to share what it is about to make certain your child/teen wants to view it with you, and to prepare the child for the emotions it may elicit. Even movies with negative or inaccurate messages about the adoption experience can be valuable if they help to foster discussion/conversation about adoption. Right now, adoptive parents are working hard to express their outrage over the soon- to be released movie “Orphan” – a horror movie based on the adoption of an older child. (Read more on this topic in Ask Ellen)
Read a book together (or at the same time) that involves foster care or adoption in some way (see suggestions below). Talk about the characters and stories, and give your kid plenty of time to share his thoughts and feelings about the book. (Think of how much harder it might be for your child or teen to read the book on their own!)

Here are some suggestions:

Preschool
Over the Moon: An Adoption Tale by Karen Katz
A creative and colorful book that tells a loving international adoption story, this book will help your child learn that other children are adopted, too, and each story is different.

Early Elementary
Beginnings: How Families Come to Be by Virginia Knoll
Tells the stories of 6 different children and how they joined their families. Five of the stories involve adoption. This book will easily initiate conversation about why birth parents might place children and how adults try to make caring, thoughtful decisions for children in need of families.

Middle Elementary
We adopted You, Benjamin Koo by Linda W. Girard
This book can help children understand that it is normal to wonder whether they really belong in their adoptive families, particularly if they are feeling different in some way. The book encourages children to talk with their parents.

Late elementary and Early Middle School
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
This book addresses feelings about foster care, birth parents, and different kinds of love in a realistic, thoughtful story. It offers great opportunities to talk about loss and healing through the experiences of Gilly, a character kids enjoy tremendously.

Late Middle and High School
The Face in the Mirror by Maureen Wartski
This is the story of Mai, a 15-year old girl from Vietnam who lives in Iowa. In the summer she is able to travel to Boston to live with her birth aunt and learn more about her culture and birth family. This sophisticated book addresses critical identity issues of adoption and adolescence.

Adoption Stuck Spots: REASON for PLACEMENT!

When my daughter was three years old, I attended my first workshop on adoption. The wise speaker was also an adoptive parent and therapist.

She explained what children understand about adoption at different ages, and told us that, during the school age years (6-11), children come to understand what adoption means: that the parents who are raising them did not conceive and give birth to them. They begin to understand that they have another family whom they are connected to biologically. (Certainly, children who have conscious memories of having lived with their birth family or elsewhere, or have contact with birth family follow a different process.)

With this understanding naturally comes the desire to understand why this happened to them. Why are they not being raised by their birth parents? Why were they placed for adoption?

Communication between parents and children around adoptiontherefore centers around telling the adoption story – sharing age-appropriate information, responding to these questions in an attempt to satisfy the child’s understandable, appropriate need to make sense of adoption. Herein lies the “rub.”

The reasons for adoption are about adult decisions that most children do not have the sophistication to understand. How are young children supposed to make sense of unintended pregnancy when they barely understand the birds and the bees? How can they make sense of poverty, laws, cultural attitudes or financial constraints? School-age children are still concrete in their thinking. The speaker helped us understand this by referring to the Peanutscartoon by the late Charles M. Schulz. In his famous comic strip, Charlie Brown regularly turns to Lucy for advice. Lucy sits behind her “booth” which on top reads, “Psychiatric Help 5 cents, and below reads, “The Doctor is IN.” Whatever “problem” Charlie Brown shares, Lucy has the answer: If he feels lonely, Lucy suggests he take dance lessons. Concrete, simple answers to “life’s problems” are the way school-age children think.

So if the “reason for placement” was that the birth mother was single and wanted the child to have two parents, a child might think, “Why didn’t she get married?” If there were money issues, a child might think, “Why didn’t she/they get a job, or a second job?” Some children have asked their parents why they didn’t just give money to the birth family! If the child was removed from the family because the birth mother was doing drugs or had an “illness,” children ask, “Why didn’t she take medicine?” I recall reading The Mulberry Bird with my daughter when she was 8 years old. In this story, the mother bird’s nest was destroyed by storms and she could not protect her baby bird, so she goes to the Owl for help – and he finds two married birds who live on the beach to adopt the baby bird. With tears in both of our eyes, my daughter asked, “Why didn’t the owl just take care of the baby bird so the Mother Bird could rebuild her nest?”

