At our Brownie meeting a few weeks ago, my co-leader and I did an activity where we taped a large world map to the wall and asked the girls to tell us about a foreign country with which they have a connection (i.e. a relative lives there; they like the type of food from that country; they have traveled there; they have read a book about that country, etc.)
Each girl took a turn sticking a post-it note on "her country of connection."
When it was Katie’s turn, she hemmed and hawed for a minute. Then she whispered to me that she wanted to put a sticker on Missouri, because that is where her birth family lives, and she feels a stronger connection to Missouri than to any foreign country.
"Um, okay," I told her. We can be flexible.
Katie told the other girls in her troop why she picked Missouri, and then it was the next girl’s turn.
Sometimes I forget that not everyone knows Katie was adopted. For those girls who already knew, which was the majority of them, it was no big deal, and no one blinked an eye.
But apparently there were several girls who had not known that Katie was adopted. She came home from school the next week, telling me, “The news that I’m adopted has traveled through both TWI classes. (TWI stands for Two-Way-Immersion, which is the Spanish-speaking immersion program in which Katie is enrolled).
Katie exclaimed in exasperation, “Everyone is saying, ‘Katie, are you adopted?’ ‘Katie, I didn’t know you were adopted!’
I thought about it for a minute before responding.
“Well,” I said, “they are naturally very curious. There is nothing wrong with that. But it probably made you feel very different. Were people just interested, or did someone make a negative comment?”
She replied, “When I told 'A' that I know my birthmom, he said it was bad to have two moms.”
I’ll just bet he did. “A” happens to be a kid who has had a lot of behavior problems in school and is usually on the wrong side of empathy. I pointed out to Katie that “A” should not be considered an authority on the merits of having two moms, or on anything else about Katie’s personal life, and that she can feel free to disregard his judgment.
As Katie grows older, she encounters more and more people who are unaware that she was adopted, and she is learning to navigate whether or not to disclose the information. Sometimes, she elects to say nothing, such as when strangers comment on how different she looks from her two younger sisters. I think she figures that it isn’t worth her time to explain her adoption to people she will never see again.
It is harder when Katie is in a potential disclosure situation with her newer friends. She doesn’t want to “hide” her adoption, yet I know there are times when she is shy about it. She feels a deep desire to talk about her birth family, because it helps her maintain a connection with them, so she often brings them up.
But talking about her “other sister” or her brother leads curious people to ask her about her adoption, and then she sometimes becomes embarrassed at the attention. She is stuck in a quandary – wanting to talk about her birth family, yet not wanting to talk about her adoption – and the two desires are incompatible.
I try to let her lead discussions whenever possible, knowing that this is the best way to ensure she is comfortable with the direction of them. It pains me to imagine her at school, trying to figure out the most socially acceptable thing to say. Of course it should not matter what other kids think, but we all remember how desperately we wanted to fit in at that age!
My hope for Katie is that those who matter won’t mind that she is adopted, and those who mind won’t matter to her as she grows older. And I remind her it’s okay for people to express curiosity about her adoption. Fortunately, she agrees. She does understand the difference between interested questions and ignorant comments. And she loves opportunities to talk about her birth family, so feel free to ask!
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Filed under: birthmothers, domestic adoption, growing up, honesty in adoption, Uncategorized
Tags: honesty in adoption, open adoption, talking about adoption
This reminds me so much of when my brother was Katie's age. My middle brother and I were both adopted, but under very different circumstances. While I was adopted as an infant in a traditional closed adoption, my brother came to my family as a foster child and grew up knowing his bio family. He loved spending time with his "other" brother and sister and talking about them, but it was so hard for him to explain the relationship to other kids! I have to say, as an adult, it hasn't gotten that much easier, since open adoption is still not as commonplace.
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