Early Stages of Talking About Adoption

Before I become and adoptive parent I read books and blog posts about talking with your kids about adoption and challenges that lay ahead. Making sure my daughter has high self esteem always has been a big focus for me and how I wanted to approach parenting. I think if you have a good foundation as a person you can handle life's challenges better.

But I never thought about early years in my daughter life and how she would come to understand adoption, birth, etc.

At this point, my daughter is three. I don't think she fully grasps that she is different or even what birth means. I have to wonder when this light bulb will go off and she will know she isn't my biological child. She is very clingy to me and want to be very close to me, which is great. We have had a huge break through with bonding in the past year. But it is heart breaking to me for her to be sadden by this.

I guess I always thought of conversation we would have at seven or teenage years. But I never thought of these early years and how she came to our family. Just basic understanding of being adopted.

We have the adoption books and we celebrate family day and talk about her birth mom. But I don't think she gets it at this point.

Last night I was hit by a ton of bricks. We where reading a adoption book we made for her with pictures of our family and her adoption day. When she said to me:

"I don't want you to leave me" I said what do you mean, she proceeded

"I don't want to go live with those nannies in Vietnam" "I don't want you to leave me there"

At that moment I realize she doesn't understand that we had never been apart from each other. And she thought we left her at the orphanage. We talked long about her birth mom and how we went through the process of adopting her and would never leave her.

This was heartbreaking, and I'm still trying to figure it all out in my head. Obviously we need to work on this and take some new approaches to the subject. Being a parent is so hard, and being an adoptive parents brings additional challenges to the table. I knew we would face challenges, and hope I can find the right path to answer these questions for her.