Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. This is episode 101. We're the Nelsons. I'm Shaun.
And I'm Lanette and we're really excited to be back. We've had a bit of a break for a while.
A little longer than we anticipated.
Yeah, we didn't mean for it to be this long, but we'll chat more about that in just a second.
Yeah.
But today we're really excited to be back, to be starting a new season, a new batch of episodes.
And today we're talking about some frequently asked questions that we get that we feel like we can kind of roll up into one category.
And they're all regarding relationships and what to do when a relationship gets challenging.
So that's what we'll be talking about later on in this episode. We're really excited to talk about it because it comes up all the time.
We get so many questions.
As we start this new season of the podcast, we are really planning on changing our setup a little bit so that we don't have a specific day or amount of episodes that come out every month.
Life is busy.
Really love doing this and want to keep doing it, but we're just trying to figure out a new system for it.
So it's going to be a little bit more sporadic, the dates that episodes come out.
So that's what you can expect this season, but we will be diving a lot into more of the different kind of psychological factors in adoption.
We'll be talking with more adoptees and more birth parents and more adoption scholars.
And we're just really excited to dive into all of these new topics and learn more.
Yeah.
Speaking of adoption scholars, Lanette applied to a PhD program where she,
well, I should say not only applied, but was accepted to a PhD program.
This is awkward.
Where she'll be studying adoption in marriage, family and human development relationships.
Yeah, I'm really excited for this opportunity.
Kind of terrified.
I'll have to brush off my statistics skills and really hone those.
But we'll have our very own adoption scholar on the podcast.
Hopefully.
Yeah.
So yeah, that's exciting.
Thank you, Shaun.
I am excited about that.
What else have we been up to lately?
Lots of fun stuff with the family.
We've all been kind of sick.
We put off recording this episode for so long because we've been...
We've had coughs for like three weeks.
Sick for a while and it just isn't going away yet.
So...
But we're back well enough.
So...
And we're, yeah, we feel fine.
Yeah.
We just sound maybe a little subpar today.
Yeah, coming up, Lanette and I have been asked to participate in the Utah Foster Care Symposium,
their annual symposium that they do, and we'll be leading a panel of adoptees and they'll
be sharing some of their experiences around openness.
Yeah, we're really excited about that.
That's on April 25th in Park City, Utah.
If you live in Utah and you want to come, we'd love to see you there.
Yeah, message us and we'll give you the information.
And we'll get some new details.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's really exciting.
And then Utah Foster Care has all of that information as well.
They are a fantastic organization.
Yeah, it's kind of interesting how we've come connected with them a little bit and have
partnered on a few podcast episodes and are excited to get to participate in their symposium.
Yeah.
Yeah, we've been really lucky.
And then also lately I've been working on a research paper.
This was part of my application for this PhD program, a research paper examining different
experiences with open adoption.
And so we've had a lot of kind of fun adoption things going on.
And even though we haven't been here on the podcast, we have been thinking a lot about
the podcast and about you, our listeners, and how we want to help the adoption community
and what we want to keep learning.
Yeah, absolutely.
So we're back.
We'll be in your newsfeed.
Expect to hear from us more than you have over the last couple months.
Yep.
And then one more announcement.
So we have an ebook that I've been working on.
It's basically like what we wish we had known about open adoption going into it.
And so it's a guide for open adoption for prospective and adopted parents.
And we're really excited about it.
I think it's hopefully a pretty accessible feeling tool, a good resource, I hope, to
help you or anyone in your circles who might benefit from it with understanding how open
adoption can work and how it can benefit adoptees ultimately.
So we're excited for that to come out in the beginning of April.
Yeah.
So we're looking at April 4th, which is the three year anniversary of the podcast.
That's why we picked that date.
That's awesome.
Three years.
Yeah.
Wow.
I know.
All right.
Let's jump in and start talking about the meat of today's episode.
Let's go.
Okay.
It's not me.
It's you.
I thought that was a funny title for today.
But it's true.
But that's really, I think, the root of a lot of these different problems.
So of course, we want to respect all of the privacy of different people who submit questions
and concerns to us and want feedback on these different things.
But often these problems, and we've had these problems too in our adoption relationships,
but often these problems basically come down to there's some kind of glitch in a relationship
where a biological family member wants something and the adoptive parents don't feel comfortable
with it.
Or the adoptive parents are asking for something and the biological parents don't feel like
they have a voice and can't share what they need.
