Hard Thinking Series - #1
Originally posted August 8, 2007
My journey through adoption thinking
One of the things I often need to remind myself of as I journey through the world of being an adoptive parent is how much my own thinking on adoption has changed since we started our own adventure almost three years ago. Sometimes people say things about adoption that now strike me as simply bizarre and then I realize that at one time I might have said something similar. A few examples:
Adoption language
I never imagined how hard this would be. We know exactly what words we want to use and I still get all wound up if someone uses the term “real mom” instead of “birth mom” for example. What I have learned is that while we do need labels to help us navigate the world of adoption, ultimately they are just labels. So I am now trying to give people a break on this issue and try to educate as opposed to scold and if they don’t get it well thats ok too. I mean if I still struggle with the language after all this time how can someone new to adoption possibly get it right.
Openness - good or bad
When we first started our adoption journey, the concept of an open adoption was exceptionally hard to grasp and I will freely admit that this is one of many reasons why our first adoption choice was china. Not having to deal with an open adoption seemed like a positive thing. As those of you who have heard me rant on this subject before know I have done a complete about face in my thinking on this subject. I think China is still a great choice for adoption (note: not as true anymore). We would be adopting from there right now except for the rule changes and the wait, but I think the fact that we would know nothing at all about the child’s birth family and that our daughter would likely never have an opportunity to meet them is a big negative.
Now that we are involved in an open adoption I struggle to deal with peoples misconceptions about the concept. We recently got together with our daughters birth mom. In the days leading up to the day we would tell friends how excited we were and many of them would get this look on their faces. Like we were crazy. We would get comments like “oh how brave you are for doing that”, “i am not sure I could ever do that” or “aren’t you worried?” This leads to the next point….
It’s about her not me
While going through the long wait to adopt I found it easy to get wrapped up in what it all meant to me. I needed to constantly remind myself to think about the issues of adoption as it relates to my daughter. In the case of having an open adoption that meant not letting my own personal insecurities interfere with what would be best for my daughter. As my daughter grows it will mean talking about adoption with a recognition that it is her story and not mine. In our case our daughter looks enough like us that she will get to decide who knows and when.
I also need to restrain myself when it comes to others. I was a stay at home dad last week and was at the local playground and found myself at the swings beside another dad with his daughter. He was white, she was Chinese (2.5 years old). Now I love talking about adoption in general and adoption from China specifically, so I was so tempted to just come out and ask, but I restrained myself. Shouldn’t they be able to go to the playground without ending up talking about adoption just like I can? In the end it turned out that we live very close to each other and sort of knew of each other through the neighbourhood grapevine so we did end up talking about adoption.
Would love to hear from others about how their own thinking has changed. So much to learn.