VII. Have You Got What it Takes?

As if all the previous questions were not enough, I’m now going to home in closer on questions directly to do with adopting. Again, you need to read slowly and thoughtfully, remembering that your success as an adopter will to some extent depend on your attitudes. Some of the following areas have definite Yes and No answers, which can mean adoption is not right for you. But most of them are much fuzzier.

Can You Be Honest with Your Child?

Honesty is central to most human relationships. Of course you have secrets; we all do. But there are things in adoption which cannot be covered up or wished or pretended away, even very painful things. It will be part of your job as an adopter to help your child understand his or her past. I’ve already discussed the need for both people in a relationship to be honest with each other about whether to adopt, what kind of children you want, and to be honest if you think a child offered to you is not right for you. These are all very important as preliminaries to adoption. Later on, you need to be honest with each other and with professionals if you see problems developing. Don’t try to sweep them under the carpet or unreasonably pretend they will sort themselves out. Don’t be too proud to ask for help.

Another crunch comes after the child is placed with you. Can you be honest with your child about the past?

Telling the Facts of Adoption

There is an absolute requirement that you must be honest with the child about the fact of adoption. It used to be thought that it was right to pretend to the child and the community at large that she had been born to you. People would sometimes move to the other side of the country and start a new life; some adoptive mothers would go through a phantom pregnancy and then produce an adopted baby, which they would pretend had been born to them. This was wrong.

There are innumerable cases where children who had not been told early on by their parents that they were adopted found out by accident, were told by spiteful neighbours, by children on the school playground, in a fit of anger by their parents, found out while rummaging through drawers for Christmas presents, found documents after their parents’ died, or when they applied for a passport. Others would be sat down on their 18th birthdays and handed a brown envelope, or told on the eve of their wedding. Almost invariably these incidents of late, sudden or accidental finding out have been deeply traumatic, and children’s telephone helplines get many calls because of late, accidental or insensitive “telling”. They also proved that it is virtually impossible to effectively and permanently conceal the fact that a person is adopted. It has been known for years now that children must be told, early, honestly and with love.

In the case of very young children, I don’t believe in “telling” as an event at all. I think that the word “adopt” and phrases like “We’re so glad we adopted you and you are ours” should come up frequently in conversation, with cuddles, from before the child can understand what they mean. The child will grow up with the knowledge of adoption, and associate the word with love and affection, as a part of her most basic knowledge about herself and her world. She will never have to be “told”. As she grows up, details will be gradually added, both when she asks and also in normal, loving conversation when she doesn’t ask. Adoption will be an open topic of conversation, not something “shameful” or even “special”. The facts of her background will emerge as she is ready to absorb them, and eventually she will know the whole.

The community will also know. If the fact of adoption is public knowledge, and proudly so, it ceases to be something a bully or cruel adult can use as a weapon against the child, or something which could be accidentally or maliciously disclosed. The whole world doesn’t need to know the details of your child’s background; that is private between you and the child. You can deal with nosy questions simply by saying that you don’t know or that that kind of information is confidential.

On no account make up a story and feed it to your child as an alternative to a painful truth. As surely as you cannot hide the fact of adoption, you cannot run from the truth. While lying may buy you the time you think you need to explain things better, once you become enmeshed in a fiction you cannot get out without damaging your credibility. Your child will quite rightly reason that if you lied before you may be lying again, and not just about the adoption, but about all kinds of things. You can buy time if you need it (for example, if your child is too young to cope with the answer to her specific question) by saying you don’t know all the facts (always true) and that you will try to find out more. But definitely no fairy tales about car accidents or foundlings.

And don’t tell your child she was “chosen”. In most cases this is not true. The days of prospective adopters walking down rows of cots and stopping like the Star of Bethlehem over The Chosen One have gone (except in some cases of adoption overseas). You did not choose your child; she wasn’t even chosen for you. You were chosen for her, which makes it all the more special in my eyes. While many adopted adults have fond memories of being told they were chosen by their parents (instead of having to make do with what the stork brought), feeling that it made their relationship with their adopters especially warm, there is now evidence that feeling you were chosen sometimes puts a burden on many children, making them feel they must be grateful or continually strive to be worthy. Being chosen also has the flip side of possibly becoming un-chosen: sent back, if you don’t live to up expectations.