It is therefore not hard to see that the result of being asked to understand what they cannot leaves adopted children to face the challenging feelings of sadness, anger, frustration and confusion as they attempt to make sense of the reasons for placement. What is even more troublesome is that when children cannot understand why and what happened, especially when there is little or no information, they may devise their own explanations. In their egocentric thinking, they may believe that they must have caused the adoption – they were placed because they cried too much, soiled their diaper, misbehaved. (Much like children of divorce blame themselves.) They may be angry at the birth mother and go beyond asking, “Why didn’t she get a job, to fretfully contemplating, “WHY DIDN’T SHE GET A JOB?” Some even might begin to think, “My adoptive parents must have kidnapped me.”

So what’s an adoptive parent to do? The first step is to embrace that sharing the adoption story runs counterintuitive to parents’ natural instincts to protect children from painful feelings. Parents need to come to terms with the fact that they cannot “fix” these complex emotions. Instead, our job is to help our children express those challenging feelings and validate them. We can let them know they are not alone with their feelings – we are there for them, and we will comfort and help them. We have learned from adult adoptees -- whose well-meaning parents nevertheless went to great lengths to avoid the subject of adoption –that we must not make the same mistakes. We must talk with our children and teach them how to cope with powerful emotions. One mother said to her daughter, “ … I know you are confused. As you get older, this will be easier to understand. In the meantime, I ask you to trust in me when I say that your placement was not about you. You are wonderful. When you are feeling doubtful, come to me.”

Ask Ellen
by Ellen Singer, LCSW-C
      Ellen headshot

Dear Ellen
Recently, a friend told me about a movie she saw. She said she thought I might like it because it has an adoption-related theme. My teenager and I go to the movies often. But I'm wondering: Should I suggest that she see the film with me? Will seeing it together cause her to feel awkward?

Keeping the lines of communication open with teens is no easy parenting task. Especially with adopted teens, discussions around adoption-related themes and issues may provide challenges similar to talking with teens about sex and other sensitive matters. It is natural for teens to develop a sense of ownership and even privacy around their thoughts and feelings, including those related to adoption. Some teens may continue to make it relatively easy for their parents to discern what's on their minds – either by asking questions or sharing thoughts/feelings. However, parents of teens who are less forthcoming may need to find creative ways to start a dialogue about adoption.

Inviting your teen to be a ‘critic” of a movie with an adoption-related theme has the potentialto encourage your teen to open up. Most teens love movies and many teens are willing and interested in viewing films with their families – either in the theater or at home. If they do not want to view the film with you, you can still suggest a movie, allow them to watch it on his/her own and then agree to share your “reviews.”

Regardless of your approach, it is recommended that you see the movie first before suggesting it to your teen to make sure you are comfortable exposing your teen to the film. You know your teen's temperament and personality. You must decide if your teen can handle the material presented and anticipate your teen's reaction to the messages you believe the movie conveys. It is also important to note that if you are selecting/suggesting the film, it is better to be up front and honest with your teen that the movie has an adoption theme. Having the teen realize this on his or her own can result in anger and sabotage the goal of opening communication. It is better to engage your teen's curiosity with comments such as, “ I saw this movie with Dad some years ago and now that you're old enough, I thought you might find this story interesting…it was wonderful… it was powerful…I'd love to know what you think about it… As an adoptive parent, some of it rang true, some didn't, and I wonder how you would see it.” If you think your teen needs more encouragement, you might say, “Janey's son (an adoptee) told his mother to see this movie. I loved it, thought you would, too.”

Equally important is to tell teens as much as possible what the movie is about so that they can decide for themselves if they wish to view it. Parents must respect their teens' decisions to protect themselves if they feel that viewing the film will bring to the surface feelings they do not wish brought up. Teens must also be given permission to stop watching the movie at any time, including leaving a movie theater, if they feel uncomfortable. Putting this out on the table can help to prevent a situation where the teen feels pressured by the parent and again, shuts down, which is completely the opposite of the goal. Parents need to always bear in mind that using movies to open up dialogue is only useful if the teen buys into the activity freely and feels respected.