The Open Adoption Roundtable is a series of occasional writing prompts about open adoption. It’s designed to showcase of the diversity of thought and experience in the open adoption community.
From Susiebook:
Are there any things that you don’t want the other members of your triad to know—or that you don’t want to know about them? I’ve heard first mothers talk about not sharing their birth stories with adoptive parents because those are for the adoptees and for themselves only. I’ve also heard of adoptees concealing their reunions from adoptive parents so as not to cause them pain. What don’t you want shared in your adoptive relationships?
I don’t want Jack’s birthmother to know that I write this blog. Although I haven’t written anything here that I haven’t said or written to her, here, I say it all much more bluntly. I love her. She makes poor choices. That’s family.
There are things we don’t tell Jack. We will someday, when it’s age-appropriate, but he doesn’t know them now. I won’t tell anyone else before I tell Jack, so you don’t get to know either. These are things like why his birth father didn’t meet him – he knows that K didn’t meet him, but doesn’t know why that is.
There are a lot of little things like that. He knows part of the story, but some of it is unpleasant, and a 4 year old doesn’t really need the information. We work with the specific now, the tangible. He’s not asking too much “why” so we don’t volunteer it. He’ll know it all – or at least, as much as we know – eventually. Part of how we’ll know he’s ready is he’ll ask.
Overall, we share a lot. I’d like to end on a humorous note. I remember not wanting to tell S that our fish died. Right around the time we matched, our Betta fish just went belly up. I didn’t want to tell her because I didn’t want her to think, “These people can’t even take care of a fish! They want to take care of a baby?” For the record, I think babies are a lot easier than fish.
