Three Types of Adoptive Parents

In the book Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens, authors Debbie Riley, M.S., and John Meeks, M.D., discuss three categories of adoptive parents. The following is my paraphrasing of the categories.

The Three B's 

1) Blind: In this category are those adoptive parents who tend to minimize the impact of adoption on the adoptee and the family. These parents are apt to talk about adoption in exclusively positive terms and downplay differences between the adoptee and other family members. The adoptees in such families are not encouraged talk about adoption or the original family, and in fact may be actively discouraged from doing so. 

2) Blaming: The adoptive parents in this category tend to emphasize the impact of adoption on the family and typically blame the child for not fitting in. They are keenly aware of incompatibility and typically view it as a problem of flaws in the adoptee. 

3) Balanced: These are the parents who encourage open and honest discussion and are able to acknowledge differences without blaming the adoptee for them. Adoptees can talk about the original family or other adoption issues without damaging relationships in the adoptive family.

I find this a useful, if oversimplified, framework. Adoption and adoptive parenting are complex matters; no doubt there are adoptive parents who fit into more than one of these categories and others who fit into none. Nevertheless, I see aspects of my own experience in these three groupings. 

My own adoptive parents fit into the first category, for the most part. Like many other adoptive parents of the era (1960s), they were educated to believe that adoptedness would not be a significant factor in my life. They downplayed its significance, as they had been taught to do.They had been told that they should tell me early on that I was adopted and that as long as they did that, carefully explaining that I was loved and chosen, all would be well. I would be, for all intents and purposes, no different than as if I was born into the family. It was a well-intentioned approach that did not work well for me. Ignoring adoptedness didn't make it less of a factor; it simply meant that I had no safe space to process it. My adoption-related grief and identity confusion stayed underground until my mid-twenties, when it began to emerge in a series of small breakdowns (short of duration, but overwhelming emotionally). I've been processing ever since.

My parents were supportive of my search and reunion, but they remain largely "blind" to its significance in my life. When I tell my adoptive parents things about my relationship with my biological family members, they seem mildly but not especially interested. I never get the sense that they want more details; rather, I perceive them as wanting as few details as possible. I've also noticed that my adoptive mother has a tendency to forget things that I've shared about my relationship with my original family. I understand this as self-protective on her part, and I don't blame her, but it does not encourage openness and sharing on my part.

The "blaming" category of parents is one that, unfortunately, I have run into frequently both online and off. Blameful adoptive parents tend to talk a lot about the child's flaws and challenges, sometimes emphasizing a diagnosis, such as reactive attachment disorder, or speaking about the adoptee's original family in a way that implies that the child has inherited unappealing characteristics from the biological parents. I call this the "bad seed" mentality.

Fortunately, I have also encountered present-day adoptive parents who seem to best fit into the "balanced" category. I'm encouraged when I encounter such parents as I believe this approach is the one that is most likely to support the adoptee's well-being.

I don't believe that adoptive parents can completely shield adoptees from the challenges of adoptedness, but we can walk beside them and offer empathy. We can let them know, again and again, that whatever they are feeling is OK and normal.

"Balanced" is the category that my husband and I strive for as adoptive parents. We do a lot of listening, and we try to make connection and trust-building the guiding principle our relationship with our both of our children, one of whom was adopted from foster care and the other of whom was adopted by my husband in what is known as a step-parent adoption.

Do we always succeed? Are we always the parents we want to be? No, not at all. But I do think it helps us to have an intention and to come back to that intention again and again. You might even say that it is that intention that keeps us "balanced."

Image courtesy of gubgib / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Book Review: The Adoptive & Foster Parent Guide

The following is an adaptation of a post that was originally posted at Sea Glass & Other Fragments. I received a review copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

While reading Carol Lozier's book The Adoptive & Foster Parent Guide: How to Heal Your Child's Trauma and Loss, I often found myself excitedly underlining key phrases and jotting notes in the margins. I like a lot of things about this book. I appreciated that the author views attachment as a relationship issue between two people rather than as a diagnosis assigned to the child. ("A child cannot be characterized in one particular attachment style. For instance, it is incorrect to say a child is ambivalent or avoidant." Pg. 9) Though attachment styles are examined in detail, the focus is on healing and on helping the child develop a secure bond in the new family. That healing is possible is one of the core assumptions of the book, and a viewpoint that I heartily endorse.

I became especially enthusiastic when I got to Part Two of the book: "Healing My Child's Past Trauma." I love that this section opens not by focusing on the child, or on any challenging behavior that the child may be exhibiting, but rather on the parent and the parent's state of mind. "What is the energy between my child and myself?" is a question raised in Chapter 7. That same chapter includes a section titled "THE FIVE S'S: DISCOVERING AND MAINTAINING CALM," which consists of "five suggestion to help parents find and maintain a state of calm with their children." That section alone is worth the price of the book. Why does parental calm matter so much? Because the parent's emotional state has a huge impact on the child's emotional state, and when the child is calm and grounded he or she is better able to think and to maintain self-control.

All in all, I would consider this book a useful addition to the library of anyone who is parenting or considering parenting a foster or adoptive child affected by early trauma. The book is easy to read, well organized (chapters stand on their own so the book can be read cover-to-cover or dipped into at any point), and provides a good overview of the complexities of parenting a child with a painful history. I can't speak to the effectiveness of the specific parenting and therapeutic strategies that the book recommends because I didn't have the book when my foster-adopted daughter was in her more active healing phase, but if you are looking for practical suggestions you will find plenty of them here. If you try them and find they work well for your family, please let me know!