CASE:eNewsletter

December 2005

In this issue

Holidays with Extended “Family”: an opportunity for connection
Adoption and the Holidays
Parent Perspectives – Visiting Birth Families

Holidays with Extended “Family”: An opportunity for connection

As the holidays approach and families anticipate the time they may be spending with relatives and close friends, parents often think about the relationships between their children and these important people in their lives. For some families who live far apart and only see each other at holiday time, the chance to build connections makes this time especially important. For adoptive parents, the desire for their children (and their family) to be loved and accepted may be tinged with anxiety. Will their relatives and friends accept their children? What are the attitudes of their relatives and friends about adoption? Will the subject come up in some way? If so, do these people know how to even talk about adoption? Do they know positive adoption language? Will they unknowingly say something hurtful? Will they be sensitive to their children’s feelings?

Educating family members

Just as adoptive parents broadened their understanding of adoption (beyond the personal experiences they had prior to considering adoption), so too must extended family members learn a great deal. For example, many people still think of the adoption process of the past as being true today. They may be shocked at the idea that adoptive families and birth families may enjoy some kind of contact/relationship with each other. They may have no understanding why a family’s house is decorated with Chinese paintings just because the adopted child is from China . After all, isn’t she being raised to be an American?

Just as adoptive parents may have in the past, used the terms “real parents” or “put up for adoption” or “surrendered” or “hard to place”, hearing those same words from others, let alone their relatives/friends may shock them. Having been hurt by intrusive questions from strangers, adoptive parents may still be surprised to know that their own close circle may feel entitled to information about their child’s birth family and not understand the privacy of a child’s adoption story.

Adoptive parents have learned so much as they have strived to understand and meet their children’s needs. They have also learned (hopefully) so much about how a child might think and feel about his/her adoption at different ages. Now, to foster the relationships between their children and their relatives/friends, adoptive parents can and must help to educate and normalize adoption to their extended network. This is not an easy task, as people often “don’t know what they don’t know.” After all, if your child’s grandmother’s best friend growing up was adopted, then she “understands”, no? Maybe, but a sample of one does not an expert make!

Adoptive parents can teach their relatives in many ways. The best way is to prevent difficulties by arising by sharing the important things to know (as they pertain to your family situation.)

1) Explain kindly that your child’s story is his and only he can share the details he wishes to share as he grows.

2) Help extended family members understand how aspects of your child’s behavior may be related to experiences he had prior to adoption – in the orphanage, in foster care, in the womb!

3) Education can also involve helping the extended family learn about a child’s heritage or ethnic background (if different from the family), or possibly the country where he was born. Explain to your loved ones why keeping an adopted child’s heritage is so important and why you may have incorporated certain traditions into your celebration of the holidays as a result.

4) Help your relatives understand why you are not threatened by the lovely holiday cards/gifts you’ve received from your child’s birth family. (If birth family members are to be included in family celebrations, obviously it is a good idea to prepare relatives/close friend for this as well!)

If a relative or friend is open to reading, give them books, articles, websites and other resources to increase their knowledge. Sometimes parents invite their relatives to join them in attending adoption-related holiday celebrations. Many adoptive parent support groups hold holiday get-togethers. The important thing is to keep the lines of communication open, be patient and respectful. Anticipate and even role play the difficult questions that may come up or the troubling comments. If you get defensive or angry, the relative learns nothing about adoption except that you seem “overly sensitive and over reactive.”

One more tip for creating bonds: look for the similarities between your child and his relative and comment on those similarities. Maybe your son laughs the same way as Uncle Harry. Maybe your daughter loves to cook like Grandma Rose.

A child’s sense of belonging to an extended family network provides important support as he grows up. For the child who joins her family through adoption, it is especially critical to feel that family members claim her as “one of theirs.” Those strong bonds also provide peace of mind that the next generation--children and grandchildren of the adopted family member—will continue to be “just part of the family”!