Or all of these different things.
There's a lot of-
Or adoptees feeling like the parents in their relationships aren't listening or susceptible
to what they actually want.
Yeah.
And instead are projecting things onto them.
So many different issues, but basically I feel like they boil down to thinking more
internally about what we need instead of looking at this bigger picture, which in adoption
relationships is essential, right?
Yeah.
Thinking about the other parties involved and especially about adoptees.
Yeah, I was just going to say there are just so many connections in adoption, whether that's
between an adoptee and their birth family or birth siblings.
There are just so many-
There can be so many complicated relationships and it's important that we discuss really
putting the adoptee first, but also how to navigate and manage relationships around adoption.
Yeah.
And so all of that sounds really good, right?
But today we're going to be talking about some practical tips about the how.
How do we cultivate these relationships and particularly how do we address challenges
when they arise, whatever those challenges may be, right?
That's there's such a myriad of different issues we could have.
So we get these messages with questions about things like, hey, there's this person in our
adoption relationship, whether it's the adoptive parent or the birth parent who wants to do
this thing that I don't feel comfortable with on behalf of our child, right?
What do I do about this?
Or like my child's biological grandparents aren't respecting our family's culture.
Or I don't know how to include birth siblings with my other kids who weren't adopted or
who don't have birth siblings not feeling left out.
Like there's so many different questions we get.
Those are just a few examples that we tried to tweak a little bit so they don't sound
too close to anything people have sent us.
Yeah, but to lay a foundation of having really healthy connections in any relationship,
it really comes down to two important factors.
And in our experience, the most important, those two factors, those most important factors
are respect and communication.
Yeah, and especially in these adoption relationships.
But I feel like these are really foundational in all relationships, right?
This is kind of like a relationship 101.
And so when a challenge arises that you're having a hard time looking at, I feel like
the best thing to do first is take a step back and say, am I respecting this relationship?
Am I respecting the other party in this relationship?
We want to make sure that we've established a connection that's really deeply rooted in
respect for one another.
When I think about adoption relationships, particularly, we're not talking about some
casual acquaintance we have with someone at work or someone that we meet in passing.
We're talking about people that we're going to be connected with and engaging with potentially
for the rest of our lives.
And we need to show common courtesy and respect because that's what true relationships are
built upon.
You can't be fake in those relationships and have a real genuine relationship.
Well, and your child's birth family, I mean, we believe very strongly should be or become
your family too, right?
They're obviously deeply connected to your child, but also they're going to become part
of you.
And so treating these relationships with respect is so important because these are familial
relationships for your child, but hopefully also for you.
Yeah, but the challenging part of that is we control our own actions in a relationship
and we can't make others respect other people.
Yeah.
And so we can be respectful, but we can't necessarily get that respect back.
Yeah.
That is the challenging part about it because for a healthy relationship, you really want
mutual respect and you can't force that.
Yeah.
But if we're talking about, we've often said that when we meet with birth parents the first
time, it kind of has that first date feeling, right?
Where it's like you're trying to gauge whether this is a good fit for a relationship for
the rest of your life, right?
And I feel like with that same dating stream of thought, right, you wouldn't go on a date
with someone who doesn't respect you, right?
And so you don't want to be forging these relationships when there's not mutual respect.
And years ago, we had a woman reach out to us.
She was considering placing her child for adoption with us.
Oh, that was a long time ago.
It's been a long time and I don't know what happened with her, but as we communicated,
I don't think there was any intentional drama.
No one was trying to make this a dramatic, challenging relationship, but we didn't click.
We honestly just did not click with this woman.
She thought that we were trying to be rude or offensive or something and the way that
her messages came across to us, we were like-
It was just really difficult to communicate.
It was.
And I don't think that that was anything anyone was doing wrong.
We just didn't click and we didn't have mutual respect.
And in that very first trying to establish a relationship era of a relationship, if we
don't have mutual respect then I feel like it's going to be more challenging to have
it later.
And ultimately we told her we just didn't feel like this was a good fit and I think
she agreed and knew that.
But it's a challenging thing, right?
For sure.
And when we choose to adopt and bring a child into our family, like bringing them into our
family, that means that we're committing to loving and respecting that child forever.
And through adoption that includes respecting their birth parents, their birth family.
And we strongly feel that that's a fundamental requirement to adopting.
Yeah.
