Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. This is episode 67. We're the Nelsons. I'm Lanette.
And I'm Shaun. In today's episode we are going to talk about all things open adoption and have titled this episode Adoption 101.
Open Adoption 101. Yes, with the focus on openness.
I think I did that on purpose.
Oh yeah?
Yeah.
So that I could remind everyone what the focus really is.
Just put some more emphasis on it.
Perfect.
Alright, so if you're new to our podcast we thought this would be a great place to start and kind of get an idea of what maybe unique discussions we have on the podcast.
We try to talk about a lot of different things in the adoption world, but I think one thing that does set us a little more apart is that we really do try to focus or bring conversations back to how we can make adoption a better experience for adoptees.
And at this point from what we know and from what research shows, the best thing we can do to make adoption a better experience for adoptees is have openness. Have relationships with biological families. Have open conversations.
Yeah. So in this episode we're going to discuss what open adoption is, why it matters, and what we can do to build better open adoption relationships with, again like Lanette just said, the ultimate goal of empowering adoptees.
Yeah, yeah I think one question people might have is how are we at all qualified to talk about adoption when we are adoptive parents, and we do really love giving the microphone over to adoptees on our podcast.
But as parents as adoptive parents in adoption, open adoption is something that we learned about from day one when we first went to our first orientation meeting to decide if we wanted to adopt.
I think it scares a lot of prospective adoptive parents, because it's still a relatively new concept. And I feel like it's getting better there's more conversation about it but it's still isn't really talked about that much I haven't seen much media with good depictions of open adoption that are like realistic.
So yeah so we'll discuss that today, and we're going to answer some questions that were submitted by listeners, we love doing that being able to help those in the community that reach out to us.
Yeah, and then we'll share a couple of thoughts on things that you could read or look at for a little bit more of a well rounded further learning about open adoption, some of them are specific open adoption books, while others are tools that are really helpful for building a strong
open adoption relationship. All right, so let's jump into open adoption 101. All right.
One really important thing to start off with is talking about what we even mean with open adoption. What would you say if someone asked you that Shaun. Yeah, so open adoption means that we know who our children's birth parents are, but more than just knowing them, continuing
that relationship with them past placement. After we've received a child into our home. It's not goodbye to biological parents, it's welcome to the family. And so I would say that open adoption is the way that we connect with our children's biological family with the ultimate goal
of creating a relationship between our children and their birth families. Yeah, we want to continue that that relationship we don't want it to be severed when papers are signed. Yeah, anything that you would add if someone asked you the same question. I thought that was really good.
I think that's a really tricky concept because it can mean so many different things. You're going to hear later on in this episode from our friend Joanna, she's going to talk about an openness agreement that they signed with one of their adoptions.
So I want you to be on the lookout to listen and see how broadly open adoption can be defined. It's a wide swing. But when we talk about open adoption, we feel like it's really important to have as much openness as possible as feasible and reasonable.
Yeah, and ultimately, I keep saying ultimately, but at the end of the day, what's best for our kids? Yeah, and as many questions as we can answer and as many questions as birth parents can answer for our kids, the better.
Absolutely. So we talked a little bit like that very first orientation meeting. Do you remember when we went to our first adoption orientation meeting? Yeah, I was super like,
I've never heard of this, and this is making me really uneasy. Does this look like co parenting? Do I really become dad?
Like if the first father is still in the picture, then are you still? Yeah.
Yeah, so I was really insecure. A lot younger, at least at this point now, and less educated, probably the biggest thing. I really had never heard of it and needed to learn a lot more.
Yeah, same for me. I remember feeling a lot of insecurity about it, and just not really being sure what I could expect with that it felt like this huge unknown concept.
But luckily, before we adopted, we got to know a few different mothers who were considering adoption and built these really great relationships with them, where I think that helped us realize that it's not scary to keep a child's biological family in their life.
And we also surrounded ourselves with some other couples who had already adopted, and we had heard a lot of experiences of what their adoptions had looked like, and what relationships looked like.
We had heard from, like you said, some mothers that had placed and kind of shared their preferences. And so really just trying to educate ourselves in those months before we had our first adoption was really, really helpful.
Yeah, absolutely. I think our families had some anxieties about that too. Do you remember any of that?
I remember, I mean, telling my parents that we were moving forward, they'd known for a long time that we were considering adoption. And my dad, and I think this is kind of common amongst my dad's generation, but their questions were like, wait, aren't you afraid they're going to try to take their child back from you after you adopt?
Do you have a relationship? If they know where you live, aren't you afraid of that? And I think it's been fun to see that over time, their understanding of open adoption has grown, and their kind of acceptance of how this all works is now just in a great spot.
I love that. Well, and it's such a trust based relationship, you have these biological parents who are literally entrusting their child with you to raise forever. And it seems very reasonable to give them that trust back and say, yeah, I trust you to stay in our lives.
And you're trusting me to parents every day and yeah, it just makes sense to me. Yeah, you would have that trust to be a mutual thing.
So if you're walking into adoption for the first time as potential adoptive parents, and you're still uneasy about the idea of openness, here we are.
