One of the first issues that adoptive parents know they will have to face sooner or later is:

“Why was I adopted?”

While I’ve certainly never had to answer that sort of question (I’m not actually old enough to be a parent), I can certainly see why a parent would think “Um, my child is barely three! How exactly do I answer that without making him feel like he was loved ‘less’ because he had to be given up?”

There is no easy way to do it and the answer will start varying in time as their understanding of what it means to be adopted grows.

Someone once asked me: “how old were you when you realized what adoption really meant? When did you really understand the ‘truth’?”

To be honest, it feels like I’ve known since, well, forever. In which case, I presume my parents must have started explaining about adoption to me at a really early age.

An interesting thing to note is that at the age of two, when I pointed out that I looked “same as the same!” as those China porcelain dolls, somewhere at that point I had already made the connection that I was ‘different’ (from my white parents). Not necessarily a bad ’different’… just that I was different. And perhaps my parents may have start talking to me about adoption around that time.

It didn’t shock me or surprise me, at least not that I can remember. I do remember one time when I was about seven and I asked about my relinquishment again.

~*~

Me: Mom, why didn’t that other woman keep me?

Her: Because she was not able to. She couldn’t afford it financially. However she loved you very much and she gave you up so you could have a better life. This was her sacrifice for you because she loved you so much.

Me: But if she loved me that much, then wouldn’t she keep me? Why should I love someone I don’t even know?

Her: Because she did this for you, so you could have a life. She is your mother and you should love her because of what she did and honour her decision. It was all that she could do at the time.

~*~

Do you see a flaw in the above conversation? Anything at all that would be strange to tell a child?

It’s easy. I’ll tell you:

“This was her sacrifice for you because she loved you so much”  - that sentence will NEVER EVER make sense to a child. It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t matter if you picked the gentlest and more simple approach to say it. It doesn’t matter how good your intentions are to say it.

You are saying an adult’s explanation to a child.

Some of you might say “But it’s the truth!” and in quite a few cases, you are probably right. But the child doesn’t understand the truth in that aspect. How many TRA blogs have you read which touched on this subject and said that as an adult they understood the WHY, but that the child inside them still wants their mother? Quite a few, I’ll bet.

Some kids might think, “Oh okay. She loved me a lot yet she gave me up? Well, I guess I’ll just have to accept that explanation because it’s the only one everyone will give me.”

I think the main sentiment a lot of young children are more likely to think (and even myself now as an adult) is:

If she loved me that much, then why didn’t she just keep me? If I was worth so much to her, then why did she still give me away? If she really loved me and cared about me… then why can’t she be here with me?

(Which is exactly what I thought at the time)

And no, there is no perfect answer to that question. Obviously if you’re pressed with that question more often as your child grows up, you will have to explain more, and sometimes all you can do is tell them that their mother loved them. But when you tell them their mother loved them, don’t go on and on about “sacrifice.” (Again, “sacrifice” may have been the truth in some cases, but a child will not necessarily understand.) Tell them the truth - that despite their mother loving her child very much, she just wasn’t able to raise them for whatever reason.

As a child, I wondered about what really happened. If my mother held me, if she even wanted to see me or thought about me. But once the “sacrifice” notion was shoved down my throat, I stopped asking because it was clear that I wasn’t going to get any answers beyond that.

A lot of TRAs don’t know the truth. They don’t know their background, their parents, their hometown of birth, nothing. And being told “She did this for you” may involuntarily convey the message “Be grateful and stop asking questions“

Yes, a mother may have sacrificed her own heart for her child.

But just because you understand the truth and can process it like an adult doesn’t mean that your child will be able to do so just as easily.