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As an adoptee, the thought of never knowing makes me shudder. My life story perhaps differs from some I see on here as it was a bit more difficult, but as emotionally trying as childhood was for me at times, it would have been 10x worse not knowing.
Granted, once I became a teen/adult there's certain obvious things that would have made me know that my adoptive parents were not my biological family, but at that point if they had kept it from me I probably would have severed ties completely.
It seems today it's generally accepted that you tell your adopted child about their adoption from the very beginning. Why is this considered the best approach? Is it detrimental to never tell a child or to wait until they're an adult?
This is pure curiosity, I don't have any close friends or family who are adopted. I work with a woman who didn't find out she was adopted until her 20s when her parents passed away, she is well adjusted and only wishes she had had a chance to talk to her parents about it. I've only known her as a woman in her 40s, maybe she's grown to accept it over the years, but it seems a lot of the adopted people I've known have had behavioral issues and just general poor life decisions and I wonder if there's some correlation.
When you tell a 25 year old he or she was adopted, then that comes as quite a shock. He or she grew up not knowing anything else. Something like this totally changes your life as you know it. If you tell your child from the very beginning, he/she will grow up knowing it and it will be completely normal to him/her. That's why I would do it this way, too.
Without going into detail, I found out some really awful, dark things about my birth parents when I did a search for them. Really dark. But I am glad to know the truth. I didn't go in expecting rainbows and fairies, and knew that there was likely a reason my birthmother put me up for adoption. I found out what those reasons were, and although it's not a "happy story", I am still glad that I know the truth and the circumstances about where I come from. In the end it's a happy story because I realize just how much better my life is now than it would have been had I never even been put up for adoption. I always knew, even as a young kid, my life was better than it would have been in an orphanage, but the search also confirmed for me that my life is still a million times better than it would have been growing up with my biological family.
Nimchimpsky, as a fellow adoptee, I think you have given some great replies on this thread.
My bfamily were lovely and I have discovered my bmom was a lovely lady (unfortunately she died young). However, I believe I would have been ready for any outcome because of the fact that my aparents were very objective when telling us our stories. They didn't tell me anything that they didn't know as fact.
When I got my OBC, I also got info with it so it did give me a few insights into what was her situation at the time. It is always worth getting one's non-ID, if possible, before even thinking of contacting family. Where I live, we receive counselling when one gets their OBC so one knows what lies ahead.
Because of my APs objectivity, I have always considered my bparents to be humans - I've neither put them on a pedestal or considered them to be the lowest of the low.
The "real mom" is the woman who is raising and loving him. Not the birth mother.
It is usually up to one's self whom one decides is the "real" mom or not. It is not up to others to tell other people whom their "real" mom is.
I consider both my mothers to be my "real" mothers. I know enough about my bmom to know that whatever reasons she relinquished me for adoption, it wasn't because she "just didn't want to parent". I know many BPs who have said they would "give their right arm" to have been the one parenting their child but at the time, there was very little support, financial, societal, familial or otherwise, to do so.
As an adoptee, the thought of never knowing makes me shudder. My life story perhaps differs from some I see on here as it was a bit more difficult, but as emotionally trying as childhood was for me at times, it would have been 10x worse not knowing.
Granted, once I became a teen/adult there's certain obvious things that would have made me know that my adoptive parents were not my biological family, but at that point if they had kept it from me I probably would have severed ties completely.
I'm sure that's an exaggeration. If your younger than a certain age, the word would have no meaning to you. At what age did you understand what that meant?
As to when to tell out 5 1/2 month old daughter, we really haven't talked about how to broach that topic yet.
I don't know when I was exactly conscious of it, but in all my living memory with my family, I remember knowing. They were always open about it in indirect ways, and just filled in more details as I got older. When I was really young, they'd tell me funny stories how I had never been on a plane or in a car before I was adopted, and how amazed I was by the movement of a plane and a car--little things like that. It's not like they told me that my birth mother was sixteen at the time of having me and I was three months premature etc. etc. when I was 5, but they were always very open about the overall topic of adoption and any relevant stories as something that is nothing to be ashamed of--and that's what counts for most kids, is the emotional impact. I was three and a half when they adopted me, so it's not like I was 5 1/2 months old.
Nimchimpsky, as a fellow adoptee, I think you have given some great replies on this thread.
My bfamily were lovely and I have discovered my bmom was a lovely lady (unfortunately she died young). However, I believe I would have been ready for any outcome because of the fact that my aparents were very objective when telling us our stories. They didn't tell me anything that they didn't know as fact.
When I got my OBC, I also got info with it so it did give me a few insights into what was her situation at the time. It is always worth getting one's non-ID, if possible, before even thinking of contacting family. Where I live, we receive counselling when one gets their OBC so one knows what lies ahead.
Because of my APs objectivity, I have always considered my bparents to be humans - I've neither put them on a pedestal or considered them to be the lowest of the low.
I consider my biological parents to be humans as well. They're not trash for giving me up, and I don't let myself project my ideal of what my parents would be like onto them. (I have run across adoptees who make the mental jump from the image of the parents they'd like to "that's how things would be if I weren't adopted.")
I was adopted.
I was told early on in my life that I was.
It does a child a terrible disservice to not reveal their adoption status as soon as they are able to understand.
It is difficult for me to understand how someone could successfully be kept from the truth about their adoption until they were in their late teens or early twenties.
Medical history or lack thereof would inevitably come to the forefront of conversation with doctors.
This would cause the child to question why family medical histories are not applying to them specifically.
Inevitably adoption has to come to light, the later you wait to tell your child the more explaining you have to do and with that comes a higher risk of angering the child for not telling them earlier.
I know he ahould have been told at 18, and at least given the chance to find his Mom and Dad.
You tell a child he is adopted because it is the right thing to do. not because he might want to "find his Mom and Dad".
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