Tough conversations
All parents occasionally have tough conversations with their children. You might have to tell your kids about why Mr. Fluffer-Nutter the hamster has been napping for three days straight. Or that awful conversation when puberty begins and you have to initiate "the talk".
As adoptive parents, we have all those tough conversations just like "regular" parents. But, adoption brings a different kind of tough conversation.
More than once we have had difficult conversations about the poor choices made by our children's biological parents. It isn't always easy to balance the truth with what our children can handle hearing at their age. The questions they ask don't always need the entire truth -- not until they are older and can grasp the complexity of what really happened.
Sometimes we can't avoid the tough conversations and we have to give 100% of the truth. Just this week we had a discussion about why our younger child has an easier time with reading and spelling than our older child. The gist of the conversation was that the younger sibling thought she was smarter than her older sister and the older sister confessed her belief that she isn't smart. Because of the unhealthy attitudes they were both expressing, we knew it was a conversation we had to have with some of the ugly details. We had to tell both girls the truth about their early start to school.
My oldest child was eight years old when they entered foster care. She had never attended preschool before entering kindergarten as a barely-five year old (she has a summer birthday and barely met the age requirement to enter kindergarten that year). With neglectful, addicted parents and a less-than-stellar attendance record, that first year of school was an abysmal failure. She repeated kindergarten with greater success the second time. She continued to live with neglectful parents and a dysfunctional, unpredictable existence until the start of second grade. Her second grade year began traumatically, with the sheriff's department forcefully removing the children from their meth lab home. They bounced to a couple of different foster homes during that first semester of school. It was a terrible time in her life. Needless to say, her formative years of phonics instruction were less-than-ideal.
My youngest child, however, had just begun kindergarten just three weeks before she entered foster care. Prior to that she had been in preschool. The transitions in foster care weren't ideal for her, but she definitely had a more solid foundation for learning than her sister had. Her learning was less interrupted by all the trauma. Her phonics instruction was much more successful -- which is reflected in her higher reading and spelling ability now, five years later.
It was important to explain some of the details to our children and to discuss how that has affected both of them. Neither of them are responsible for the rocky start they had in life, even though they are both affected by the hard work required to overcome that rocky start. Even now, five years later, they both still have effects of their early life experiences. It would be impossible to gloss over the past when we talk about their current struggles.
In a way, though, the conversation freed them from some of their own assumptions about themselves. My oldest child knows she got the short end of the stick for the first eight years of her life and that she will be playing catch-up for a long time. But, knowing the truth also frees her from feeling inadequate. Her struggles are because of someone else's mistakes, not because her brain isn't smart enough. My youngest child is also freed from feelings of inadequacy for some of her struggles. She, too, can look at her parents' poor choices as the source of some of her learning challenges.
When we first brought our girls home, we weren't sure when the time would be right to have some of those difficult conversations about the past. I mean, how do you initiate that conversation without being super awkward? Our fears have been relieved as time has moved forward with our girls. They bring up conversations when they have questions or when a memory pops up with its troublesome feelings. We answer their questions as honestly as possible, while protecting what we can of their feelings about their biological connection to the past.
I am sure we still have many hard conversations in our future. I don't look forward to those talks, but I no longer fear them like I did as a new adoptive parent. The girls will "tell" us when they are ready to hear the full story -- and I am confident that we will be ready (with God's help) to tell them.
As adoptive parents, we have all those tough conversations just like "regular" parents. But, adoption brings a different kind of tough conversation.
More than once we have had difficult conversations about the poor choices made by our children's biological parents. It isn't always easy to balance the truth with what our children can handle hearing at their age. The questions they ask don't always need the entire truth -- not until they are older and can grasp the complexity of what really happened.
Sometimes we can't avoid the tough conversations and we have to give 100% of the truth. Just this week we had a discussion about why our younger child has an easier time with reading and spelling than our older child. The gist of the conversation was that the younger sibling thought she was smarter than her older sister and the older sister confessed her belief that she isn't smart. Because of the unhealthy attitudes they were both expressing, we knew it was a conversation we had to have with some of the ugly details. We had to tell both girls the truth about their early start to school.
My oldest child was eight years old when they entered foster care. She had never attended preschool before entering kindergarten as a barely-five year old (she has a summer birthday and barely met the age requirement to enter kindergarten that year). With neglectful, addicted parents and a less-than-stellar attendance record, that first year of school was an abysmal failure. She repeated kindergarten with greater success the second time. She continued to live with neglectful parents and a dysfunctional, unpredictable existence until the start of second grade. Her second grade year began traumatically, with the sheriff's department forcefully removing the children from their meth lab home. They bounced to a couple of different foster homes during that first semester of school. It was a terrible time in her life. Needless to say, her formative years of phonics instruction were less-than-ideal.
My youngest child, however, had just begun kindergarten just three weeks before she entered foster care. Prior to that she had been in preschool. The transitions in foster care weren't ideal for her, but she definitely had a more solid foundation for learning than her sister had. Her learning was less interrupted by all the trauma. Her phonics instruction was much more successful -- which is reflected in her higher reading and spelling ability now, five years later.
It was important to explain some of the details to our children and to discuss how that has affected both of them. Neither of them are responsible for the rocky start they had in life, even though they are both affected by the hard work required to overcome that rocky start. Even now, five years later, they both still have effects of their early life experiences. It would be impossible to gloss over the past when we talk about their current struggles.
In a way, though, the conversation freed them from some of their own assumptions about themselves. My oldest child knows she got the short end of the stick for the first eight years of her life and that she will be playing catch-up for a long time. But, knowing the truth also frees her from feeling inadequate. Her struggles are because of someone else's mistakes, not because her brain isn't smart enough. My youngest child is also freed from feelings of inadequacy for some of her struggles. She, too, can look at her parents' poor choices as the source of some of her learning challenges.
When we first brought our girls home, we weren't sure when the time would be right to have some of those difficult conversations about the past. I mean, how do you initiate that conversation without being super awkward? Our fears have been relieved as time has moved forward with our girls. They bring up conversations when they have questions or when a memory pops up with its troublesome feelings. We answer their questions as honestly as possible, while protecting what we can of their feelings about their biological connection to the past.
I am sure we still have many hard conversations in our future. I don't look forward to those talks, but I no longer fear them like I did as a new adoptive parent. The girls will "tell" us when they are ready to hear the full story -- and I am confident that we will be ready (with God's help) to tell them.
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