Over at Susan’s house
Mar 16, 2008 Adoption
Tonight, she told me that she wished–in the part of the [Jane Brown] playshop where they made wishes about their birth families–that we knew more about J. and S., her birth parents. She cried a bit, told me we don’t even have a picture, we don’t know anything about them. “You know a little bit, but I don’t know anything,” she said. I told her that I would never, never, never have secrets about her first family, and that everything I know, she will know. I also said, “Sounds like you’re feeling sad.” So we talked about her sadness for a while, and I told her that I’m sad, too, that she doesn’t know much about her first family. We ended up talking about the possibility of her having siblings in her first family, and she went to sleep planning to dream about living with her brothers and sisters and birth parents. She told me I could come in the dream, but that I couldn’t live with them.
from Crunchy Granola
Because I know there are a lot of other adoptive parents who wonder, “Is it normal for my kid to think about this stuff?” Or “should I bring up their adoption if they don’t?”
It’s easy to think that if our kids don’t talk about their adoptions it’s because they are totally cool, absolutely fine with it and perfectly normal, healthy adoptees. I think we need to stretch our concept of normal and healthy. It’s normal to think about the way things might have been; it’s healthy to grieve our losses. A child can be cool, absolutely fine with his or her adoption and still sometimes need/want to talk about it or feel sad about it.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:49 am
That was an interesting conversation–when she woke up in the middle of the night and came into my bed, she was still thinking about it. “Remember, you’re J.,” she said again. So I soothed her back to sleep telling her that she could dream some more about her first family. She is just (at almost six) getting in touch with her sense of loss about all this. Up until now, she could tell her life story, but the fact that she had a birth mother and birth father and was born in another country were things she didn’t seem to think about with anything but positive emotions. She’s always been very fond of her birth parents (or the idea of them, or the emotional resonance of them–she hasn’t seen her birth father, most likely, and I don’t believe she saw her birth mother for long after she was born (but some of that is hazier given what I know). She’s heading toward realizing the fact that someone couldn’t keep her (to use her words), and she’s feeling sad about that in ways that often lead to garbled sentences. I hope I”m listening well to her feelings, to help her keep thinking and processing and wondering.
I’m curious what others think about a part of my post which you didn’t quote, Dawn, the part where she’s asked me to pretend to be J. so she can talk to me. I’m very clear on the fact that I will never pretend to speak for her birth mother, but at the same time, I don’t want to react in ways that she perceives as pushing away her attempts to start a conversation.
Anyway, thanks for thinking with me about this. Our kids do have a lot to say, don’t they?
March 16th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
You could use hand puppets and have yours pretend to be the birth mom and her hand puppet as herself. You’ll be surprised how theurapedic it can be to use handpuppets as it allows you both to touch on senstive or emotional issues but in a somewhat removed fashion (as it is the puppets talking you know
I used them w/ my daughter (some we bought and later some we made) and it was very helpful.
What I’m getting a lot of now that she is 9 is conversations that start about a seamingly unrelated subject but then ties in to her feeligns about loss and/or adoptions. For example, a few days ago she was talking about becoming an inventor…she was going to invent a time machine…the time machine would take her back to the day of her birth…she wanted to see her first mom giving birth to her.
Anyway…just thought I’d share the hand puppet thing as it worked for me.
March 16th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I meant to touch on the fact that I when I did it I didn’t really speak for her first mom but it was in a generalized way…allowing her to do most of the talking and in my case my answers were/are true because I did/do know her first mom so when I would respond with “I know you are sad but I always think of you and some day when you are older we’ll be able to get together” I wasn’t lying so that is probably why it worked for us….another option would be for her to play both parts w/ the puppets and this way you can see where her feelings are going and offer support.
Drawing also helps…she can w/ your help work on independent drawings, a guided project or do a little book w/ short captions as story…ways for her young mind to process and sort out her feelings.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:16 am
[...] Angela (who has a blog again! Hooray!!!) had some thoughts about using puppets that I think you guys might want to read. [...]