I’m blessed to have several close friends of mine that
represent the three different sides of the adoption triad- birthmother,
adoptive mother, and child. I find that
my conversations that I have with each of them have become more and more valuable
as I travel my path as an adoptive mother.
A friend of mine is the adoptive mother of two little
girls. She has fairly open relationships
with both of her girls’ birthmothers, and we often talk about how that impacts
their lives compared to the completely closed relationship we have with our
son’s birth family. She has fairly
regular contact with each birth mother, so is aware of lifestyle choices that
are made.
As her oldest daughter is getting closer to an age where she
would become more aware of what’s going on in her birth mothers life, my friend
struggles with what information to pass on.
Of course, you want your child to have a positive view point of their
birthfamily, but what if you make it too nice and cozy? Are you then setting the situation up for a
tween/teenager fight about wanting to go back to live with their birthparents,
because they seem so great? Remember, I
WAS that adoptive teenager who wanted anything except my parents house rules, even
though I knew nothing about my birthmother, surely she HAD to be better then my
parents.
It’s also difficult to filter out some of the not so great
decisions that are made. I know that
both of us have access to pictures/information of our children’s birth parents
making less the wise decisions. In our
case, there is drug use, unsafe decisions, and prescription drug abuse
documented in an instagram account. I
don’t plan on saving those pictures for Isaac, but those are the choices that
are being made at this time, which depending on consequences, might come out
eventually. I dug through both facebook
accounts and instagram accounts trying to find pictures that I could save for
when he was older to show him pictures of his birth family. While doing this, I struggled to find ones
that I was comfortable with my future toddler and school age child seeing. There were very few that didn't have drugs or
alcohol in them.
We understand that these are their own lives, and their own
decisions, but my friend and I both agree; these decisions influence the amount
of contact and type of information we are willing to share as our children
grown up. In this age of technology and
‘connected-ness’, information is so readily available… but what if you aren’t
comfortable with all that information?