Hopefully this episode helps, but educate yourself. Listen to adoptees, listen to birth parents that have open adoptions, and consider what you want for your children and how an open adoption can help provide those things that they want.
It's so interesting to see that broad swing of where we were first so anxious and worried about what this might look like. And then when we had situations presented to us where we wouldn't be able to have an open adoption, because that's not what the biological family wanted.
We were just like, oh, well, we don't really want that. Like, that huge shift of mindset where it suddenly became what we really, really wanted.
Yeah, and actually I remember, I don't know if we shared this long, long ago in our early episodes, but when we were first filling out adoption paperwork, we actually just skipped the questions about openness because we just couldn't decide on how.
There were a couple different check boxes that we could click and we weren't sure how much contact you'd want. And when our daughter's birth parents reached out to our caseworker, and they were asking about openness.
She reached out to us and said, Hey, we realized that you never really checked these boxes. What are you? What are you open to? And in the time we had been waiting.
I mean, it had been many months at that point.
Our feelings had changed. Yeah, we had talked with I don't think matched us the right word, but we talked with a different mother who had ended up parenting, but we had grown to really, really love her.
And that relationship I think helped prime us to realize the openness was what we wanted. Yeah, we had spoke with her for probably three months, and I couldn't imagine her giving birth to a child, placing that child with us and then us never talking to her again or having the same type of relationship that we had.
So I think that when that question was presented again down the road, we were like, Oh yeah, like, for sure. We want them to want as much contact that we can have.
Yeah. Yeah, some of the common questions and concerns that we do hear when there's a lot here about openness. Are your kids confused. Do you feel like our kids are confused. No.
Yeah, I have heard that. Maybe not so much recently, but in the beginning, like, do they know who mom is, do they know who dad is, like, what do they call each other, what do they call. Yeah, what do you call everybody is a big question. Yeah, sure.
And that's going to differ in every family. In our family, most of the time our kids call their birth parents by their first name.
We had shared their adoption story as like stories all the time when they were young. And so it wasn't this big reveal at some point.
Well, yeah, let's see their birth parents as often as we could. Yeah. And grandmas and grandpas are grandmas and grandpas. And that's what we call them. One of our children's birth moms doesn't like being called by her first name.
And so kind of the nickname that we picked or she picked actually was Bma short for birth mom. And actually earlier today, our youngest at the kitchen table this morning.
He I think it was because we saw her just a few weeks ago at Christmas. And when she was coming, he was looking out the window and he's like, where's Bma? Where's Bma?
And this morning at breakfast, he was saying, where is Bma? And I showed him a picture and he didn't know it was just a picture and he's like, hi Bma.
So it is going to differ between every adoption, but that's something that you probably want to figure out early on and then just stick to it.
Yeah. Yeah. Also, we do have a lot of people who have asked if we're afraid that our kids biological families will take them back, which in our case hasn't ever been a fear.
No. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that that may be a little bit of Hollywood speaking. I mean, it's kind of like what we were just talking about a minute ago about trust, right? You want mutual trust.
No, I, I just have never had that fear, honestly. Yeah. And granted, we have to be sensitive to lots of different situations. All four of our children were domestic infant adoptions where we had connections with birth families and brought all of our children home from the hospital.
Now there are other situations where parental rights are terminated. And I mean, mostly in the, maybe the foster care type of situation where maybe it wasn't as smooth of a transition from child coming into your home and having to think about what type of relationships you're going to have.
It takes time to build trust. Yeah. It just might take time to build that trusting relationship. Yeah. And so you have to start from the beginning. Yeah. Build it up.
Yeah. We also get questions about whether we're afraid that our kids will love their birth family more than they love us.
Which I don't know. It just makes me smile. Of course they love their birth family and we're not going to try to make them choose who they love more. That's, that's weird. Yeah. And the reason we foster a relationship with them is so that they can have more love in their lives.
Right. They love more people, more people love them. And it's a, it's a really healthy thing for them. Not a competition. No. Yeah.
Are we, we left now, but I think that we probably had some insecurities. We probably had some of these fears, but, but yeah, they did not last long at all if they were there. Yeah. Yeah. What about naming? We do get a lot of people asking if we named our kids.
Yeah. I don't know how to take that sometimes. Like, did you guys give them those names? Like if they're asking if we actually picked these names or can they say that they're terrible or something?
No. Um, again, that's going to be different in every situation. And in our situation, it was different in each one. Um, I can, I can talk through all four of them really fast. Yeah. So with our first, uh, we went out to breakfast with her birth parents and just shared a name that we both really liked and the significance that it had both first and middle name. And they were like, wow, we really liked that. And we like, why are you like that? And that was it. It was really quick.
We all just started calling her that name. Yeah. And then with our second, um, that was a really quick adoption. We met him the day he was born and, um, his birth parents asked what we wanted to name him. And we were like, well, do you like this name? And in a really, I mean, really mature, uh, response, his birth mom said, I like that name, but it doesn't matter if I like that name. He's your son and you get to name him, which was totally not a response.
I ever thought, um, we would get in that type of situation. Um, with our third, we had picked a name that we both liked, but, um, his birth mom had some issues and we didn't want her to really dislike his name.
