Parenting

The dreaded school Family project, or is it?

8 Comments

Our eldest daughter is in second grade. This seems to be the school year where the curriculum moves to tracking/tracing/sharing your Family Tree and/or Family Ancestry.

As a family built through adoption this could go one of two ways, we either dread it or look at it as a learning lesson. You may recall our family is living in very open adoptions so our family is looking at this project as a learning lesson one where we don’t hide who we are and use my husband and my ancestry but reach out and have our daughter learn more about herself by seeking this information on who she is.

How you ask will we approach this school project then? Good question. Our daughter (and her sister) obviously know that they were adopted, know who their family members are and how they are related to who and how so digging deeper into her family roots through her birth family is the best way to approach this project in our opinion!

We have reached out to our daughter’s birth mom and told her about the project and who else we would like A to interview which would include her Aunts and Grandparents through C. We are setting up a Skype call for all of them to interact and assist A with this project!

We believe this will further connect A to her birth family by learning her ancestry giving her a deeper understanding of where she came from. Our intent is to reach out to her birth father as well and have him contribute since she is part of both of them and their families are part of A.

It will be interesting for all of us to learn the ancestry of where A’s families come from!

(whispered) Do they know they are adopted?

2 Comments

There are occasions when someone learns our family journey to parenthood, that this question happens in a whisper to us if our girls are present.  I understand there was a time that talking about adoption didn’t happen often and even still there were children who did not know they had been adopted. 

I’m never offended, I usually smile with a bit of a laugh and say they sure do!  You see we have ongoing in-person family relationships with each of our girls birth mothers and their extended family and their birth fathers and their family.  It would be a very hard secret to keep anyway!  When we changed our path from trying to have a baby to hoping to adopt for our family building we basically sat on our rooftop and shouted it out to the world.  SO a lot of people in our immediate world know how our family came to be. 

Our girls have heard their story pretty much from the time they were born.  Each girl was entrusted to us right after their birth from the hospital.  My husband created a song/lullaby that tells them their story about our family entwined with their birth families.  Each girl can now proudly and loudly sing their song 🙂  There are many story books that we incorporate into our night time reading that talk about adoption “Tell Me About The Night I was Born” by Jamie Lee Curtis, “How I was Adopted” by Joanna Coles, “We Belong Together” by Todd Parr, “Happy Adoption Day” by John McCutcheon, and “Forever Fingerprints” by Sherrie Eldridge. 

Our girls are 7 and 5 years old now and can understand their story, that they each grew in another’s tummy.  That their birth mother and birth father made them and that’s who they get certain features and some of their personalities from.  That we were chosen by their birth parents to be their Mommy & Daddy.  That they are loved by all of us.

So it’s okay to ask in front of our girls if they are adopted, they know and they may even answer you who they were born to and who they call Mommy & Daddy all by themselves.

 

I want to be the shield to protect …

1 Comment

“Not every lesson in life can be learned–some have to be lived” ~ Arianna Huffington

As a parent you want to be the shield and protect your child/children from anything and everything.  This is very true and especially when you want to save their feelings of hurt or disappointment.  And as a parent living in two very open adoptions you want to do everything in your power to make certain your children are always happy and not touched by sadness or disappointment.

Life is full of things that may cause hurt or disappointment things that you cannot control.  All parts of life become some sort of life lessons; but for my girls at their young ages I want them not to know how it feels when someone disappoints you.  However this is not something I can control…the actions of another causing disappointment to my girls.

Life is not perfect and neither are people.  It’s just that  J’s birthmom suddenly and without warning sent a text early in the morning of our get together to cancel.  I normally don’t get in a twist but it’s J’s birthday.  The situation gets complicated from there which I’ll leave for another time to post.

At almost 5 years old this relationship between J and S is theirs to develop and build together.  Disappointment shouldn’t be part of this autonomous relationship in my opinion, not yet.

We wiped away the tears after sharing the news, we talked about our feelings of disappointment, sadness and how it’s okay to miss someone when you won’t see them when you think.

When she was younger we didn’t share when plans were scheduled as they could change without warning.  So in protecting/shielding our children from disappointment we wouldn’t let them know too far in advance.  However, we learned it’s not for us to be this over protective.  Instead we realized we need to be there to help them through their emotions of disappointment when plans change.

So now we move forward with our family plans to help J celebrate turning 5!  And although we didn’t see S we do have separate plans to see her birthfather and his family.

 

 

Balancing act …

Leave a comment

I sit here thinking nothing in life is perfect and the expectation that it should be is not good.  But here I sit thinking how to keep the balance of how often our girls see their birth families so that they feel equal.

You see at 7 and 5 years old it counts!  And at the same time geography plays an important role in the amount of visits with one family. 

We live in California and our elder daughter was born in Minnesota.  Both her birth mother and her extended family still live in Minnesota and so does her birth father and his family.  We travel to Minnesota every other summer and her birth mother visits in California at least 2-3 times throughout the year.  Between visits we rely on Skype to brush away the miles and keep the connection/relationships ongoing.

Our younger daughter was born an hour south of where we live and her birth mother and her family live in the area and her birth father and family live just a few hours away.  So as you can see its easier to get together because proximity makes it so.

I feel sad when I have to explain why we don’t see C more and why we see S more.  I don’t want our girls to feel different because of geography.  We have explained that when C was choosing a family she wanted a family in California and that was her choice and the opposite was true for S.  S wanted a family that lived locally for her own reasons.

I know I can’t make this situation perfect but I also want it to feel fair to our girls so it continues to be a balancing act.