How to Treat Adoptive Parents
Today I am moving on to how to treat adoptive parents. I actually thought of less topics for this subject, so I will only spend one day on it. And there is a decent amount of overlap from the prospective adoptive parents as well.
-Don’t ask stupid questions like if the baby’s real parents are coming back to take him.
-Don’t ask personal questions about why the family chose adoption.
-Don’t fish for information on the birth family. The adoption story is the child’s to share with whomever he or she chooses. Plus it is not our place to share why a child was placed for adoption. Truthfully, we are not in the birth mom’s head, so we will never really know why.
-Don’t treat us like saints. (I already addressed this one previously.)
-Don’t tell us our child is worth the money we spent. We realize that our child is worth more than any amount of money.
-If a couple gets pregnant after adoption, don’t tell the “I told you so.” Adoption is not a fertility treatment. It does happen. People do get pregnant after adopting. But, not as often as people seem to think.
-Let me cry and complain. Don’t tell me I asked for it. Yeah, so did you when you chose to have sex, got pregnant and carried the baby to term. Why do you get to complain about sleep deprivation and I don’t?
-If the child looks like us, you can tell us. Once. We don’t need to be told every time you see us that little Bobby looks just like Daddy Bob. After a while it starts to feel like you are telling us to reassure us that he really is ours. We do have eyes and we can see if our child looks like us.
-Do not assume all birth moms are bad and horrible people. It is actually theorized that the women who place children for adoption are women that can and often do go on to become great mothers. It is not true that the children would have been abused and neglected if she had not chosen adoption. The children who end up in foster care are not the children whose mothers contemplated adoption.
-The last one is for employers dealing with an employee who is adopting: Treat it like any other pregnancy. The woman will not be recovering from child birth, but she does need time to bond, time to process emotions, time to adjust to no sleep. Treat her like any woman who is giving birth to a baby.
Tomorrow I will try and tackle how to treat an expectant mother considering adoption. I hope these lists are useful and let me know if I have missed anything!!
Leave a Reply