Recently, I attended a support group meeting in which the topic for the night was sharing your child’s story with them. At the risk of sounding overly-confident, before I went, I felt like I had done a pretty good job of things. But, as often happens when I am overly-confident, I walked away from the meeting with the realization that I had not done as well as I thought.
Now to be fair to myself, it was not terrible (there were just more holes than I had previously wanted to admit to), and it was totally fixable because I had not lied; I mostly needed to flush out a bunch of details. So overall I had a lot left to tell. And maybe you do as well.
I’m sure many of us have heard that the general consensus of experts say that kids should know their full story by the time they’re 12 years old. Now I want to pause there and say obviously only if the child is going to be able to handle it. If they are very low function or they are emotionally much, much younger, I don’t know that 12 needs to be the hard and fast rule. To be clear, the ladies running the training did not say that, but this is me interjecting with my non-professional (but lived-experience) opinion.
Now because it was a super-informative training, I want to share with you some of the other things that they discussed. First and foremost, they acknowledge that it is uncomfortable for both the adoptive or foster parent AND for the child. So much so that often times it’s never brought up because everyone’s uncomfortable. So their point in the training was this: if the child is not bringing it up, it is up to you as the adult (the steward of the story), to be the one to “toss a pebble”.
So what does that mean? “Toss a pebble”? Basically it’s tossing out a little thought about your child as they relate to their birth family and seeing if the child will engage in the conversation. For example: “You have such beautiful hazel eyes. I wonder who else in your family of origin has hazel eyes.” You’ve not asked a question, you’ve simply made an observation and then sat back to wait and see if the child will engage. The child may respond with a comment or question about their eyes or about something completely different about their family of origin. Or they might change the subject altogether.
And each one of those is perfectly fine because this exercise is not so much to start a conversation (although it could be great if you do), but mostly it’s about showing the child that you are thinking about their birth family. You can already guess that more than likely, they are as well, but they do not know how to bring it up to you; the child has many mixed emotions about it (which is understandable!) But by tossing a pebble, you’re showing that you are a safe space to talk about their family of origin.
One of the other points from the talk is that you should be completely truthful. Don’t embellish and don’t leave out details…even if it’s really hard; only when there is truth can a child begin to move forward with healing. It’s clearly not going to happen right away, but if they are left to wonder about their story, or if there are gaps in the story, they will fill in their own details which are more than likely not accurate.
Also, do not be afraid to say that you don’t know an answer. More than likely at some point there will be questions that you don’t know the answer to. It might be that no one knows the answer. So don’t be afraid to sit in that with your child as well.
One last point they made is that if you don’t know an answer, know that it very well might be that you need to seek out help from someone else…maybe someone who has experienced a similar journey to your child. But is ahead of your child in the journey and is working their way towards healing. This person will understand your child in a way that you can’t because they have had a similar experience. And this person may be able to see and validate your child in a way that you can’t. Not because you’re not trying, not because you don’t love your child, but simply because you could never fully grasp your child’s feelings and story in a way that this other person may. And this will help your child with his healing as well.
Often times for a foster or adoption child, there is a lot of felt shame in the fact that they are not with their biological family. Obviously these circumstances came to be through no fault of the child, but there still is much to work through. By sharing their full story with them and allowing them to face the facts of their reality, only then can they mourn all that they have lost and move ahead with healing.
Sincerely,
Kris