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Parentpedia
Telling Your Child
What Experts Say
As Joyce Maguire Pavao points out in The Family of Adoption, no one else knows your child as well as you do. How you talk to your child about adoption depends on your sense of who your child is and what he or she needs to hear. But one thing is certain -- the days of "protecting" kids by keeping their adoption histories is long over. No reputable adoption professional would tell any parent to lie to their children about being adopted. So the real question is how to make adoption an easier subject for your family?
Before you can get comfortable talking to your child about adoption, you need to be comfortable talking about it, period. Practice talking about adoption before your child is even old enough to understand what the word "adopted" means. That will give you time to find your comfort zone and let your child grow up taking his or her adoption story for granted.
Some families build "life books," which are similar to baby books but expand on their children's adoption stories. These life books may include:
- information from the birth family
- notes about the agency or attorney
- travel to the child's country of origin
- any other information you have about your child's life before the adoption
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