There were, there were reasons. And they were good reasons. Yep.
And so we said, okay, well, here's our top three names. And we were pretty comfortable with all three of the names. And we said of those three, which would you pick? And she picked one and it was great.
And I think that was Lanette's number one, uh, besides the one that we had looked at before anyway. And so it worked out awesome. And then with our fourth, um, we kind of toenamed.
Yeah, we, we collaborated over text for quite a while. We had a lot going back and forth trying to figure out the right name, but once we got there, we all just knew it was perfect.
Yeah. And it felt really right. And the rest of her pregnancy, that was the longest we were connected, um, before birth.
Yeah. And the rest of the pregnancy, we just all referred to baby as his name and it was really, really sweet. So yeah. So to answer that question, it's different in every situation.
All right. Another question we get pretty often is who makes the decisions? Like, is this a co-parenting kind of situation? What does it look like?
And I mean, I imagine in some families, it might be a little bit more collaborative, kind of like our co-naming situation we just talked about. But for our family, we're making the day to day decisions.
And of course we are open to and listen to thoughts that birth family have about things that might come up, but, but yeah, we're making the decisions.
Yeah. Um, I don't think there has ever really been anything. I can't think of any time where the parents asked us to do something that we weren't already doing or that we didn't want to do. Yeah.
I mean, maybe other of our listeners have had other experiences. And if so, on Instagram reply to the post when we post this and share your experience.
Yeah. We can talk about that more if you'd like us to. Yeah. Uh, we also have heard a lot of people more than I would expect say, I could never love a child that wasn't mine.
And so, uh, this comment really bothered me initially the first few times we heard it. I was just like, oh my gosh. Uh, I think it's kind of multifaceted, right? Because we look at our kids as ours.
Like they feel like our own kids, but then at the same time, like who can really say they have ownership of a kid?
And then also furthermore, if you don't feel like you could love a kid that's not biologically your kid, then you probably shouldn't adopt. And that's okay. I think it's a good thing to recognize if this is not a good situation for you.
Yeah. So I don't know. Yeah, it's.
And I think maybe my response a long time ago would be, well, what does biology have to do with love in the first place? Like, I hope nobody's biologically related to their spouse.
Um, and, or their significant other, their partner, um, biology doesn't equate to love and they become your, your, your people become your people, right? They are our children.
So, yeah, um, never struggled that because all every time there are kids. Yeah. For us, we've always just felt it click and it's not been an issue.
I think to that, to that question though, I might say bonding with a baby is different for every child. I've talked to people, both biological parents and adoptive parents who have a new baby.
And it's hard. Uh, you don't necessarily, you don't automatically bond with every baby that you have immediately. Um, there's a process and there's lots of things that books are recommend like skin to skin.
And I mean, there's a plethora of things that we can do to foster that connection and each child is going to fill and going to be different, whether they're adopted or biological.
Yeah. Yeah. I think we've talked before about how we did feel like one of our kids might've had a harder time bonding with us and he did bond with us, but it took a little longer and it took a little more intentional work.
But, but yeah, it is something that is important to talk about and to not let stigma get in the way of getting help if you need help with making that happen.
Yeah. Uh, one more thing that we kind of want to talk about before we go to some of the listener submitted questions is maybe the nuance difference between what works best for us versus what works best for your adopted child.
Yeah. Yeah. Like when you're talking about having an ongoing relationship with the biological family, I feel like a lot of adoptive parents kind of fall back on, Oh, well, we can't have that much contact because like we're too stressed about the visits or our older kid who's our biological child.
They don't like the visits or I don't know. I've heard multiple thoughts on those lines and I know they're not coming from a place that's trying to dismiss the needs of an adoptee, but it's really important to recognize that these open adoption relationships can be beautiful for everybody.
And they are a work. There are a lot of work, but they're for your child. They're for the adoptee and you have to do things that can be hard or uncomfortable or maybe time consuming.
Yeah, we've, I mean, we've interviewed dozens of adoptees, both coming from closed and open adoptions and either way, there are going to be times where they have questions. They're seeking to understand parts of who they are.
And for the most part, we can answer almost all of those questions. If we've developed and maintained a good open adoption relationship. Yeah, which is really empowering when we talk to people who grew up and closed adoptions.
I just think I hope that open adoptions are building a better path to identity and self awareness for adoptees.
And I think it's going to take time to see that because there aren't very many adult adoptees who grown up with open adoptions and the openness has I think increased and become more liberal over time.
So it's going to take time to see exactly how this all plays out. But on that note, we have a couple episodes coming up over the next several months. Yes, where we do have some adult adoptees.
We're really excited and open adoption relationships. Yeah, growing up. We're super excited about that. So maybe let's switch gears a bit and look at some of the questions that were submitted.
And for this one we are going to go over to a little mini interview with our friend Joanna pace. We had a listener submit this question I just didn't know how to answer it but I thought of you immediately and remembered that you have experience with this.
And this listener asked, I would love to hear from people with experience and open adoptions in states that require packers. So a packer is a post adoption contract agreement. And it's also sometimes referred to as an open adoption contract.
