Foster Children Should Meet Their Biological Family to Know Their Background

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When we were adopting our children more than 25 years ago, open adoption in domestic voluntary agencies and private adoptions was certainly not the norm. Today, that has reversed, with the trend toward some degree of openness. (Read more on openness in adoption from the Donaldson Adoption Plant.) Fifty-fifty adoptions from foster care increasingly include mediated post-adoption contact agreements. Why has this been the tendency? How do parents and the professionals who help families navigate these important relationships?

Reasons for Continued Contact

At Center for Adoption Support and Education (C.A.South.E.), we consistently see young adoptees struggling to effigy out who they are — many with conflicted memories of birth families and others without knowledge of where they came from, who brought them into the world. Children in foster care and those adopted are challenged by a loss that is unique from other losses due to the ambivalence of the loss. Children may spend a great deal of time wondering about their birth parents, "Are they OK? Exercise they always think of me? Will they forget me?" Many children spend a peachy corporeality of time fantasizing about seeing their birth family again.

As reflected in this extract from our newly published book, "Beneath the Mask: For Teen Adoptees," some adoptees may spend a great deal of energy with this emotional preoccupation to the detriment of their emotional and intellectual growth. Anna, adopted at age 8 from Russia, writes, "During the adoption process, I did not have much knowledge of what that entailed. I never imagined I would never run into my mom over again. If I had understood, I would have remembered her eyes and hair colour, what she liked to practise, her grinning, the sound of her voice, the mode information technology felt to hug her and everything else near her. I wonder if she thinks about me or misses me. I wonder if she still remembers me and our moments together, or even if she's notwithstanding alive … When I went to C.A.South.E. for counseling at age xiii, I was really struggling … I would cry all night long."

While there are many factors involved in the move toward continued contact, experts in the field emphasize the many benefits for children. There is substantial research confirming the importance of nativity parents to children in adoptive families and the impact of open up adoption, including The Minnesota Texas Adoption Research Project.

Continued contact provides children with ongoing knowledge of their origins, family history and important information to aid chart the course of one's identity formation. Equally children grow developmentally, new information and understanding helps them to procedure who they are at different developmental stages. Continued contact can foster self-esteem by mitigating feelings of loss, rejection, cocky-blame and abandonment commonly experienced by youth in closed adoptions. Knowledge of birth parents offsets some children'due south trend to worry almost their birth parents' well-existence. In add-on, siblings separated past adoption tin maintain relationships in open adoptions. Information technology tin take work, but by maintaining contact, adoptive and birth families tin work together to address children'due south many questions about their story.

Teens forming identity benefit from having admission to both of sets of parents. In another excerpt from "Beneath the Mask: For Teen Adoptees," Cheyenne, whose open adoption from foster intendance was finalized at age ix, writes, "Fortunately, I also know several positive characteristics about my birth family: they are intelligent, musically talented, and accept a neat sense of humour. When I expect at my own positive traits, I know I am honest, hardworking, take a keen humor and am musically talented, likewise … and my adoptive family keeps my sense of sense of humour going because they are funny, too."

When adoptive parents agree to contact, a powerful message is sent past adoptive parents: "Your birth parents are of import to you and a office of who you lot are. Nosotros recognize their importance to you." Continued relationships may help children with loyalty conflicts, as both birth and adoptive parents affirm their place in the kid'due south life. As opposed to interfering with attachment, open adoption tin can actually promote or deepen the attachment between children and adoptive parents.

Making Decisions Regarding Continued Contact

In adoptions through the foster care system, mediated agreements tin can consist of a continuum for visitation from monthly to several times a yr. Adopting parents must consider the individual needs of their children both at the electric current fourth dimension of placement and future needs. Given the complexities of these decisions, guidance from professionals to decide what level of contact is in their children's all-time interests and parents' ability to manage these relationships is highly recommended. Unfortunately, decisions regarding continued contact are often made on understandable but misguided parental fears and concerns.

Well-pregnant adoptive parents accept a potent want to protect their children. Children who come into care have histories of trauma, abuse and neglect, which may be complicated past nascency parent substance abuse, mental disease and violence. Adopting parents may harbor anger toward the nascence family unit whose earlier beliefs and choices have hurt their children. They may see fiddling reason why birth parents take the correct to continued contact with their children who were removed to protect them from damage. They may also fear that the children's loyalty to the birth family will interfere with the ability to attach to the adoptive parents. Adopting parents often worry that continued contact with the birth family will only exacerbate their children's feelings of loss and grief, and difficulty with attachment.

