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Dear Care and Feeding,
My cousin’s son came to live with us when he was 2 and we later adopted him. He’s now 10. We also have two biological daughters, a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old, but they are all equally our kids. Our son doesn’t look exactly like us—the rest of us are fair skinned and freckled and he has more of an olive skin tone—and up until now he’s not thought about it much. Sometimes people comment on how much he stands out, but it’s been happening less and less over the years. He’s always known that he’s adopted. We’ve talked about how we love all three of our kids equally, and just because I didn’t give birth to him like I did his sisters doesn’t mean I’m not just as much his mom.
Recently, he’s been saying things that make it sound like he’s trying to prove how similar we all are to each other. He’ll say stuff like “Isn’t it so weird that all five of us have dimples (or have brown hair, or are nearsighted, or any other extremely common physical trait)? I guess that’s just part of being a [last name]!” Or if we’re out in public as a family, he’ll always put heavy emphasis on words like “Mom,” “Dad,” and “sisters,” and insert them unnaturally into sentences. I’ve tried talking to him about why he feels the need to do this, and he just brushes it off. I’ve tried asking in more subtle ways about whether or not anyone is giving him a hard time over our family situation, but what he’s said has made me think that’s not the issue. (Most of his friends have unconventional family situations—he has friends raised by aunts and uncles, or single parents, or same-sex parents, or a wide assortment of blended families; it doesn’t sound like any of them are being mistreated for theirs either.)
In any case, it’s clear that despite his protests, he feels insecure about our family. I’m really not sure what to do here—part of me wants to leave him alone since whatever his issue is, it’s clearly something he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing with us. But an even bigger part wants to get to the bottom of this and try to help him feel less insecure. My husband is similarly conflicted, but leaning more toward doing nothing.
—Adoption Insecurity
Dear Adoption Insecurity,
Whatever your son is feeling right now probably can’t be entirely chalked up to him looking different from the rest of you—although that could certainly be a factor, and other people’s comments about it can’t be helping. At a very young age, he experienced a separation from his family and a profound change in his living situation. Your love for him can’t erase that trauma. If he does feel a little insecure or unsure about his place in your family now, it makes sense given what he’s experienced.
I would also wonder about the tenor of the comments your son is making, which seem to point to some deeper insecurity—or, at the very least, confusion or complicated feelings—on his part. It’s common for adoptees to have complicated feelings about our adoptions and our place within our adoptive families, and for these feelings to shift over time. When we’re young, we might not have the vocabulary (or, sometimes, the encouragement) we need to express what we’re feeling. Sometimes we may get the impression that we need to navigate or manage our adoptive parents’ (and other relatives’) feelings—we don’t want them to feel insecure, or doubt our love for them—and this can lead to our own feelings and questions being even further sidelined.
You mention offering a lot of very natural, loving reassurances—ongoing reminders that you’re his parents and he’s your son—and I absolutely understand why. But it could be worth considering whether there’s also space for him to express doubts, or questions, or more complex feelings about his adoption and/or the family he no longer lives with. He might be getting the message that he shouldn’t love or miss or grieve that family, or feel anything other than glad that he was adopted and became your son. And of course it’s rarely that simple when we’ve lost something important, no matter how much we gain afterward.
If you really believe that your son is feeling insecure in your family, I don’t think you can or should just drop it. But instead of, say, asking him point-blank if he feels this way or that way, putting him on the spot, do everything you can to help him understand that adoption and his feelings about it are always safe topics—part of an open and ongoing conversation, not subjects that are only raised when someone is worried or upset. He should know that whatever he’s feeling is okay, and that you, his parents, live with him in the complexity of adoption. That none of his thoughts or questions will ever be interpreted as him rejecting you or your family (or lead to you rejecting him), and that you are always ready to listen without fear or judgment. If he doubts any of this, he may not feel free to share what he’s really thinking or feeling about his adoption, and you won’t be able to support him the way you want to.
I recognize that this may be hard to talk about, for all of you. Don’t give up. Be willing to seek help or support processing your own feelings, if you need it. You can’t control how your son may feel about his place in your family or being adopted at any given point in his life. But as his parents, you can choose to validate and be with him through all of it.
Link
My cousin’s son came to live with us when he was 2 and we later adopted him. He’s now 10. We also have two biological daughters, a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old, but they are all equally our kids. Our son doesn’t look exactly like us—the rest of us are fair skinned and freckled and he has more of an olive skin tone—and up until now he’s not thought about it much. Sometimes people comment on how much he stands out, but it’s been happening less and less over the years. He’s always known that he’s adopted. We’ve talked about how we love all three of our kids equally, and just because I didn’t give birth to him like I did his sisters doesn’t mean I’m not just as much his mom.
