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: #456711 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

Practical and Conceptual
I loved this book for a variety of reasons. It begins by laying a groundwork of WHY information can be so powerful and destructive in a family. It contrasts that with how openness can build a foundation of honesty between adopted youths and their parents. In that sense it starts out very conceptual. But it does not stop there, it goes on to give very concrete and practical ways you can give your children possibly hurtful information about their pasts in developmentally sensitive ways. I highly reccommend this book for anyone who plans on adopting from the foster care system. Sometimes questions come from our kids we don't always know how to answer. This book can help us to do that AND understand how our children respond to those answers.

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.

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.