By Ellen Singer, LCSW-C

Adoption and the Holidays

Most children benefit from the predictability, familiarity and security that family rituals and traditions provide, especially during the December holiday season. Traditions connect families to their past, help them enjoy the present, and create lasting memories for the future. For adoptive families, rituals and traditions at holiday time can present some significant challenges in a number of ways.

For children adopted at older ages, holiday time can conjure up important memories and associations. Whether having lived with birth families, in foster care (perhaps multiple homes), or in orphanages, children with positive or negative memories of what happened during this season – of how holidays were celebrated or not, are likely to experience powerful emotions related to their memories. There may be a resurgence of feelings of loss and grief, anxiety related memories of traumatic events, etc. The smells, the food, the music, the lights, the trees, the routines – everything may trigger behavior that is puzzling to parents.

Especially for children who are in their adoptive placements for the first holiday season, just learning how to be part of a family or part of this new family-- can be overwhelming, let alone with all of the added stress related to expectations of holiday celebration and family gatherings. “For parents who are eagerly anticipating sharing their holiday traditions with their children, there can be a real disconnect between their expectations and the children’s responses,” according to Madeleine Krebs, Clinical Coordinator at C.A.S.E. Ms. Krebs has helped many confused adoptive parents make sense of their children’s experience of sadness at this supposed to be joyful time. “And kids may not tell you they are feeling sad or angry. They are more likely to demonstrate it through difficult behaviors – increased opposition, hyperactivity, etc.”

Ms. Krebs suggests that parents help their children remember the people whom they have lost. “Light a candle, say a prayer, encourage the child to share stories.” When children have contact with birth parents and/or siblings, parents need to be especially sensitive to the feelings that may surface as a result of visits during this time.

Parents can also learn about the traditions their children experienced in the past, and if they were positive and meaningful, find ways to incorporate those traditions into their holiday celebrations. One family found recipes to cook some of the foods that were part of the holiday meal that was served in their daughter’s previous home. Of course, incorporating traditions can certainly be more complicated if the religion celebrated is different from the adoptive family’s. However, many families do decide to incorporate aspects of the different religion to honor their child’s past if they believe it is significant for their child. Each family situation is unique, of course, and each family will decide what is best.

Daphne Saunders-Houston, C.A.S.E. therapist notes that sometimes it is not just memories of holiday time that are important to adopted children, but also their desires and fantasies of what holiday time should be like. She says, “It is important to ask your child how they would like to celebrate.” She describes a little boy who had never been to church on the holidays and who very much wanted to go. She also suggests that parents help their children to appreciate the commonalities between their values and the child’s related to the holidays.

Families who adopt children who are from another country may also decide to use holiday time to celebrate their child’s heritage. Since holiday time is a time for spending time with relatives and friends, it can also be a time for creating new traditions that the extended network can participate in. These new family traditions can help to foster the connections between the adopted child and the larger family network.

By Ellen Singer, LCSW-C

Parent Perspectives

“ My child gets birthday cards every year from her birth mother. I guess he could have more contact if we chose to. But I don’t know if I can deal with that. What if he wants to start visiting her?"

We may be afraid that the birth parents will try to reclaim our children, or that our children will love them more than us. If our adoptions are international, we may even fear having them return to their home country because they will want to move back. Those who have contact with birth parents find there are challenges as the children grow and their comprehension and feelings about adoption changes. Research has shown that parents who have some form of contact with their children’s birth parents (pictures, letters, phone calls, visits) often develop a level of trust and comfort that allows them to resolve many of those common feelings of envy and fear. All adoptive parents need a secure sense of entitlement – certainty of knowing that they have all of the rights and privileges involved with parenting their child – and studies are now showing that security is more easily attained when there is some form of contact with the birth parents. This is because contact tends to put to rest the common fear of the unknown, (will birth parents show up on the doorstep one day?) – and allow for more realistic expectations.