“Real Parents”

This guest post was written by Arise Society student A Welsh

My uncle and I were both adopted. So my entire life I have had this story of his experience with adoption looming over my head. It goes like this: My grandmother and my uncle were sitting at the dinner table when he was about thirteen years old. She asked him, “Do you ever want to meet your ‘real mom’?” He looked at her silently for a moment, then replied, “Why would I want to meet her? She’s sitting right in front of me.” This story is music to the ears of any parent of an adopted child. However, my uncle’s attitude towards his adoption is simply not the case with many adopted children. So if you are an adoptive parent and expect to hear these words, I regret to inform you that you most likely will not. 

aIf you’re not adopted you simply don’t get it. No matter how hard to try to understand it, you won’t be able to understand the full experience. From what I’ve witnessed and dealt with, I’ve found that this is mainly due to the inability to sort through the negative emotions that come with adoption and the inability to put words to them. One thing our parents need to understand is that there is an overwhelming amount of guilt for feeling negative things towards being adopted. Society bombards us with the message that we must be 110% grateful to our adoptive parents for “saving” us from the lives we could have lived.

Frankly, that message is wrong and not helpful. So what is helpful? What can you do to better assist your adopted child in sorting through these negative feelings?

Here’s the number one thing that I’ve found to be helpful in communicating with my parents, and what I believe adoptive parents should try to keep in mind:

NEVER USE THE WORD “REAL” WHEN REFERRING TO YOUR CHILD’S BIOLOGICAL PARENTS! 

This habit is one to avoid because it can cause a lot of subconscious confusion for the child. If the biological parents are the “real” parents, what does that make you? The way I’ve learned to think of it is that my “real” parents are the ones who have done the parenting, so that would be my adoptive parents. What should you be saying instead?

When referring to the two different families the child comes from, always make the distinction through the words “biological” and “adoptive”. When the word “real” is used, it can create a sense of distance and separation from the family. We don’t want that, because it’s an awful feeling to feel like you don’t belong in your own family. The goal here is to communicate that, yes, you were brought into this world by somebody who is no longer in your life, but we are here, we chose to be here, and we will always choose to be here and will always choose to love you. Now, just because you say these things does not mean they will always be believed. But you have to be patient and keep saying it and communicating it through your actions. If you can do this, you are starting to head down a path with your child that can lead to great things. It all starts with how you frame your child’s position in your family; their REAL family.

This guest post was written by Arise Society student

A Welsh