So it's a contract between adoptive parents and biological parents that outlines contact between them once the adoption is finalized what that's supposed to look like.
So they're not legally enforceable in all states, but in states that recognize post adoption contract agreements, you need to file them with the court at the time of finalization.
And one of the states legally binding packers is Arizona. And so we're here with our friend Joanna, and she and her husband Matt were in episode 50 of the podcast it's a wonderful episode, and they have experience they signed a packer when they adopted their
second child in Arizona. So we had Joanna join us to share a bit more about what that entails and what their experience looked like.
So, can you tell us first, just what your experience was like when you signed that agreement.
Yeah, absolutely. We had discussed it ahead of time. We were working through an agency for this particular adoption with our second son.
And the agency was for all intents and purposes a lot more conservative about what open adoption looks like, then, then what Matt and I had in mind and also what our son's birth mom kind of hoped for our son's birth mom hadn't placed before and so she was,
she was excited about our willingness to do open adoption, and, but also she didn't know and and the agency was unfamiliar and so most of the time like early on in the adoption we had to sign paperwork saying that we were going to be have open contact
without their.
I want to say supervision. Yeah, because usually the adoption agency is like on the phone with you the entire time.
Yeah, yeah, like, and so.
So we had to first of all sign paperwork saying we're going to have contact without the agency, and then we assume any risks associated with that.
And she also had to sign something like that and then so yeah, and then also even when we did that the agency kind of encouraged us to have an alternate phone number as like a Google Voice number instead of giving our own number and
then I like, no, we're not doing that.
So, we just because for us, we had already built a relationship with her and it felt weird to be giving her.
Like I don't know already had a relationship and I, it was, it was weird to do that. So, um, so yeah, so that's the backstory of the agency was trying to kind of help and facilitate, while at the same time not understanding what we actually wanted.
I asked our son's birth mom because of this question.
What if she had had any input in the process, and she said, she didn't remember having any input.
But she, she did say like I want to open and then the agency said okay we'll make that part of the contract. When, so when we when relinquishment happened our contracts included the packet included like an open, open contract and our recollection
between the two of us we were, we were texting back and forth trying to remember what Ashley said. But she said, she thought it was pictures twice a year, and the letter once a year until the child turns 18.
Wow, that was the open adoption agreement. That was the open adoption agreement is what I remember and I remember talking with her and both of us just laughed because it was so, so minimal compared to what we wanted.
And this is a first school yeah yeah really really old school and we, we had been there for, we had been in there, a few months prior to our son's birth just so we can meet her and get to know her.
And so we finished a trip to come down to Arizona and, and just kind of meet in person, see, see.
And she had invited us to come to a doctor's appointment for our son so that was kind of fun like a prenatal ultrasound or something and.
And so we'd been there in June, and then he was born at the beginning of August, and, and he had been, they had an induction date. And so because this hospital is small we'd end up spending the whole week together while we are waiting for the hospital to have room
and so we had, we've been spending time all week. And then when, when he was born and then a few days later with relinquishment we were signing the agreement with the adoption representatives adoption agency representatives and they said have you, you know, have you guys
talked at all since the birth and we're like, yeah we've been hanging out the whole week you know and she was like, oh, oh interesting. And we signed the agreement she's like oh here's the agreement you're agreeing to do pictures twice a year.
And I was like here's our texting back and forth I've already sent her five pictures today you know so it was just funny. It was just funny we kind of laughed about it all like Katie, our son's birth mom also kind of chuckled she's like I know that you guys are going to do way more
and we said yeah obviously we want an open adoption and to me what was in the open adoption agreement didn't actually feel like an open adoption to us because of our previous experience with open adoption with our older son so that was interesting.
That was what was in it. So, we, we chuckled and we smiled I said of course we'll sign this because we want to hold ourselves to that standard at a very very very minimum. So, very interesting.
Thank you. So, it's really interesting I feel like packers have the potential to be super helpful if they're done in a more personalized way where maybe you can sit down and talk together and say hey this is what we're thinking what do you think how do we want this
relationship to look as goes on what do we see for that. I think that could be super healthy to talk about but you guys didn't have any input in your pack right.
Yeah, I feel like we had the conversations.
Separately from the packet. So that was good like we already have those.
So, it was just not necessarily like with the other people who might be curious. We didn't have a legally enforceable document, talking about that the discussions that we had had together.
I do feel like for for a lot of birth moms. That is such an important. That's such an important thing, especially if it's, I don't know, just to, to hold adoptive parents accountable for the promises that they make at birth, recognizing of course
that they look different throughout the years, according to what all parties need, but, but the research is clear that for the child, the best thing is when possible having this healthy cooperative relationship so I don't know, it's just interesting,
I'm glad that we signed it I was glad that it was there. It doesn't give me any sort of anxiety because, because we do have that foundation already. And because she's been extremely respectful and disrespectful of us and our boundaries as well so it's never an issue.
