So last time I talked about sharing your child\u2019s story with them. And I realized that I had not done as well with our son as I had thought. There are definitely some difficult details that I knew I needed to share, but it occurred to me after listening to a talk at support group that I had pretty much negated the existence of one of the birth parents.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think it did it intentionally, but instead avoided it because it was a difficult situation; to be fully transparent, I really did not know how to approach it without disparaging him. That\u2019s one of the things they said in the talk: be honest, but avoid disparaging. Also, don\u2019t embellish the story and make the family of origin sound amazing, for obvious reasons, because that will leave the child confused about why they were removed or placed for adoption.<\/p>\n
All that to say, I was deeply convicted that I needed to rectify this situation; my son is 11 and closing in on the \u201cknowing his full story by the time he is 12\u201d milestone. I was incredibly thankful for the suggestion of tossing a pebble; after so much time of NOT discussing the birth dad, I knew it might come as a surprise to my son that I was bringing him up. Surprising, confusing, upsetting\u2026I knew those were all possible, so I had just avoided it.<\/p>\n
But I also knew there were going to be other questions coming my way due to circumstances in the birth mom\u2019s current life, and I needed to lay some groundwork by getting the whole story out there. And even though it was still incredibly uncomfortable, I was thankful the speakers provided a great tool for me to utilize, even though I had not asked for it. And I know you\u2019re not necessarily asking me what I said or how it went, but I want to share my experience to give you confidence to try tossing a pebble yourself.<\/p>\n
I planned my pebble toss to be at a time when we were engaged in a jigsaw puzzle\u2026so we were close together but not looking at each other; I find that helps when a difficult topic is being discussed. (I know that\u2019s a little off topic but I wanted to mention it in case it helps someone else in a similar situation.)<\/p>\n
To get the conversation (or what I hoped would be a conversation) started, I tossed out this pebble: \u201cI wonder if you\u2019ve ever thought about why you are so tall. Your mom is tiny so I wonder where you get your height.\u201d<\/p>\n
And my son responded, \u201cWhy do you say that?\u201d<\/p>\n
So I said, \u201cWell, you know how we inherit our physical characteristics from our birth family and since your mom is not tall, I wonder why you would be so tall\u2026and I wondered if you ever thought about that too.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was quick to say no, that he had not thought about that (which honestly made me think he HAD, in fact, thought about it\u2026but since we had not discussed birth dad previously, I understood if he was taking his cues from me that it was a subject we didn\u2019t talk about so he didn\u2019t want to admit that he WAS thinking about him). But also\u2026he didn\u2019t change the subject, and he didn\u2019t leave the room and he didn\u2019t tense up\u2026 so I took that as a sign that he wanted more information but didn\u2019t necessarily want to ask.<\/p>\n
So I tiptoed into an area we\u2019ve never ventured into and shared a bit of what I knew\u2026and left it at that. He didn\u2019t ask any questions and I didn\u2019t offer any more information. We just kept working on our puzzle and then I started talking about something completely different.<\/p>\n
Over the next few weeks, I had other opportunities to toss more pebbles and share more of the story. It seems to me (and it might just be my son, I realize) but by giving him small amounts of the story at a time, he has time to digest\/process and then we share more. To give it all would be overwhelming and dysregulating, which is obviously something we try to avoid if at all possible.<\/p>\n
Clearly your situation may be vastly different from mine. Maybe you\u2019ve done a pretty good job of sharing most of the story but just have to give a few final details. Or maybe you have hardly shared a thing for one reason or another. But I want you all to know that it\u2019s important to get your child\u2019s story into their own hands so they can wrestle it through and begin to fully heal.<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
Kris<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So last time I talked about sharing your child\u2019s story with them. And I realized that I had not done as well with our son as I had thought. There are definitely some difficult details that I knew I needed to share, but it occurred to me after listening to a talk at support group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kriss-corner"],"yoast_head":"\n