Recently, he’s been saying things that make it sound like he’s trying to prove how similar we all are to each other. He’ll say stuff like “Isn’t it so weird that all five of us have dimples (or have brown hair, or are nearsighted, or any other extremely common physical trait)? I guess that’s just part of being a [last name]!” Or if we’re out in public as a family, he’ll always put heavy emphasis on words like “Mom,” “Dad,” and “sisters,” and insert them unnaturally into sentences. I’ve tried talking to him about why he feels the need to do this, and he just brushes it off. I’ve tried asking in more subtle ways about whether or not anyone is giving him a hard time over our family situation, but what he’s said has made me think that’s not the issue. (Most of his friends have unconventional family situations—he has friends raised by aunts and uncles, or single parents, or same-sex parents, or a wide assortment of blended families; it doesn’t sound like any of them are being mistreated for theirs either.)
In any case, it’s clear that despite his protests, he feels insecure about our family. I’m really not sure what to do here—part of me wants to leave him alone since whatever his issue is, it’s clearly something he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing with us. But an even bigger part wants to get to the bottom of this and try to help him feel less insecure. My husband is similarly conflicted, but leaning more toward doing nothing.
—Adoption Insecurity
Dear Adoption Insecurity,
Whatever your son is feeling right now probably can’t be entirely chalked up to him looking different from the rest of you—although that could certainly be a factor, and other people’s comments about it can’t be helping. At a very young age, he experienced a separation from his family and a profound change in his living situation. Your love for him can’t erase that trauma. If he does feel a little insecure or unsure about his place in your family now, it makes sense given what he’s experienced.
I would also wonder about the tenor of the comments your son is making, which seem to point to some deeper insecurity—or, at the very least, confusion or complicated feelings—on his part. It’s common for adoptees to have complicated feelings about our adoptions and our place within our adoptive families, and for these feelings to shift over time. When we’re young, we might not have the vocabulary (or, sometimes, the encouragement) we need to express what we’re feeling. Sometimes we may get the impression that we need to navigate or manage our adoptive parents’ (and other relatives’) feelings—we don’t want them to feel insecure, or doubt our love for them—and this can lead to our own feelings and questions being even further sidelined.
You mention offering a lot of very natural, loving reassurances—ongoing reminders that you’re his parents and he’s your son—and I absolutely understand why. But it could be worth considering whether there’s also space for him to express doubts, or questions, or more complex feelings about his adoption and/or the family he no longer lives with. He might be getting the message that he shouldn’t love or miss or grieve that family, or feel anything other than glad that he was adopted and became your son. And of course it’s rarely that simple when we’ve lost something important, no matter how much we gain afterward.
If you really believe that your son is feeling insecure in your family, I don’t think you can or should just drop it. But instead of, say, asking him point-blank if he feels this way or that way, putting him on the spot, do everything you can to help him understand that adoption and his feelings about it are always safe topics—part of an open and ongoing conversation, not subjects that are only raised when someone is worried or upset. He should know that whatever he’s feeling is okay, and that you, his parents, live with him in the complexity of adoption. That none of his thoughts or questions will ever be interpreted as him rejecting you or your family (or lead to you rejecting him), and that you are always ready to listen without fear or judgment. If he doubts any of this, he may not feel free to share what he’s really thinking or feeling about his adoption, and you won’t be able to support him the way you want to.
I recognize that this may be hard to talk about, for all of you. Don’t give up. Be willing to seek help or support processing your own feelings, if you need it. You can’t control how your son may feel about his place in your family or being adopted at any given point in his life. But as his parents, you can choose to validate and be with him through all of it.
Link
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My own situation: I’m sixty-two, was adopted in infancy, assigned to blend in visually with my adoptive family because that’s how they did it in the 60’s—-and my identity issues have been ongoing, particularly since (A) the adoption records were closed and (B) it was clear right out of the starting gate that I was the family (and schoolyard) weirdo. (Remember Ray Bradbury’s story “The Homecoming”, about the only human child in a monster family? I used to theorize that there’d been a mixup at the adoption agency, and Timothy was the kid my parents were supposed to have gotten.)
(The academic Powers That Be weren’t looking for The Spectrum in boomers, particularly girls. They did do relentless IQ testing, and my scores (and the uproar over them) had me regarding Reed Richards as a reasonable performance standard. Another source of pressure was that I was the oldest—-within nine months, my parents’ marriage turned out not to be as barren as they’d assumed for nine years, meaning that (A) my parents were playing new parenthood on Hard Mode and (B) my weird shit was the act my brother had to follow every year.)
The OP’s son’s experiences are going to differ: there’s been half a century’s worth of societal shift, he knows who his birth family are (and he is an extended blood relation to his adoptive family), and he’s visually different enough to draw notice. I’d say it’s an encouraging sign for his adoptive family that he desperately wants to belong to them. And they did the right thing by letting him remember his status throughout—-that’s a fundamental part of identity that the adoptee shouldn’t have to discover as a Tomato Surprise.