So, that is, that was our experience with the document. Yeah, so interesting. I thought that it was really interesting that they just had had this generic agreement that you guys used, but it made me think of another birth mom that we've talked to before,
where she had matched with the family, and was planning on placing with them, but then they sent her an open adoption agreement. And just like for her records before baby was born or anything and she read through it and she was like you know, this isn't
what I want like I want something different than what this is. And so ultimately she ended up choosing a different family. And it was all because of that agreement.
And I'm sure some people could look at that and say oh that's so sad like why would I want to change an outcome like that, but I think that there's so much potential for packets to be really helpful and adoption and so much good and I love your take on that
too where it's holding yourself to a higher standard, and just being really open right where you just say hey, we're going to do this, commit to this.
And yeah, it shouldn't be a scary thing I really love that. The downside that I read about for packets is that they're not enforceable in so many states.
And the even in states where they are enforceable it's very challenging and very costly to actually do anything if someone's not following through the agreement. But yeah, really interesting topic I really appreciate all of your help with that.
Thank you Joanna. You have anything else you want to talk about with that.
Maybe testing, like what it was like adopting one kid with a pack and one without or I don't know because you have such open options. So, we have such open options our first son is what there's a family relationship there and our,
our biggest thing was that we didn't want any weird family secrets.
So because we've seen that, especially with adoptions within families people somehow.
I don't know, I don't know why but yeah we we didn't want any weirdness so we just said yeah let's please make it open.
And there, there were less documents on a whole because it was a private, private adoption privately matched and through.
Yeah, just done, you know lawyer social worker, very minimal crew.
But, but with a commitment I think always for at least for the birth moms are the our kids birth moms. I feel like we've tried as much as we can to show our commitment through actions.
So even before to try and include, include them.
For for Katie for this for this one with the packet, I feel like our commitment to talk with her all the time before he was born our commitment to go down to Arizona and meet her ahead of time.
That kind of showed her ahead of time like who we are and what we're about and she, she talked on the phone with our older son's birth mom and had kind of like a history of our openness with her and so I think the packet was what the packet
itself wasn't necessarily the agreement at all, but it was just part of the forms that the agency does to kind of watch out for the birth moms, although it was not personalized and I kind of wish it had been and I didn't ask that much about it so I feel bad that I should
have asked more.
I mean, but that's in retrospect it's so hard to know everything in the moment right. Do you have any thoughts on ways we might be able to improve agreements like that.
I mean, I don't, I do hear, I hear a lot, the, the anxiety from adoptive parents on the idea of like, oh you're, you know, you are committed to this openness I hear anxiety from people.
Because of the legal side of it like what if this happens and what if that happens. And at the end of the day, adoption. To me, there's like a lot of trust going in on both sides.
And, and the legal part right the legal part for birth mom. They have to do it all at once. It's like one big legal commitment right at the beginning.
And it's irrevocable. And for adoptive parents, their legal part, they sign, and then the rest of their life is a choice whether or not to.
It's like an ongoing commitment and so I don't know it's. I see that people are hesitant, but I feel like, as long as there's, there's like a willingness to continue the communication and figure out what the what each specific birth mom is meeting.
I don't know because I know that sometimes they want to pull back it's not like, I also would say, for me, I like having a baseline.
I wouldn't want to be too specific or too detailed because I know that it can change and people's needs change. But at the same time like respecting and honoring the place of their first parents.
Thanks Joanna for being willing to do that. We're grateful that you could jump onto the podcast with us and help us out with that since we personally don't have a lot of experience there.
Okay, so another question we have. She is asking, while we're still building these relationships, is it appropriate to check in on birth parents about their emotional health and ask like how they're doing are they seeking counseling.
Is it appropriate to even bring it up if they're not bringing it up themselves. How do you check in. Yeah, that's a really good question.
And I think it's appropriate. I mean, I think it's going to differ a little bit on the relationship that you had pre placement. Yeah.
We should have the emotional and mental health of our birth parents in mind. Yeah. Well, and I believe it might be different in different states but we are responsible to help pay for counseling that our kids birth parents might need.
So yeah, I feel like it's super appropriate because we need to make sure they know like hey, we're okay, helping and paying for this counseling and making sure that you're as well as you can be. Yeah, and many expectant mothers receive counseling pre placement.
And a lot of that is leading up to placement. And in our, in our circumstance, we've had a few that kind of stepped away and didn't meet with a counselor didn't want to meet with a counselor refused counseling.
And ultimately that was maybe harder for them, and then they finally were able to get some help later on, whereas it, if it were a little bit closer upfront to closer to the time of placement. Perhaps there would have been some tools, coping mechanisms that those counselors
could have helped with even more. But you can't force someone to meet with counselor but making sure that they know that you care about their mental and emotional health, that you're willing to provide that connection with with a counselor.
Yeah, showing that you're willing to help that you care. I mean you obviously don't want to push it if they don't want to talk about it but I think making sure they're aware that that is something you care about and you want to help with if they need it.
Yeah, yeah.
I guess maybe one other thing that would add to that if you feel like any reason, and like approaching that with biological parents may strain the relationship that you have with them.
It might be appropriate for you to reach out to your, your caseworker, like adoption professionals who you worked with, who probably have a connection to hers, and encourage maybe a conversation between caseworkers, so that the, that someone can reach out.
