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Caring for Mind and Body
Growing Up Adopted
There are issues, but for most families they’re readily resolved
Adoptive parents and children have the same joys and problems as every other family. But they also face some unique issues that can be challenging for parent and child alike:
“Why didn’t my other mother keep me?” Sooner or later, every adopted child asks that question—and there’s no “right” answer, says adolescent medicine specialist and adoptive mother Sarah Stevens, M.D., of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. “Your response should be geared to your child’s age and understanding,” she says.
Stevens told her three children (born in Ecuador) that their mothers weren’t able to take care of them and brought them to a place where they would be cared for. Before adolescence, she says, children usually can’t comprehend the many circumstances that would make a mother give up her child in hopes of a better life for him. “Reassure him that his birth mother’s decision had nothing to do with him,” she says. “Help him understand that what matters is being in a loving family, and adoption is just another way of coming into a family.”
“Where do I come from?” Heritage is an obvious issue for the 189,000 foreign children adopted into American families over the past 20 years. “It’s important for these kids to have some connection with their cultural heritage, and with people from their country of origin, if possible,” says Nicholas Jupina, therapist at the hospital’s Adolescent Transitions program and father of two South Korean children. They use school projects as a way to learn about their home country and share it with classmates.
Heritage also can be an issue for American-born children. Those adopted by families of a different ethnicity have to sort out their racial identity. For all adoptees, there’s the haunting question of where those blue eyes, athletic abilities or musical talents came from.
“Who am I?” Forging a personal identity takes center stage in adolescence. Adopted teens have another whole layer of identity to figure out, and typically they don’t have much information about their birth families to work with.
Even non-adopted teens sometimes fantasize about having parents who’d understand them better, so it’s not surprising that adoptees tend to romanticize their birth parents, says Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network psychiatrist Laurence Karper, M.D. He advises delaying the search for birth families until the late teens or early 20s—and doublechecking your child’s expectations. “The reality rarely coincides with happy, tearful television reunions,” he says. “The birth parent may not even want to meet the child.”
Coming to terms with being adopted is harder for some than for others. “The child’s age at adoption and his prior experiences definitely affect his adjustment,” Karper says. “Still, a supportive family can overcome serious deficits, even genetic ones.” And the passage of time helps. Being adopted is a big issue in young adulthood, and it may resurface when an adoptee becomes a parent and wants to share cultural or genetic information with the next generation, Jupina says. “But for most adults, being adopted is not their primary identifier. It’s just one of many parts of who they are.”
Want to Know More about coping with adoption? Call 610-402-CARE to find tips for teens and reassurance for parents worried about genetic health risks.
Published from Healthy You Magazine, September-October 2007
This page last updated 2/12/08 04:08 PM
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