In my opinion, if your adopted child has a concrete memory of being told they are adopted… you’ve told them too late. It is an important part of their story that they should grow up knowing.
The age of the adopted child really determines the type of conversation you may need to have. I have 3 adopted kids who are all different ages. All of them were adopted on the same day but each one understands their adoption in a different way.
Infant adoptions are trickier to navigate because it’s up to the adoptive parents to have the conversation. My oldest two adopted kids joined our family at ages 4 and 6 allowing them to have a fuller awareness of their situation simply due to age. However; our youngest adopted son was 11 months when he joined our family and 2 when he was adopted. Cognitively, he can’t remember a life before us, so we had the responsibility of sharing that information with him.
Adoption is not a word that is hidden in our family. It’s talked about often. Every few weeks my older 2 adopted kids mention adoption in some form. Even though it’s a topic that comes up often, it’s still important to have individual conversations and for each adopted child to know their story.
I practiced telling my then 2 year old adopted son that he was adopted before he could even talk. This made the conversation easier. I would put him in his crib at night and share his adoption story. I didn’t have to worry about sharing something that would surprise him. I didn’t have to worry that he was going to ask a question that I didn’t have the answer to. I was able to stumble over his story without worrying about saying the wrong thing. I could be as honest as I needed to be. Sometimes that first conversation is the hardest. Sharing his story with him before he could talk, gave me the opportunity to get more comfortable with it. Each time I shared it, the conversation become easier to have.
The real conversation happened one day in the winter of 2018. You know, the one where he was really able to understand the gravity of his story. He was just over 3 years old then. We had talked to his birth mom via video chat the day before. I was in my office at home working and he walked by. I started the conversation, “Do you remember who we talked to yesterday on the phone?” He told me, “Momma Tae.” Then he proceeded to ask who she was. It wasn’t a flippant question. I knew that what he was really asking was, who is she REALLY?
My first instinct was to redirect the question… I wasn’t ready for it! And that’s what I did. I sent him out of the room. I wasn’t harsh, but I quickly redirected his easily distracted 3 year old mind. Immediately I regretted not allowing this conversation to happen on his time table. Realizing my mistake, I called him back in and I shared who she was. I told him that he grew inside her belly, that she loved him, but she couldn’t take care of him at the time. He denied it at first, not really grasping that he grew inside her belly. I confirmed the truth again. He was okay with the answer. The conversation didn’t last long but he knew the truth. Months later when we were headed to see her in person, he brought it up again. He said, “I was grew inside Momma Tae’s* belly.” He wasn’t questioning this time, he was stating a fact. It seemed as natural to him as if saying the sky is blue.
Facts are facts.
Here we are years later and he still tells me he grew inside of her belly. He tells me he likes her. He has nothing but nice thoughts and words about her. She is nice. We do like her. In fact, we love her.
Having an adoption conversation with children can be hard. As an adoptive mother I sometimes want to ignore that there was a life lived before me. Some of my kids have memories of those times. Some are good memories and some are very awful memories. But when I signed up for adoption, I signed up for all of it. When I adopted my kids, I adopted the entirety of who they are. They had a life before me, they have a biological family, they have memories that I will never know. As an adoptive parent the best thing we can do is to support and love our children… and that includes the past they lived before coming to us.
*Her name has been changed to respect her privacy.