If it's not us as adoptive parents, encouraging that connection.
At least some time somehow trying to facilitate it I think is a good thing to do.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, another question how do you foster relationships with someone who you would otherwise not be friends with. Why don't you start that one. I think that's a great question.
So, I mean, it's hard to say that I wouldn't be friends with our kids, birth parents at this point because we are friends, we are family with them we love them.
Yeah, I could see that being a concern and an issue in the beginning, especially when you're trying to build these relationships.
I think a few key things can help as you're trying to really build those relationships and make it healthy.
I think communication, just making sure that you make communication as open as possible.
I know that a lot of birth parents say they don't want to step on anyone's toes and they don't want to offend anyone. And so they might not talk about what they want, or what they need.
When they're talking to adoptive families, especially post placement. Yeah.
And yeah they're afraid of being shut out which is so sad. And so I think maybe if you can set the culture in the beginning and always be working on making sure this culture is reinforced where you're very open
to hearing thoughts on maybe how you can improve this relationship or what these families need.
That's probably a really good first step, making sure that you're just really open to hearing whatever they want to share.
Yeah, I think another maybe recommendation I would have here is that if you're unfamiliar with or uncomfortable fostering a relationship with someone who's different than you, then reach outside of yourself, find people with different,
you know, political views or faith traditions, or that are of a different race, or just people that are different than you, live in different circumstances than you and build a friendship with them.
And people are awesome. And there are amazing people in every culture, in every neighborhood, right?
And so just being more comfortable getting to know people and connecting with people is a good thing. And it will help in the circumstance, whether the birth parents of your children are very much like you or very opposite.
Yeah. Yeah, you can have close relationships with people who are different from you and that's, I think, really healthy. Maybe society has been making some shifts lately where that seems harder.
But I think that's an important thing to try to always be nurturing. Yeah. Yeah.
Another question that we get is how you set healthy boundaries and what's the right balance. It's a hard one. It is a hard one because it is different, so different in every situation.
We start with the adoptee in mind. And what is the healthiest, safest thing for our kids? And knowing that they are going to have lots and lots of questions that they're going to want to have this connection at some point, whether it's early in their life or later.
And once we've begun to foster that relationship from from an early time, that that connection will be so much more natural, less awkward.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I feel like with technology now, there's really no excuse to not have some kind of contact and relationship.
Like you can Marco Polo and Zoom if you're not comfortable yet with having an in-person get together or if your house is a mess or something or I don't know if for some reason you don't want to do something in person.
You can still have a face to face conversation with someone with technology, which is incredible. I just feel like you can make it work. There's always going to be something you can do to connect.
Yeah, I remember. I think we watched a movie or listened to something about the history of adoption in the United States.
And even now, I think the definition of an open adoption is like being willing to send a picture once a year or something like that.
And we have moved way past that. And I think it's because technology aids a lot in that.
We have like Facebook Messenger channels set up or group texts set up where we'll post pictures and videos just kind of all the time as a way that we're always getting like even specific pictures to birth family.
And then, of course, they follow us on our regular social channels and stuff like that. So they see us and they're just part of our lives.
But yeah, so we want to do what's best for our kids and we want them to be safe. And in some situations, it's not safe, at least in the beginning, for them to physically be together.
And so we have to do what's best. But ultimately, they're going to want our children are going to want that connection.
They're going to have a lot of questions. And the better the more that we've tried to facilitate and foster a good relationship upfront, the better that's going to work out for for our kids.
And again, back to the beginning, that's why we do this. Yep. That's the whole point. All right.
This next question is a little bit different. It's isn't it better to just not tell a child they're adopted so they don't have trauma?
Yeah. So we've had people ask this question to us. And the answer is no.
Secrets are just not good. Don't keep secrets like that from your kids. Yeah. No. Yeah.
There there's especially today with technology the way that it is.
Everyone doing like ancestry DNA tests, the type of things like it's going to come out at some point. Absolutely. And so I can't even imagine and I know this has happened to many people because we've heard it on the podcast.
We've heard many people share. I didn't know I was adopted until blank age.
And a lot of times that's in the in their younger, like kid years, preteen years. But sometimes it's they're an adult and traumatic, right?
And you do not know this core part of your story. And I don't know about everybody else, but I would immediately lose so much trust in my parents because they kept this huge secret from me.
Part of part of who I am. And I think really that would fracture my relationship with my parents if that were the case. So yeah.
So they're going to find out. And I always say this. I think it's really important to remember when you love your child, which I hope you do. We all love our kids, right?
When you love your child, you love all of them, right? You love every part of them. And so if your child was adopted, you love their biology. You love every part of them.
And if you're not going to talk about their biology or their biological family, it makes it seem like you don't love that part of them.
Like it's some kind of secret, like there's shame attached to it. And that is going to project the opposite feelings that you don't want to be projecting on your child that you don't love every part of them.
Yeah. So upfront, honest and from the very beginning. I mean, you got to do this best for your family.
But for us making it really natural to talk about all the time from the time they're a super little baby, it's just part of who they are.
And it's part of our family culture. And it doesn't, it's not a weird thing. It's not this thing that makes them stand out.
