"Talking with Young Children about Adoption" by Watkins and Fisher

2-3: When children ask questions, it is not a sign of maladjustment, but understandable curiosity. It should not be taken as disloyalty or rejection, but a child attempting to put the pieces of their heritages in order. Silence creates distance. Minimizing the child's feelings creates separation, they go outside the family for emotional support.
4: Don't simply tell a child once that they are adopted, but talk with them across developmental stages throughout childhood.
7: Major issues faced: sadness of not being in their mother's tummies, need to look like adoptive family, difficulty understanding multiple caretakers involved in their history, desire to have entered their family in the traditional way, continuity between past and present.
9: First questions are usually directed at mothers because of the fascination with how babies enter the world.
10: Amount of and frequency of information provided was not as important as parental attitude toward adoption.
17: Respect the unfolding of the child's qualities, whether adopted or biological.
21: Help a child with their feeling of rejection by emphasizing that the rejection was not of the child themselves, but of the role of parenting. After all, you have to know a person to reject them.
21: Adoption is a repair of trauma, not a trauma in itself . it is not a losing or taking away of what never was, but a mutual giving and gaining of affirmative family relationship.
32: Terms: tummy lady and adoptive mother
37: In most other cultures, children and infants have multiple caregivers- concern focuses on quality of care, not presence or loss of a particular caregiver.
52: Genetic impact on personality is estimated at .25
55: The research is predictive. It is only statistical, retrospective, inferential, and descriptive.
58: Young children abandon a conversation as soon as they have gotten what they want, need, or can handle.
59: But don't stop talking bout adoption just because a child uses the correct language and appears to report the details correctly.
64: Young children who appear to be preoccupied with adoption could just be showing the same intense focus on family that their peers are experiencing for their age.
78: Term: A father plants a seed inside a mother that grows into a baby.
91: Children's question are about curiosity, need empathy to understand their sense of identity- it has little to do with the parents.
93: There are many ways to begin a family
94: We are in a relationship of mutual teaching
98: Commit to saying only what you know for sure
111: Coming to love someone means making room in your heart for the other important people in their lives. With this room made, these other relationships begin to take on a life of their own, becoming gifts in their own right- despite difficulty and struggle.
130: There is a mother of the body (tummy lady), and a mother of the heart (adoptive mother)
146: Explaining adoption seems easier for parents who believe the match was purposeful rather than random.
153: We can approach talking about sexuality and adoption the same ways: with respect, privacy, and humor.
201: Story of a mother who realized she did not have to explain every action her son did, especially relating it to his adoption, letting him stand as a human being with his own personality
208: Physical features are not the same as your actual expressions, the way you talk, your voice, hands, etc. These are the things kids imitate. (not based on genetics)
211: Even biological children are not copies of their parents, each have their own personalities.
212: Parenting is a life-time commitment, developing a relationship is most important so that both parent and child adjust together to the various stages of development.
215: Children pick up their sense of reality from their parents, so if adoption is the overwhelming factor in their relationships, kids will feel the same way.
218: Adoptive parents, through the love and care of their children, take on dilemmas of society because of their children's relinquishment: alcoholism, drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, prejudice, child abuse and neglect, inferior status of women, economic inequality, etc.
222: Don't make our children feel like an addition to our family.

Life Direction

It is January 2013, and we are getting ready for the arrival of our third child, soon afterward preparing for a move back to Michigan. It is great to know now which state we will living in for the foreseeable future, in order to prepare more for the adoption process. We plan to look into agencies and community services after we are settled in this summer.

We continue to pray for any children who may come home to our family in the future, that they would not give up hope of receiving love from a family on earth and in Heaven.

I got another adoption book for Christmas and plan to ask for a couple more for my birthday.