Professional assistance tin can help parents overcome their fears and provide reassurance that open up adoption will not undermine their role as parents or be harmful to their children. Parents demand to e'er feel in control of decisions that impact their family. They can make up one's mind what type and frequency of contact to have. Agreements oftentimes state that visits will not take identify under sure circumstances such as if birth parents are deemed not sober. And of course, all agreements state that the terms around visitation/contact may be changed if they are deemed not to be in the children'southward best interests.

Contact with the nativity family unit can take many forms besides actual concrete visits. Parents can determine if and when to substitution photos, and communicate via email, telephone calls and video conversation. Even incarcerated nascence parents can take telephone contact with the children. Parents can also engage other nascency family unit members who may be in a more stable, healthier place to accept a relationship with the adoptee and adoptive family.

Seeing the benefits of openness, many informed adoptive families seen at C.A.Due south.E desire connected contact with birth families. They are often disappointed when it is the birth parent who is unavailable or does non wish to proceed contact. This can happen for many reasons, including: i) fearing that adoptive parents don't want them in their lives, 2) feeling that they accept no right to a connected relationship, three) shame/guilt/anger at having their children taken away, 4) loss and grief; continued contact is too painful for them and for the children, 5) not understanding their continued significance to their children. With respect to this misguided conventionalities, information technology is vitally important that professionals working with birth parents back up and guide them equally to the continued significance to their children. They need to know how their connected presence in their children'due south lives can contribute to their child'southward well-existence and adoption adjustment.

Making These Relationships Work

While no important relationship is without its challenges, relationships between adoptive and nativity families can seem daunting, scary and overwhelming. However, with support and guidance we have seen both parties move to a more than accepting and collaborative place both respecting and valuing their office in the child's life. "Adoptive and birth relatives who engage in contact need flexibility, strong interpersonal skills, and commitment to the human relationship. These skills can be learned, and they tin can be supported by others, through breezy, psychoeducational, and therapeutic means," states the Contact Between Adoptive and Nascence Families: Perspectives from the Minnesota Texas Adoption Research Project.

All relationships thrive when there is trust, and developing trusting relationships normally unfolds over time. Adoptive parents must feel confident that birth parents respect their role as parents – that continued relationship is non similar to shared parenthood or joint custody. They must exist prepared to set boundaries, manage conflict or differences (trouble-solve) if necessary and accept expert advice skills that convey respect and kindness. They may be managing more than one "open adoption" human relationship and must consider their time and energy, etc. and not make commitments they cannot see or will resent having made.

In add-on, fifty-fifty if it is adamant that contact is in the children'southward best interests, that does not forestall the possibility of children having emotional reactions that are expressed through challenging behavior. Fifty-fifty in open adoption, children may struggle with loss and grief, continuing loyalty issues, and the complexities of sibling relationships. Parents may need and desire professional assistance to aid children process their complex feelings. And finally, adoptive parents' support system of family members, friends and others may question these open adoption relationships out of a lack of knowledge and understanding. Parents may need to help educate them and so that they can provide the support that is and so vital to their family's well-being.

In open up adoption, nascency parents demand support besides, but may not receive it. They will continue to manage painful feelings of loss and grief, shame and guilt. They take to manage their feelings related to the differences between themselves and the adoptive family like ethnicity or race, religion, socio-economic or when they do not agree with adoptive parents' parenting decisions. If they are raising children, they must manage those children's feelings around existence separated from their siblings. They may navigate pressure from their family members around their relationships with their birth children.

Thus, nascence parents, besides, need to utilize expert communication and trouble-solving skills. If their challenges are impacting their human relationship with the adoptive parents, and if nascency parents exercise not have access to the supports they need, we encourage adoptive parents to consider offer to invite birth parents to participate with them in counseling. Whatever the reasons for conflict, we emphasize the importance of seeking professional aid before things unravel to the point where either party is considering severing the relationship — either temporarily or permanently. At C.A.South.E., nosotros have had much success with resolving misunderstandings, hurt feelings and problem-solving for stronger and healthier relationships.

It is important to emphasize that relationships with the birth family unit are not static. Children will abound and modify, and their needs may change over time. They may desire more or different types of contact with nascence family. Nascence parents may resolve some of their serious challenges and go along to healthier, more than stable lives.

Continued contact is not a panacea or a solution to all adoption-related challenges, but as one adoptee nosotros worked with said, it can offer peace of mind for everyone. Sharon Roszia, writer of The Open Adoption Experience, reminds parents: "The question to ask is not 'Who does this child belong to?' merely 'Who belongs to this child?'"

Debbie B. Riley is the CEO and co-founder of the Eye for Adoption Support and Instruction (C.A.Southward.E.). Ellen Singer is the senior adoption-competent therapist at C.A.Southward.E..

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Source: https://imprintnews.org/adoption/connections-matter-relationships-with-birth-families-are-important-for-foster-adopted-children/36174

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