Loved from Birth- Talking to Children About their Adoption Story

Our three-year-old son Kyle has a special story, a unique story, a story we want him to be proud of. Kyle lived with a wonderful, loving foster family for the first two years of his life. From the day he left the hospital till the day he moved in with my husband and me, he was loved and cared for. Just after his second birthday, he moved into our home and we became a family. We always knew that openness and honesty would be necessary and healthy but we had to decide how to share very adult information with a small child. The solution thus far has been to share age appropriate information a little bit at a time in a positive tone with positive language. No secrets, no lies, no fluffy answers. Just the truth.

We talk about happy memories with his foster family and we look at pictures from when he was a baby in their home. We are working on a relationship with Kyle’s biological Mom and always speak highly of her. We have pictures of her in his memory book and plan a few visits with her every year. His biological Father is a bit of a mystery but we do keep pictures of him and will share them along with any information we have about him when Kyle is older and curious. It’s important that Kyle has no gaps in his history; we want his story to feel natural and, most importantly, we want him to know he has been loved since the moment he was born. F

or Kyle’s third birthday I made him a book. A simple book with simple drawings and simple sentences. Each page was an important stage in his life. Birth, learning to walk, meeting Mommy and Daddy, etc. Eight pages long, it’s to the point, honest and shows how much love is in his world. We keep it on his book shelf so we can rotate through with his other favourite stories. He loves pointing out his picture in each milestone and names the important people who were there to share it with him. We know that, as he gets older, the questions will become more difficult. But, we believe that by being open with age appropriate information and maintaining positive connections with his past, we can support him and love him through the whole process of growing up and figuring out his place in the world.

Most importantly, we want our beautiful, curious boy to know he has always had and will continue to have a family who loves him.

Yvonne is a foster parent for the Children’s Aid Society of London & Middlesex and birth mother of two children.