5 Do's of adoption

Part # 4

Be honest throughout the journey of adoption: I meet many Indian families that do not believe in disclosing the truth about adoption to their children. Their logic is that they love them like their own (they mean to say that they love them like their biological children) children and why should they make them (adoptive children) feel anything otherwise?

If you’re thinking in those lines, let me assure you this: You’ll be in lot of heartache. There are many issues that adoptive families tend to think that the adoptive children doesn’t need to know and forget the fact that it is part of their life that they are trying to hide.

Issue of honesty can begin with your home study and continue with talking about adoption with your children to answering questions pertaining to birth family. By no stretch imagination do I suggest that being honest throughout the journey of adoption is easy but the alternative creates more heartache than anything.

Recently there was a study done by the researchers of Queens land University of Australia, which studied a group of adult adoptees that were told about their adoption at later stages of their life, and they didn’t appreciate that. They felt that their trust is violated. What they are saying is this: They see the inconsistency in what you’re saying and what is the truth and they not comfortable with it.

Adoptees are curious about their birth family because it is part of their life. When they ask questions about their birth family, it is not because they don’t like their adoptive family but because they also belong to their birth family. In most of the cases, when the adoptees do reunite with a birth family it is a chapter in their life that they would like to turn over and move on. Sometimes being truthful could be giving as simple answer as “I don’t know” if you truly do not have an answer but don’t make up one. When the truth is revealed, they doubt you in more areas than one.

Once I remember listening to a Korean adoptee speak on this topic. She said that she never remember a time in her life that she didn’t know about her adoption. That gave her strength to face the future with confidence and courage. Every adoptive family has the responsibility to help their children live in an environment that is only based on truth and truth alone.

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