Product Description

"Do I have to tell my adopted child the truth?" This is a question that faces every adoptive parent. Filling a much-needed gap in the adoption literature regarding communication with adopted children, Telling the Truth to Your Adopted-Foster Child provides parents with the important knowledge of why adopted children need to know the truth about their past. The authors offer practical guidelines and tools that parents can use in communicating with their children the circumstances of their past. This book presents the developmental stages of how children understand adoption and what needs to be said to a child age appropriately. The authors suggest how to share with children the painful and difficult issues regarding their circumstances, birth family and background. The goal is to provide a gateway into life as emotionally and psychologically healthy adults, with solid foundations for identity and self-esteem.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #316345 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
“[A] clear and helpful guide for parents and others who work with adopted children. How to gather information about the birth family and how to present that information to a child in age-appropriate increments are lucidly explained. Suggested techniques are detailed and explicit, taking into careful consideration the life stage of the adopted child, including adolescence. Each chapter concludes with questions for readers so they may apply information to their specific case--a helpful device. This excellent book deserves a place in public libraries because it advocates a constant policy of truth to remove the vestiges of shame and secrecy from adoption.”–Library Journal

“This well written book would be a fantastic resource to any adoptive or foster parent considering whether to, or how to, tell their child about their early history.”–Youth In Mind

“Beautifully assists adoptive and foster parents in unraveling the mysteries that can cause so much pain for adopted persons--as children, adolescents and adults--and their families. With sensitivity and remarkable insight, Keefer and Schooler skillfully tackle the hard issues with which foster and adoptive parents struggle in deciding to tell and telling their children their true histories. It is an indispensable resource, combining a rich understanding of the psychological complexities of adoption with straight-forward guidance that foster and adoptive parents will treasure.”–Madelyn Freudlich Executive Director The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

“There is a great need for this book and I feel the authors do a wonderful job of giving clear guidelines and examples that adoptive parents can follow to explain even the most difficult of adoption-related circumstances to their children. This book gives parents the concrete tools they need to share information openly and honestly in words their children can understand. Adoption has gone through such a transition over the past 10 to 20 years, and the situations that the children are coming from is often so much more complex, parents need this type of guidance and support. For adoptees, accurate information and facts about themselves and their past are critical, this book gives parents the input and direction they need to build healthy communication and relationships. The authors have given a great gift to the adoption community--this book is a must read for all adoptive parents.”–Betsie Norris Executive Director Adoption Network

“Finally, a book which talks about telling adoptive children the WHOLE truth! Keefer and Schooler do an excellent job of presenting just why the truth--with all of its details--can help heal the hurt child. Adoptive families will find this book helpful as they struggle with how to share the good, the bad, and the ugly with their children. It will help them avoid deceiving their child about his or her past. A must read for parents of traumatized children.”–Gregory C.Keck Psychologist Founder/Director of the Attachment of the Bonding Center of Ohio Coauthor of Adopting the Hurt Child

About the Author
BETSY KEEFER is a Training Consultant for the Institute for Human Services in Columbus, Ohio, where she has been instrumental in the development of adoption training curriculum for professionals used nationwide.

JAYNE E. SCHOOLER, an affiliate trainer with the Institute for Human Services and Program Manager for the National Foster Parent Association, has over 20 years of experience in child welfare, first as a foster parent, then as adoptive parent, adoptive professional and educator. She is the author of The Whole Life Adoption Book, (1993) and Searching for a Past (1995).

Customer Reviews

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?

Excellent!
This book is wonderful! It communicates well; gives sound advice about when and how to tell children about adoption. It gives advice on how to deal with children and adolescents' feelings surrounding adoption issues. Addresses domestic as well as international adoption issues. Etc.

Excellent and forthright
Excellent step by step instruction on how to tell kids difficult information about their birth parents. E.g., your birth mother was a drug addict. Also shows how to present this information for kids of different ages: what you say to a 5 year old, a 10 year old, a 15 year old. I have read just about every book on adoption/fostering and this is one of the best. Since reading it I have known how to answer my son's questions and have felt much more comfortable discussing his birth parents with him.