Like in our family is an outcast or something like that. It's just part of their story. And they own it.
All right. So this next question is, does open adoption make you feel like less of a parent? If I'm doing all of the work, I don't want to share the credit. How do you balance that?
I mean, you are doing a lot of work. But that question, and I'm not, I don't want to offend anybody, but that question is a little bit more like me centric, me focused rather than children or child focused.
And so step back and ask why you're really wanting to parent. Why do you want a child? Is it filling avoid? Is it filling childlessness?
Or are you trying to like, yeah, feel awesome and you want some kind of recognition or reward? I mean, yeah, I'd be careful. I'd be careful.
I mean, there's a lot of moments where you're like, sweet. I am a successful dad. There's a lot more moments where you're like, man, this is hard. I suck at this.
And if you're doing it for the credit, those are going to be a few and far between moments.
Well, and yeah, you're going to feel sometimes like you're sharing the credit with their bio family. And I think that's fine.
Well, and I love it. Like I remember one time our daughter had a soccer game and her birth mom and her husband came and grandma, grandpa came to the game.
And like, I remember afterward she ran up to her birth mom and gave her a huge hug. And her birth mom said, I am so proud of you. You did such a great job.
And for me, it was just this super tender and sweet moment to see her birth mom being able to just love on her and support her and congratulate her on a job well done.
There was no like jealousy or resentment. It was just this really awesome sweet moment.
And so again, I think we've got to be thinking about our kids. We've got to be thinking about how we're doing what we can.
What is the best thing that we can do to help them emotionally through all of it?
Absolutely. All right. This next question is how do you know if an adoption situation is something you can handle?
And especially with addiction as this person's question.
That's a good question. That's hard. So we do have an episode that talks about
infants who are exposed to different substances and utero. So I would refer you to that for sure.
But yeah, it's hard and we can't really tell you because it's different for everybody.
But definitely counseling and meditation, prayer, if you're a religious person, like talking with your partner a lot.
Yeah. And, you know, I think in the beginning, I remember us counseling with our caseworker and she said something like,
if it could happen to you naturally, then maybe you should be open to it. So for the circumstance was a child with Down syndrome, for example.
Could Lanette and I have a child, a biological child that has Down syndrome? Absolutely in the realm of possibilities. Right.
And so don't turn your nose up to that situation. Yeah, that was her example.
And this was her counselor. We're going to apply to everybody. And then with that counsel, I thought, well,
I don't think we would ever have a child that was born addicted to a substance.
Does that mean we should always say no to that kind of situation? Yeah.
I think in the beginning that maybe I thought, oh, well, it wouldn't have happened to us naturally.
So maybe I probably don't need to go into that. But I think my heart changed over time. Yeah.
And people, people have hard lives. People make decisions that spiral out of control and can't hold everything against the person.
And especially a person who's trying to make a decision for their child, that's absolutely heartbreaking and wanting the best for their child.
And they choose adoption. Yeah, I would just say be willing.
I mean, counsel together as a family, as a couple, or if you're an individual adopting counsel with other family members, counsel with your social worker,
maybe even a therapist to try to talk through things. Educate yourself.
Like Lanette said, we did a podcast about this adoption. Med-Ed was the group that we spoke with when we did that.
And just educate yourself because it may not be like what you're imagining. Yeah.
Keep an open mind and an open heart and it'll it'll work out.
You'll understand, I think, eventually what might work for you and what might not.
Yeah. Another question that we got was how do you navigate openness when our child acts scared with their bio mom?
That's a hard question. This is a hard question. So we're going to answer this with two different kind of scenarios.
So if there is not a history of abuse or neglect, then I would say you need to keep the openness.
You need to try to keep nurturing that relationship.
Some kids are naturally more shy, get a little more wary around people who they don't know or see often.
And that doesn't mean you should just be like, oh, well, we don't want to see birth mom right now because you're scared of her.
You wouldn't do that if you were visiting your parents, right?
You wouldn't be like, oh, we're not going to visit grandparents anymore because our kids cry when they see their grandparents.
You would try to mend that relationship and help nurture it so that it can blossom and your child's not scared of them anymore.
Yeah, I think one of our children, our youngest was born in 2020.
I don't think you saw anyone else's like face in public that didn't have a mask on it forever. Right.
And so he was a little bit more weary of people. And even times when his birth mom or birth dad visited, it took a little more than our other kids.
But some things you can do that might help. Like Lenna talked about earlier, like doing FaceTime or Zoom,
showing pictures and normalizing the relationship with this person so that they know who they are.
I think that could help. Any other thoughts?
Well, when they're brand new, this is probably not helpful for this particular question because this is more like, yeah, brand new baby.
But I really like the idea of OK, first off, rewind a little.
When baby first comes home with an adoptive family, they're going to be feeling some anxiety because they are so used to their first mother.
Right. They're used to that smell that she has. They're used to her voice.
They're used to being with her. And we've talked before on the show about how there is absolutely some trauma associated with that.
And I've heard some people talk about bringing home a stuffed animal or a blanket that hasn't been washed to get the scent off
that has like that the first mom has slept with or has held so that baby can still feel that closeness
and also the importance of having meetings and visits as often as possible to help baby know that she's still there and part of their life.
