When to talk

We don't talk about our LO's back ground all the time but they do know and if ever they ask we explain in an age appropriate way ie why is BM not looking after us I will say " I am sorry she can not look after you because she has made some bad choices and she was not able to put you first when she made those choices so a SW thought you needed to be in a safe place".

Mine tend to ask at the strangest of times so I have learnt to have my answers ready. I have a grown up BD and her BF died (not in a very good way) when she was 2, she always knew about it so when we talk now she says she just always knew and she did say that when she was about 12 she was at a friends home and heard friends parents talking about her dad she says "imagine how I would of felt if I did not already know". Xx

I think it very much depends what the information is.

There are things no child or early teen can understand or process, why tell all details when this is the case? (it is probably not what HvG meant as she talks about a picture not the full picture, I have not read the article) All you do is compromising your childs mental health.

Of course children need to know from a young age they are adopted and some details like who is dead etc. There are certain things I do not tell, and I have no intention telling.

If they say "why did you not tell me when I was young", I will say because you would not have been able to process this information, it would have made you confused and afraid. That is the choice I made for you, I am sorry you do not agree, I did not tell you because I was and still am of the opinion that this information is not good for children to know.

You know what it is, whatever you do and whatever choice you make it can and probably will be used against you, so do not worry and follow your heart as you have the best intentions, that is good enough!

I have a lot of information for both children, and some of it has to wait until they are adults, my opinion is make the child first mentally strong and as stable as possible before you feed the very sick details.

I don't think anyone of us intends giving our LO all the horrid gore of the life they might of had before always age appropriate and just as much as they can manage at that age.

Some of our LO come to us already knowing more about life than most children know.
 
However stable a teenager is they can go off the rails for the smallest of mistakes we parents/life make.

Why not talk to your PAS SW Pingu?

He/she might be able to advise you on how to proceed and they must come up against this all the time.

At least you could run it by them to voice your concerns and worries.

However stable a teenager is they can go off the rails for the smallest of mistakes we parents/life make.- flowergirl

Really? In that case when you look deeper the teen was not as stable as everyone thought. And that 'one mistake' was just the drop.

I do believe that how children are parented makes a difference, but in extreme cases there is often more to it, one factor is mental health what kicks in, or kids are on the asd spectrum, have brain damage from alcohol (but not the facial features to have fas) etc.

I do not believe it is about the fact or you told them too much/not enough etc. On the end of the day there are no children anymore who find out at 29 they were adopted, the children we parent come from disfunction, are high risk. Telling a bit less early on might be better to protect them if the information is severe.

The child hold the fact that they were not informed against the parent-
I think in most cases this is not really true, but it is a way to control the parent. Especially if the child mentions how upset they are again and again.

Of course if children remember you let them talk, but I am also very careful as memories from children are highly unreliable, my youngest has vivid memories, a few too many lol, he just fantasises and lies and somewhere in there is a little truth. He also mixes up events from the past with those what happen now.

Another point is that you have to be very careful to 'awaken' forgotten memories, as it can be the brain who protects by 'forgetting', maybe at a later date when the child matures those memories come to the surface, this might be a better time to deal with them.

I think you have a good point there, Pluto. My concern with ds is what he is told, against what he believes. Lots of mixing up here and timelines are squiffed.

The other day we visited a village I lived in because he wanted to know where I lived and what school I went to when I was his age. On the drive there I was telling him about some things I did in this village. We visited this same spot a few years ago where he climbed a small tree and I said it would be nice if we could take another photo of him in the tree and compare the photo from last time and see how much he's grown. He loved this idea, but said something like 'yes because when I lived here when I was your age I used to love climbing that tree all the time, didn't i?'

It's one of my huge concerns about how he interprets information given. He has just started life story work which I'm hoping will help clarify things for him.

So, I guess when and what to tell depends on the child, but I would give as much information, age appropriately, earlier rather than later. I am also of the opinion that there are some things that really don't need to be divulged unless that incident was directly responsible for removal from birth family or had a direct impact on the child.

Pluto, when you say about the brain "forgetting" so as to protect, that would suggest not raising things unless the child does.

I know this is accepted wisdom in some quarters. Others would argue that bad stuff is better out, talked through gently or whatever.

I think DS2 would want me to continue to be as honest as I reasonably can be, when he asks me questions.

Doesn't help that the person who did life story work with him, never sent the final book!

I will ask PASW and see what he advises but I just wanted to hear what others here thought. perhaps from their own experience, or what they have read.

Thanks

I think you are right Flora at age 3 he knows the facts ie he is adopted and it will not mean very much they are just words at his age.

But as long as he knows the words as and when he is ready he will ask anything he needs to know, I think they become inquisitive around age 6 or 7 and the penny drops and they begin to look at other families and question things about them self.

I think you should answer what you can in the best way you can for them to understand but we don't always have all the answers because we were not there.

In my experience girls ask more about life then boys.

I do think we can't always go by what PASW say.

Some are very experienced, some not, or years out of date with their methods or what they have studied.

I am lucky at the moment, we have a good one, but I think it's also worth doing some reading up on things for oneself , hearing from other people's experience, and also listening to your gut feelings as your child is an individual after all, and you know them best.

I think you have to use your knowledge of the child and what they seem to want to know. They won't understand something which is beyond their cognitive capabilities at the time and won't always 'believe' what they don't wish to believe.

The difficulty is where they don't ask or bring up things that you feel they should know - but I have only the one experience of that, where it was something we knew dd should be told. Otherwise I let things arise naturally - with dd1, I used to look for opportunities to explain adoption when she was very young, but once she was around 7 or 8, she would bring it up herself and I stopped trying so hard. Only last week she suddenly asked me something about bm. She has 'changed' the facts at times - for example,she has often said that she lived with bm, though this isn't the case - obviously wishful thinking. But last week she had clearly accepted this and asked questions about bm's visiting her as a baby.

It's a long process, not a one-off thing - and it develops over time. dd2 has never been interested much in her bm or birth family - even at nearly 9, she almost never brings it up, but does talk about her last fc from time to time. I didn't try that hard to 'tell' her things when she was younger, partly as we have no photos of her bf to bring it to life, but she certainly understands what adoption means. And she has talked about it with another adoptee in her class - which surprised me when I first heard about it. Both mine have similar backgrounds in terms of why they came into care - I have told dd1 the less palatable facts, but not dd2 yet as it hasn't come up. As long as they know they CAN talk to you about it, mostly it seems to work out - so far anyway.

Moo - would it help to make a book or timeline of Baa's life story - so there is tangible 'proof' that x happened BEFORE he met you? Lots of repetition in reading it might eventually help him get the facts straight. dd2 has a recurring story that we stole her from her fc - I don't know if she truly believes it - she has a tendency to be all 'hard-done-by' in general at times and I wonder if it suits her to have a reason to be angry with us?