Comments on: Backstory

By: Dawn

Dawn — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:29:00 +0000

Kohana, Madison was about 27-months when she definitely GOT that Pennie was her birth mother and that she was born FROM Pennie. Definitely part of this was having Pennie around and then part of it was that there were two people in our life who were pregnant and Madison was curious about that. She started talking about her own skin color and our skin color around three but it’s only recently that she’s really talked a lot about how she is brown because Pennie is brown and she has curly hair because Pennie has curly hair, etc. I think these are all pieces to the same puzzle and she sometimes gets one part of it without seeing how it connects to the other but it’s really coming together now.

By: Leslie

Leslie — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:42:54 +0000

When I was 4, I thought that a minor explosion happened in the living room of our house and that when the smoke cleared, there I was, standing in the living room, fully clothed, exactly as I was at that moment, and that something similar happened in order for my parents to exist also (fully formed adults, my parents, no other purpose in life, etc). This construct worked for me for some time.

By: Kohana

Kohana — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:55:27 +0000

It’s interesting to read this. We also have limited information and no contact with our son’s biological father. He is just now discovering, and verbalizing, the differences he sees in our skin tones. I have been thinking ahead of how to intruduce the concept of his biological father. We mention him, but as my son just turned three, he’s not really developmentally there to wonder where he came from, or to even really understand what we’ve told him about adoption. I make use of each question he asks, and introduce things where I can. In a situation like this, there are so many complex concepts rolled up at once: genetics, adoption, sex, race…I keep reminding myself that I can’t explain all of that at once, that it will take time, and he will get it bit by bit. It’s the getting the process started that we haven’t really done, but perhaps in the next year it will start to unfold more? When did these discussions begin with Madison? I guess having an open adoption means that the dialogue had to be facilitated very early as you spent time with Pennie, which is not the case in our situation. I’d be interested to know when most children really start to get curious about their birth and adoption stories?

By: Heather.PNR

Heather.PNR — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:40:33 +0000

I’ve always thought of “birth dad” to mean that he’s her dad by birth (i.e. by virtue of her birth into his family tree), as opposed to her dad by adoption. Like saying you’re a US citizen by birth, as opposed to by naturalization. So it works for me. But I’m not the one being labeled that, so what do I know?

By: ahhhh, the rewards of stalking on the internet « the night kitchen: writing when i should be making dinner

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:39:01 +0000

[...] the internet Posted by cynthia under Uncategorized something must be in the air about birth fathers. we too call wendell’s birthfather just that. he hasn’t met him yet (though we have- [...]