So I think those would also be helpful things, but those are kind of earlier in the game, if possible.
Like you can't turn back time, but I would do those things if you're still in the early stages.
Hopefully that's helpful. Again, maybe a prompt to our listeners on Instagram when we when we post this episode, go to this post.
And if you have other suggestions for how you might respond to that question, we would love to get your input because we we don't know everything.
Yeah, so we would love some extra support on that question.
So maybe the flip side of that. So if you do know that there was a history of abuse or neglect, then what's your answer?
I mean, that's so much harder that I would say you really need to be consulting with a professional for one.
Working with your child, if they're old enough to tell you what they feel and what they want in this situation, then you need to listen and respect that.
So, yeah, that's hard. But I would definitely do that with professional guidance and with the guidance of the child. Both. I think those would both be key.
Yeah. So that was our last question. Yeah. So we're just going to point you to a couple of resources that we think might be helpful now.
So first is a great book. It's written by Lori Holden. It's called The Open Hearted Way to Open Adoption.
This is such a great book. My very favorite line of it. I'm just going to read one sentence.
No, it's two sentences. It says adoption creates a split between a child's biography and her biology.
Openness is an effective way to heal that split and help your child grow up whole. So I really love this. I love this book.
It's it's a bit older now, but it still is a great tool.
And personally, I've seen a huge difference in my kids lives and other adoptees in my life when I tell them and really clearly state that they're allowed to feel whatever they feel.
And I want to hear their thoughts and their feelings, regardless of what they are. They don't need to be like sensitive to my feelings.
I just want to hear what's on their mind and what their thoughts are with adoption.
I've seen a huge difference in how confident they feel and explicitly sharing what they're thinking because adoption can be hard.
It's a lot of things. It's hard. It's traumatic, beautiful. They're lost and it's really misunderstood and misconstrued.
And it's just so different for everybody. Right. There's so much going on.
But when we approach adoption from the angle of helping adoptees to heal that split that they might feel like what Holden says, that split between biology and biography
and keep those channels of communication as open as possible, we're really doing our best to help adoptees grow up whole. And that's the goal.
So, yeah, another recommendation that we have for you. This is not specifically adoption related, but there is a book called Crucial Conversations.
And then there's a semicolon in the title Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High.
I was introduced to this book early in my career as a supervisor and manager. And then when I did a book, actually, Lanette and I both in our master's program were required to read this text.
Crucial Conversations. It has some really, really good tools for having really hard conversations.
So there are five authors on this book, but the first one is Joseph Grinney. But if you search Crucial Conversations, you're going to come up with a lot. I was going to say, if you go on to YouTube and search for Crucial Conversations, you'll actually kind of get.
I mean, there's a smattering of things available, but kind of the summary of some different tools totally do it.
It's a game changer for having difficult conversations. And in adoption, there are circumstances and occasions where you're going to have, not you might have, maybe, but you are going to have crucial conversations and do it right.
Especially if you have tools that can help you prepare, do it right. So Crucial Conversations. That's a great recommendation.
Awesome. And then the last book we're going to recommend today is called The Power of Ethics, How to Make Good Choices in a Complicated World. That one's by Susan Lietaud. I don't know if I'm really saying that right, but it's L-I-A-T-A-U-D.
So this book is about how to make ethically sound choices. And it's fantastic. I really like it because it kind of walks you through these different ethical decision making frameworks.
So you ask, what are my guiding principles? Do I have the information I need to make this decision? Who are the stakeholders that matter in this decision? And what are some of the potential consequences of whatever I do?
And this framework really stood out to me as I was thinking about complicated decisions in particular that we have in the adoption community.
There are so many complicated decisions that we all might need to make. And I feel like maybe thinking more about the ethical implications and looking at this for more of an ethical framework can be really helpful.
So recommend this book for sure. It talks also about ethical resilience. What happens when we learn from our mistakes and resolve to do better.
And that part really stood out to me too, because I recently spoke to a fellow adoptive mom and she was talking about how she had made some decisions and relationships in their open adoption relationship early on with her son's biological relatives.
And she really was remorseful about how things had gone and wished that she had done things different early on and she had already made amends, but she felt so much sadness about different decisions she'd made early on and learned so much from them.
And luckily the bio family was very graceful and it sounds like things are all good. But I thought that that lesson of being open to learning more the ethical resilience to change and make a better path forward is something we can all do, not just in the adoption world, but in all of our decisions.
Being open to learning more and doing better. Great. Yeah.
So there's some brief intro to what open adoption is. Hopefully the Q&A answered your questions listeners and gave others some things to think about and a couple resources for you to consider as you're moving into potentially having an open adoption.
Yeah, great. So next week we'll be back, not next week, in two weeks, we'll be back with part two of this discussion, and we'll talk more about what open adoption in practice might look like.
So, thanks so much for listening to part one of adoption 101. Open adoption 101. I did it again, just on purpose. No you didn't. Of course I did. We'll be back. We'll be back. Thank you for listening to this episode of the open adoption project.
Thank you.