Adoption Week e-Magazine Article

Contributed by: MN ASAP

Too often, in the joy and bustle associated with the adoption process, parents and well meaning professionals fail to support children’s loss. Adopted children old enough to remember birth family or foster family members from whom they are separated will need to actively grieve. Just as with adults, children who fail to deal with feelings associated with loss and grief cannot move through the healing process. Keeping the feelings inside and pushing away sad thoughts may result in relational, physical, and emotional problems in adulthood.

Unresolved feelings associated with past losses can affect the future, leading to a cycle of loss in the adult years.

Children who are older when they are adopted may struggle with insecurities around belonging to their new family, testing the strength of the new family’s acceptance of them. Writer, poet, actress Maya Angelou recounts a traumatized childhood of being passed back and forth between her two families in her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The attitude she displayed whenever she moved from one family to another became, “I didn’t come to stay.”

Children come to accept their adoptive parents through the process of being and doing, so parents need patience when children project an attitude of “I didn’t come to stay.”

Contrary to the popular myth, time does not heal all wounds. Time, though, can be therapeutic if children are able to put their losses in perspective and to adapt to change. As with adults, childhood grief is very individual, taking as long as it takes. What adoptive parents can do:

1. Allow the child to express feelings, realizing that a child needs to mourn the loss of what was left behind in order to embrace the future with their new family.

2. Support a child’s unique emotions without feeling threatened by them.

3. For young children, listen to “magical thinking” as to why they think they lost their first family and if they think behaviors on their part might have contributed.

4. For older children, work towards acceptance of their dual kinship, helping them explore their genetic identity within the safety of their new adoptive family.

5. Provide a supportive environment that meets the needs of the child as a powerful agent in the healing process.

Resources:

Helping Children Cope with Separation and Loss by Claudia Jewett Jarratt

Filling In the Blanks: A Guided Look at Growing Up Adopted by Susan Gable

How it Feels to Be Adopted by Jill Kremetz

Adoptive Families Magazine

Association for Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children

Attachment Disorder Site

Contributed by: Minnesota Adoption Support and Preservation project