And so even if there's not respect coming from the other parties in your relationship,
I feel like it's so important that we set the precedent of respect and we demand that
of ourselves.
That we show our children that we respect their birth family because, I mean we've
said this so many times, I feel like a broken record, but when we demonstrate that respect
to our kids' birth families, it shows them that we respect them too, right?
They're part of them.
Yeah, exactly.
And even if the birth parent relationship isn't ideal, for example, if you have a visit
scheduled and for some reason the birth parent doesn't show up, we're not going to badmouth
that birth parent.
We're not going to talk poorly to our child about that birth parent.
And while that may be frustrating in a situation, we still need to respect them and know that
they're human and not perfect.
Yeah.
Especially because our children are going to have some similar traits, maybe some similar
challenges, and so many different connections to their first family.
And so when we show that love and respect for their birth family, we're showing our
child that we also love and respect them.
Yeah.
So just super important to have respect in these relationships.
So occasionally we'll get messages about these really challenging circumstances where birth
parents are experiencing these really big struggles, right?
And adoptive families don't know how to talk about this with the adoptee.
So maybe these are some struggles that a child might be more genetically susceptible to,
like struggles with addiction, for example.
I feel like it's so important to have this open dialogue and talk about that with our
child, not talking about it with everyone else, right?
But talking about it with our child.
Yeah.
So age appropriate and always showing respect, but keeping in mind that the different struggles
that their birth parents are experiencing might be things that they have to deal with
too.
Yeah.
So R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Aretha Franklin had it right.
We have to start with respect without it.
Relationships, true genuine relationships can't form.
Our children are going to see how we truly feel and interact, truly feel toward their
birth family and interact with them.
And if it's, if it's not genuine, they'll know.
Yeah.
And I know that can be hard.
Sometimes feelings get hurt or things are done where maybe our pride is hurt or yeah,
I don't know.
There's just so many different things that can go poorly, but I feel like doing our very
best to keep that standard of respect is so important.
Not only for these relationships that are so valuable, but also for our relationships
with our children, which is really what it's all about.
Yep.
All right.
So Brave Love is this birth parent support organization.
It's a 501c3 a nonprofit and they post a lot on social media and recently they conducted
this really big birth parent survey and it was really interesting.
I went through and read some of their different findings from the survey and different highlights
and the big things that stood out to me were that birth parents generally were more satisfied
with their decision to place their child for adoption if they felt like they received accurate
information and they were able to make their decisions without any coercion, which respect,
right?
I feel like this all ties together.
Honestly, upfront truth, all the things that go along with respecting someone.
Yeah.
And then also interestingly, this doesn't tie in as much with that thread, but birth
mothers who placed their children for adoption in 2010 or later were more likely to report
satisfaction with their decision than birth mothers who placed their children before or
during the 1970s.
I'm not sure there could be mitigating factors there like age at time of taking the survey
or something, but I feel like the way that we treat adoption has changed so much since
the 1970s that that's likely also got to do with more autonomy and openness and decision
making.
Yeah.
And then they also found that birth mothers said that they were making these decisions
with their child's best interest at heart, right?
And they felt like they received support in their decision from some people and then like
stigma from other people.
But the vast majority of birth mothers in this report said that they did feel stigma
associated with being a birth parent.
And so the amount of birth mothers who felt like they received stigma for their decision
to place has gone up by 20% since the 1970s.
I thought that was really interesting.
So the maybe the culture that exists in the United States, this is where the survey was
taken.
Yeah.
And maybe because single parents more accepted now, there's more stigma, but I thought that
was really interesting.
And so I was wondering what we as adoptive parents can do to help combat the stigma that
our kids' birth parents might be experiencing as they go about life, trying to be open and
authentic about their experiences when they're also experiencing more stigma than birth mothers
decades ago were experiencing.
Yeah.
Isn't that interesting?
Well, and I wonder too if because maybe in the 1970s, open adoptions weren't as common.
And so without a relationship, maybe they didn't share the fact that they were a birth
parent as much.
And so maybe there's more societal openness happening where we're talking about it more.
People hear about it more.
And we live in a very imperfect world where we have lots of judgy people, right?
Yeah.
That don't understand.
Yeah.
And we live in a society also that online and on the internet is way more, they easily
put words out there that have maybe more hurtful kind of punch that they wouldn't say face
to face.
Yeah.
And maybe that's also a factor.
Yeah.
And people are totally different behind the screen than face to face often.
Yeah.
