Very specific and helpful resource

books:


	• Telling the Truth to Your Adopted or Foster Child: Making Sense of the Past Betsy Keefer, Jayne Schooler, ... Bergin & Garvey Trade, 2000 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Very Important Resource

All parents who have adopted a child with a difficult birth family history should read this book. Parents natural tendency is to protect their child from information that they fear will hurt the child or damage their self-esteem. The authors do a great job of explaining why children need to be told the truth, in an age-appropriate manner at the appropriate time. This book helped to resolve doubts I had on this issue.

Christine Mitchell, author and illustrator of Welcome Home, Forever Child: A Celebration of Children Adopted as Toddlers, Preschoolers, and Beyond

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Excellent

When starting out on a search for birth parents, particularly with international adoptions where one has no idea of who (or what circumstances) one will find, this is a superb guide.

They key point here, something most psychiatrists apparently have yet to learn, is that adopted children from the youngest ages frequently and actively wonder about their birth parents, and often conceptualize circumstances that cause serious acting out. During their teen years especially--a time of emotional upheaval even for kids raised in their biological families--adopted children experience a wide range of feelings that must be dealt with. There is no way for parents to successfully take their children "around" their natural grief, the authors note. The only way to handle it is to help them "through."

This, of course, is contrary to traditional thinking. "Oh just forget the past," relatives may say. Don't listen to them. Adopted children need to find out who they are, and even though they most likely never met them, they have love and concerns for their birth parents, feelings that the best adoptive parents will help them digest and manage.

Schooler describes the various levels at which adopted children may conceptualize their origins, depending on their age. And anger can be a big factor particularly during the middle school and high school years. Not dealing with these fantasies and feelings is a prescription for disaster. So is dealing with them in an insensitive or unthinking way.

The message is plain: share everything you know with your adopted child, as soon as you know, with as much respect for the child's feelings as you can. You cannot erase their pain. You can only help them cope with it. And in this way, help them grow into productive young men and women in their own rights.

A fabulous resource, which all adoptive parents, all pediatricians, and all mental health professionals, should study.

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A must read

If there is any part of your child's past that you wish to shelter them from, then read this book. It helps you figure out how to tell the truth without over sharing and guide your children through the grief and loss process. Excellent.

Very specific and helpful resource

I am so pleased that I found this book. I have already recommended it to several people I know. If you are not sure IF or HOW you should talk to your child about being a foster or adopted child, then you need to read this book. If you don't know how much to tell the child and what information is age-appropriate, then you need to read this book. Great practical advice broken down by age groups and situations so your situation is addressed. As with all books giving advice, it is helpful to read a variety and see what feels best for you. I know for me, this book answered the questions that other books only brought up as problems.

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Informative and compassionate

Keefer & Schooler have given us an excellent and substantive guide on numerous issues concerning adoption, notably how to tell children about adoption, how to handle adolescents' feelings. Unlike some other writers who think that children as young as 2-1/2 can understand and conceptualize the ideas of birth and adoption, Keefer and Schooler recognize that only by age eight do children have the ability to think in abstract terms and begin to understand the meaning of adoption. (In their book, Openness in Adoption, Exploring Family Connections, Harold D. Grotevant and Ruth G. McRoy found that only at the mean age of 10.5, age range 8.0-12.1, is the adoption relationship fully understood with its characterized permanency.) Schooler's description of the adoptee's various developmental stages is worded such that it appears all adoptees grieve, go through stages of anger and during adolescence experience an identity crisis. The adopted youths 'identity may fluctuate with their current fantasy of the birth family.' I am puzzled by our daughter who insists that she has never suffered an identity crisis. She has grown up with many adopted children, some of whom suffered such a crisis, others did not. Some studies of identity crises in adoptees and nonadoptees have shown no significant differences between the groups, so that 'adoptive status itself cannot produce a negative identity.' One study showed that nonsearchers had more positive self-concepts than searchers and overall self-esteem, identity, family self, physical self, self-satisfaction. These nonsearchers had less concern than searchers about their own background.
But research results are like see-saws: One result says green, the other says red. It's bewildering and cause for caution not to generalize. Gisela Gasper Fitzgerald, author of ADOPTION: An Open, Semi-Open or Closed Practice?

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reviews: page 1, 2

Telling a child he or she is adopted can be a trying task, but this is only the first step. After becoming aware that he or she is adopted, the child will question the details of the adoption. The truth may reveal details that are painful and sometimes traumatic: a parent is in prison, a drug addict, or even a rapist. In Telling the Truth to Your Adopted or Foster Child, Keefer and Schooler demonstrate that in even the most difficult situations, foster and adoptive parents must not withhold or distort information about the past. Though sometimes including difficult truths, communication between a caregiver or parent and foster or adopted child can help a child grow up into an emotionally and psychologically healthy adult. Providing help for parents or caregivers wishing to productively communicate with their child, Keefer and Schooler answer such questions as: How do I share difficult information about my child's adoption in a sensitive manner? When is the right time to tell my child the whole truth? How do I find further information on my child's history? Age appropriate guidelines will make an arduous task organized and easier. Detailed descriptions of actual cases help the parent or caregiver find ways to discover the truth (particularly in closed and international adoption cases), organize the truth, and explain the truth gently to a toddler, child, or young adult that may be horrified by it. Parents, teachers, counselors, and other caregivers will come away from this reading with a sharper knowledge of how to make sense of the past for foster and adopted children of all ages.

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