Raising Both Biological and Adopted Children
In early June, my daughter's birth mother "M" came to spend a week with us in our home. We kept counting the firsts as they piled up -- M's first airplane ride, M's first time on a bike in 30 years, M's first train ride -- but the one that hit me the hardest was M's first time tucking our daughter into bed. Almost 15 years old, my daughter had never slept in the same house as her birth mom until this visit.
Our two younger daughters, born to us four and seven years after we adopted our oldest, fully embraced M into the family. They bemoaned the unfairness of it all when we insisted that M be allowed to have nightly sleepovers with only their oldest sister.
It was their first experience feeling like they were the "others" in our home. Both of the younger girls strongly resemble me -- small with dark brown eyes and curly brown hair. People glance from me to them and exclaim, "You have two mini-mes!"
Our oldest daughter can't even count how many times strangers in grocery stores have pointed to her and asked me, "Where did she get her that blonde hair? Why is she so tall?" Since the time she was a toddler, she has known what it feels like to be an "other."
[Read: What Not to Say to Adoptive Parents.]
A lack of physical resemblance is only one way in which our oldest daughter has expressed that she feels different from the rest of the family. Her personality, her mannerisms, her particular sense of humor -- the core of what makes her who she is -- differ as well, and she is keenly aware of that, and sometimes she struggles with it.
What struck me throughout our week with M was seeing how our oldest daughter made sense to her, in the same way that our younger girls make sense to me. M has two other children -- two more blood relatives for my daughter to love from afar -- and she kept marveling, "You are just like your brother and sister. You have their same expressions, their same mannerisms!"
For the first time, our daughter had the experience of being familiar to someone. She glowed every time her birth mom exclaimed how much she was like her biological brother and sister. It's something that most people take for granted, the innate connection among biological relatives that emerges starting at birth. In interviewing hundreds of adult adoptees from closed adoptions over the years, I've heard over and over again how much they yearn to know who they look like, who they act like.
For everything we can give our oldest daughter, we can't give her the experience of recognizing her biological traits in us. And it matters to her, even if she didn't know she was missing it.
[Read: What Parents Can Do to Help Siblings Grow Their Bond.]
Any adoptee is susceptible to feeling like an outsider, and these feelings can intensify when their parents are raising biological children too. Of course, there are families with huge variations among biological siblings, but those differences don't create the unique emotional complexities as a family in which the child who is different was adopted.
Adoption creates its own lens through which a child filters her world and calibrates her sense of belonging. Adoptees may live with the innate fear that their parents love their biological children more. As a result, adoptees are primed to interpret parental responses to typical sibling interactions as confirmation of their status as the " less loved" child.
One way to ease your child's fear is to talk openly about it. Validate the child's feelings: "It is understandable that you feel this way; it is not uncommon for children who were adopted to have these worries." Yet also reassure the child that fearing something does not mean it has to come true: "We absolutely love you as much as we love your sibling(s), and nothing will ever change that. We can be different from each other and share the same love."
Raising children that are both biological and adopted is a fascinating glimpse into the forces of nature and nurture. As parents, we can treasure all of our children with equal fullness of heart; however, we cannot control how they receive or perceive our affections and parenting decisions. This is why it is so important to offer unconditional love. No child should ever be made to feel that they have to earn parental love, but it is even more urgent to practice unconditional love in families built through nontraditional means.
[Read: Secure Attachment: Parenting From the Inside Out.]
In the hard moments and in the good times, it is always helpful to tell our children, "My love for you is always here. It isn't based on whether or not you look like me or share my skills; it isn't determined by your behavior. I won't love you more if you achieve great successes, and I won't love you less if you make big mistakes. We are your parents, and that means you get all our love, all the time. You may wonder sometimes if you belong, because you feel different from us. It's OK to talk about it, and yes, you do belong."
Carrie Goldman is the award-winning author of "Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear." In addition to her expertise in bullying dynamics, Carrie writes one of the nation's premier adoption blogs, Portrait of an Adoption, which has followers in more than 45 countries. She has written two children's fictional chapter books, Jazzy's Quest: Adopted and Amazing, and the sequel, Jazzy's Quest: What Matters Most. You can learn more about Carrie at carriegoldman.com. Every November, Carrie hosts a guest series called 30 Adoption Portraits in 30 Days, an annual series designed to educate people about the vast variety of adoption perspectives and experiences. Guest writers can be adoptees, birth parents, adoptive and foster parents. If you would like to send a submission, please email her at portraitofanadoption@gmail.com.