Well, one more interesting finding from this Brave Love survey was that connection really
matters to birth parents, particularly birth mothers.
I think that the survey did look at both birth mothers and birth fathers, but it was mostly
looking at birth mothers probably because they had more participants in that regard.
But that support is a really important thing for birth parents and that finding adoptive
parents who are supportive of them is like a key factor as well.
So I was just thinking about how this all ties together, how we can respect and support
the birth parents in our lives and the birth families beyond birth parents too.
So I've been thinking about some different ways that we could cultivate respect.
I came up with a list of three things.
Maybe you'll have some other ones to add to it.
Yeah.
So I feel like one way that we can cultivate respect in our adoption relationships is by
listening to other birth parents stories like here on our podcast or like Brave Love.
They do a great job to sharing birth parent experiences and foster a respectful relationship
with your children's birth family.
So that's my first one.
Listening.
My second one was to forgive quickly when there's a misunderstanding.
I feel like those are inevitable, even in wonderful relationships.
There can be so many hiccups.
So to just forgive quickly.
And then number three, don't air your grievances inappropriately.
If something comes up and you need to talk about it, talk about it with the person who
you're having a struggle with, right?
Or like go talk in therapy about it, about how to do this more appropriately, but don't
just hop on the internet or troll people or I don't know, gossip about it.
Yeah, I had one specific thing come to mind, celebrating successes.
So I think particularly of one of our child's birth parents who ultimately went to college
and graduated and we attended her graduation and she pulled us aside and just said something
like, it means so much to me that you're here and get to experience this with me because
I never thought this would be my story.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
That was a really beautiful day.
I love that.
Yeah.
Celebrating together.
Yeah.
That's beautiful.
So respect.
I think it's just such an important part of every relationship.
And then we also want to talk about communication.
I feel like these two pillars are just so important and building these strong relationships
and getting over whatever challenges come our way.
Yeah.
I think that's just a huge key to any healthy relationship.
Yeah.
So I found just an article on the internet.
I don't know if it's a great article or not, but I thought it would be a good way for us
to explore communication and relationships together.
So it's called Relationship RX, Prescriptions for Lasting Love and Deeper Connection.
It's by Jessica Griffin and Pepper Schwartz.
That's a cool name.
And it was published by Roman and Littlefield Publishers.
Okay so these authors say that from what they've learned and what they've studied, what makes
relationships successful or what makes them fail is ultimately communication.
And so they talk about reflective listening, which they say is this really powerful tool
to strengthen relationships and communication.
So I wanted to just go through and talk a little about some of the things they shared.
Great.
Wanted to make sure we attribute this to them.
For sure.
So reflective listening can help save any relationship from disaster, the authors claim.
I know that's like a big thing.
So I thought we should talk about what is reflective listening.
So the goal of reflective listening isn't to solve the problem for the other person,
but rather for them to feel validated and heard.
Yeah.
So reflective listening is like when think of reflections, right?
It's like showing that you're hearing what the person is saying.
So from what I'm hearing, you're saying this and using these tools to show.
You hear, you understand, make sure that you're on the same page.
And these are things that are from Crucial Conversations as well.
I feel like we talk about that book a lot.
It's a great book for adoption relationships.
And if we've done it right, then the feeling of the person talking should be like, okay,
I feel understood now.
Yeah.
And so then when we're sure that our opinions are being respected and we're being heard
and understood, then it's easier for us to get through these disagreements or differences
because we don't feel that threatening feeling of they aren't listening, they don't understand
me.
Right?
Yeah.
And so reflective listening, I thought that was really interesting.
Yeah.
And so these authors had 10 steps for working through conflict with reflective listening.
So the first one was to find a quiet place where you can both sit down and make eye contact.
Yeah.
Eye contact is really important.
And sometimes that's not really possible because of the distance in our relationship, but with
technology, it kind of is possible.
Yeah.
And I think that between Zoom or other face to face technology bridges that gap to an
extent for sure.
So do it face to face using FaceTime or whatever you want to do that will help.
But yeah, trying to have a really hard conversation like that over text, it's so hard to have
these quality and challenging discussions in other ways, right?
Because the eye contact is so important.
I feel like it helps us better connect and better understand how the other person's feeling.
And so yeah, definitely try to like have these conversations in real time.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
So then they say to introduce the conversation and allow your partner.
And in this case, we're using partner interchangeably with other family members, right?
Like in adoption relationships.
