So, you want your child to be a positive adoptee…

Get out of your predominant adoptive parent only groups. Gingerly step into many different spaces with non-adoptive parent voices, sit on your hands instead of talking.  Instead, just listen for a while, really listen when you’re the most uncomfortable, after a while you’ll start to hear what the underlying message is saying, some easier to hear than others. And when you go into spaces that make you uncomfortable, stop yourself each time you want to contradict in your mind (or in words) what you are hearing with protestations about how beautiful adoption is.

 

Adoptees – what say you?

Every time I read an adoptive mother speak/write about her “adoptee” or “adoptees” I cringe. When you refer to your adopted child as merely an adoptee, you aren’t being cool, really, you aren’t. It’s more like you are denying they are your child/ren because you don’t want  to acknowledge they are your adopted child/ren, or something along those lines. Call them your child you adopted when you need to, or call them your adopted child when it’s relevant, just stay in your lane, it’s up to the one adopted as to whether they refer to themselves as adopted or simply use adoptee to identify their role.

 

I’m hard on adoptive parents for a reason

I’ve been pretty hard on the choices some adoptive parent have made lately and will be hard on them in the future. I’ve also held other adoptive parents up as doing it right and will do so in the future. What I won’t do is stay silent when I see something I feel is wrong that has the potential to harm adoptees; whether it’s a law, policy, a stupid meme or adoptive parents acting badly.

 

When Will Adoptive Parents Learn?

I’m not the first adoptee to speak up against adoptive parents oversharing their child’s adoption story, nor will I be the last. We routinely speak up on this issue and have for years. This is a Do Better subject dear to many of us. This is also a Respect Your Child subject we think you should care about. We have lived a lifetime of being adopted and know all too well the consequences for the one adopted, and by extension, all adoptees when adoptive parents overshare their child’s private stories. (do feel free to assume a #not-all-adoptees-feel-that-way.)

This post is courtesy of the latest rendition of oversharing an adoptee’s story on-line, the most recent adoptee video that’s gone viral.

 

Another adoptive parents say the darnest things post

On a post on WSBS FB page talking about the TLC show Taken At Birth series is this comment:

Yes just finished. Was such a crazy story! Goes to show how much education and knowledge around adoption has improved in the last 70 years but still a horrific story.

 

Because adoptive parents say adoption is so different today…

I’ve decided to add a new tag: Adoptive Parents say the darndest things. 

 

Quick thought

I think sometimes prospective and adoptive parents don’t realize that how they say something – tells the reader the person’s feelings of privilege and entitlement to adopt someone else’s baby. The quote below is in response to a comment about how birthparents should be allowed to spend time in hospital without the adopting parents there:

 

Naming in adoption

There’s no lack of conversations on naming and changing a child’s name in the online world of adoption. There’s also no lack of *reasons* why a child’s name should (or must) be changed. Here’s what I’ve learned reading those conversations about how I view names.

 

Triggers in adoption

I think everyone has triggers that can immediately set you off. I have them, although the older I get, the less I seem to care about the ones that intrude on daily life, more of a it is what it is and move on. Yet, I still can’t do that with adoption triggers, they sit with me, sometimes I’m not aware they are still there until the next time they show themselves. This post is mainly about one adoption trigger; and it’s a ridiculously ignorant adoption meme going around on general and adoption FB pages.