Allow your partner to speak freely without interrupting.
So when we argue, me and Shaun, I feel like we both have a hard time with not interrupting,
right?
I feel like that's pretty common.
Yeah.
I think we can confess that.
Yeah.
We argue?
Uh huh.
Yeah.
We're not the models of perfect relationships all the time.
We're most of the time.
No, you're funny.
But yeah, so allow them to speak without interrupting and then check yourself during the conversation
to make sure you're not like sighing, rolling your eyes, but instead remember that you're
trying to understand and listen for understanding, not to project your own feelings during this
conversation.
Yeah.
And that goes back to respect too, right?
Like respectful listening.
Okay.
And then it's also important.
This is like the reflective listening coming into play to show that you're really there
in the conversation.
Like maybe repeating back what your partner says or saying, what I hear you're saying
is paraphrasing what they've said.
Yeah.
And taking note of how they're feeling.
Yeah.
So this takes a little bit of emotional intelligence, right?
To read the room, read the situation, understand why someone's saying something the way they
are and how, yeah, it takes intent.
Absolutely.
So yeah, like it sounds to me like maybe you're feeling insecure or whatever it might be.
Okay.
And then also fact checking.
Fact checking.
Yes.
Making sure that we are asking questions like, did I understand that correctly or did I hear
that right?
Did I misunderstand anything or did I miss anything in what you said?
Yeah.
And then express appreciation for your partner or for your family member for sharing and
opening up.
Yep.
And I think a really important part of any relationship and in communicating is making
sure that we apologize for any issues that we may have caused and that we're sincere
in those apologies.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then we want to address the problem and find a way to a solution, right?
We want to solve the problem together instead of looking at this as like conflict anymore.
We want to overcome it.
Yeah.
And that's the last step, right?
That's not where we go first, right?
Like how do we solve this problem?
It's instead of listening and getting there to the point where we can actually solve it
together.
So I thought that those were some helpful tools getting through some of these challenges
in communication.
All right.
So to recap, we need to respect each other and we need to communicate with each other
and we want to focus on the adoptees and their experiences and work to improving those rather
than being comfortable with ourselves as parents or looking to like focus on our feelings.
We really want to make sure that we're keeping our focuses on adoptee experiences and keeping
respect and communication at the front and center of these relationships.
Yeah, for sure.
I think a great episode that you could reference back to or think about when we're talking
to this is the episode that we did with Amy and Stephanie.
They are moms that share the same children.
One was a foster parent who adopted the other's children.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're wonderful.
That's one of my favorite episodes we've done.
The episode is called Motherhood, Different and Equal.
So I would definitely cross-reference with that one on this topic.
I loved their example of how they built respect.
It took time and how they strengthened communication, which also took time.
It was a process, but now they have this really strong bond with each other and they're united
in their motherhood and it's so good and powerful hearing about how it's helped them and their
children.
I think to just reinforce a couple things that we've shared in the past and have alluded
to in this episode, relationships don't happen because your paths are crossing, right?
You have to be intentional.
You have to work toward a relationship.
It takes time to get to know each other, to communicate, to understand people.
That's a process and that was clear in that episode too, that in the beginning it was
a challenge.
It was very difficult.
But if we put the adoptee in the center of our relationship, yeah, it's a lot easier
to put more meaningful work into those relationships because we know that it really matters.
Yeah.
Keeping that focus.
I love that.
Well, we are really excited to be back.
We're hoping to have a few more episodes over the next couple of weeks.
Thanks to each of you for listening to this episode.
If you find our podcast helpful, we invite you to share it with others that you think
it will help.
We are here as a resource to the adoption community to help learn and grow together.
Doing this over the last three years has taught us so much about a lot of things that we didn't
know.
Yeah.
I mean, honestly, I feel like, I mean, we're still very subpar in a lot of our efforts,
but I feel like it's really helped us improve and enhance the way that we parent and the
way that we connect with our kids' birth families.
And as I said, we do have a long way to go, but it's been so helpful for us and hopefully
helpful for you too.
Yeah.
And so we want to be here as a resource for you.
If you have any specific questions or topics that you would like for us to address that
we haven't, or even if we have, we can rehash them, please send us a message on social media
or at openadoptionproject.gmail.com.
Yeah and if you have any experiences that you would like to share about how respect
and communication have enhanced your relationships and your adoption experiences, we would love
to hear them.
Awesome.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project.