Lately I have been thinking about this because not just me, but other first moms I know struggle with this much of the time that open adoption is being ‘practiced’.
Personally I have given up on expecting my sons adoptive parents to update me on anything. That all feel through before he was even a year old and I never learned anything about his ‘firsts’.
I DO get to see pictures and have had quite a few visits.
I just wonder what might prevent an adoptive parent from updating a first parent. Just life happening?? Or do some adoptive parent find it possible to ‘forget’ that their child has other parents?
Related posts:
- How can I get the adoptive parents to stretch their boundaries?
- How do I get my child's adoptive parents to send the pictures?
- Why do adoptive parents close adoptions?
- How much do adoptive parents tell their friends?
- Adoptive parents, would you want the first/birth mom of the child you adopted to tell her friends?
It’s hard to say, as each situation and adoption is different. I’m an adoptive mom. I send updates only a few times a year, and never about specific events, like firsts, new developments, medical issues, etc.
I don’t because it’s never been outlined to me what exactly is expected. As our adoption is a little more closed than most here, I haven’t had the opportunity to directly ask my child’s first mother what she wants. In addition, when I do send things, I don’t hear back about them, so I’ve become less likely to send frequent updates.
Because I haven’t had a conversation about this either before the placement or after, I don’t update often. Have you had a conversation with your child’s adoptive parents about what you’d like?
My heart goes out to you. For me, it’s on my mind constantly that my adopted son has a birthfamily. When he’s doing something cute or unique, I try to run and get the camera to capture it for them. We set up a Shutterfly website where I try to post updates, photos and/or videos at least once a week.
In the beginning, it was tough- we were constantly critiqued by either the birthmother or birthfather. It felt like they scoured each picture and email looking for something they could point out as being “wrong”, like our son (a toddler) having a bruise on his chin in a couple of photos. They expressed their opinions in less than politically correct ways, which made me cringe when I would see an email from them in my inbox. Still, I responded to every email they sent and initiated contact, too.
After I returned to work, the reality of raising a toddler and working meant that I couldn’t always respond to the birthmother’s daily emails in a timely manner. I gently let her know that, if I had a choice between giving our son my attention or responding to email, I had to choose our son. The next emails that came from both birthparents were long narratives about how terrible the birthmother’s life was and how she had nothing to live for anymore (she has attempted suicide twice). I was puzzled, as she rarely cared for our son when she shared custody of him with the birthfather. But I respect how she feels. Unfortunately, these communications became emotionally draining for me and didn’t serve her well, either.
Our attorney, whom I approached for advice, said that we had gone above and beyond our agreement on communication and even advised me to change my email address so that the birthmother couldn’t contact me except by letter. This didn’t feel right to me, so that’s when I set up the website. I let the birthfamily know that, while we couldn’t email as often as we had before, they could visit the website any time they wanted and I would update it as I could. This turned out to be the right thing to do. My son’s birth aunt said that the birthmother keeps the website up on her computer 24/7. She emails me only about monthly now and is less intense in her communications.
We went into this adoption hoping to add our birthfamily to our natural family. Unfortunately, the birthparents’ mental illnesses have made this so much more difficult than expected. We’ve had to step back to save our own sanity so that we can say good things to our son about his birthfamily and mean them.
I hope this is helpful in some way. Best wishes to you!
I think there are a lot of factors that could effect communication between adoptive families and birthfamilies. Perhaps they have really busy lives and it is hard for them to take the time to write up or send updates. Perhaps it is a matter of communication. I know that as an adoptive mom, I’m in the dark about what my daughter’s birthmother is thinking or feeling because she does not communicate her thoughts or feelings to me. In fact, most of the time that I send updates to her and/or the birthfather…I get absolutely no reply. I just recently gathered quite a few pictures and crafts that my daughter made in preschool throughout the year. I thought they would love to have some of these priceless treasures, so I divided up some of these things, put them in 2 envelopes and mailed them to the birthmother and birthfather. That was 2 weeks ago. Haven’t heard a thing. I assume they liked what I sent, but I have no way of knowing unless they tell me. It makes me think, “Hmm why bother? Why bother spending the time and money to send them these things if I don’t even know if they appreciated it? ” (of course, even though I feel this way, I’ll still send them updates, because I’m fulfilling a promise I made to them at the beginning of the adoption.)
So, just a suggestion if you haven’t already discussed it with the adoptive parents, maybe let them know how you are feeling and that you would really appreciate it if they would send you updates. And be specific about the types of things you would like to know and/or see. I know that I would LOVE to hear from my daughter’s birthmother and have her tell me what she would like or expect from us…that would give me something to work with . Otherwise…I’m playing a guessing game as to what to send to her and how often.
Artistmom, I have to say that I am sort of asking this in ‘general’ although I can apply it to my own situation.
To tell you the honest truth, I have many times, both in person and through the internet asked about getting updates more often. I have not done so recently because my sons adoptive parents expressed frustration at my asking. Currently I hope and believe that my sons adoptive mom notices the postive comments I make on pictures she does post on Facebook.
I also hope that this shows her my interest and encourages her to post more.
Tiffani, I have tried to be earnest but respectful towards my son adoptive parents and plan to continue. In the past I send a few emails and such, and the response was not in favor of increasing the amount of ‘sharing’ that my sons adoptive parents already do. I have decided at this time not to push them to do more for fear I might push them away.
My highest concern is not just for my own situation, but for ALL the first parents(which are the rule not the exception)that experience this lack of participation in the ‘sharing’ from adoptive parents.
Personally it seems to me that many adoptive parents are completely willing to share anything possible with almost anyone they know in their lives, but I have witnessed a heistation to share as much with first families. I want to know what is stopping them even as I am grateful for all I DO know about my son. I know I will never know as much as the neighbors or even random people on the street because they get to witness my son’s life first-hand. I know that is to be expected given the decision I made for my son, and I can let go of that.
Honestly, from my experience it’s because the adoptive mom sometimes commits to too much in the beginning just to make bmom feel secure and happy with them. Once they get the baby, the whole “omg we love bmom so so much” phase just wears off for them, and they consider themselves the real parents now and do not NEED to send updates etc..It’s so sad too, for both the child and bmom.
Just MY 2 cents…and not all adoptive moms are like this, I’m sure. But I’ve know a few.
sometimes I want to wait to send a nice big set of photos… Maybe we have a couple weeks where fewer photos were taken, and at the end of the month it seems thin. Maybe we’re out of town or work is really busy. Basically, the normal stuff of life, nothing exciting.
Cindy, I think not every first family DOES respond the way you would to certain photos…like, my kid has decided he always wants to wear one shoe and one boot. That’s funny to me, but his first family doesn’t actually find it cute–to them, it’s more that I am permissive/neglectful to allow it. So I tend to skip that photo based on our particular circumstances. So it’s very hard to generalize. Maybe there are as many different reasons for “not enough” as there are families. I think you’re doing all you can to ask for more, but you’re in a tough situation. In other situations, adoptive families may feel like they’re sending as much as they can, but it may still not be enough, or the lack of feedback may make them second-guess what they are sending.
Our agreement was that we would send monthly emails. In 27 months I admit that I have missed two updates. Why did I miss those two months?
-It’s been 16 months since I’ve heard anything from my son’s mom. I find myself wondering if she even bothers to read my letters. My monthly letters take hours to write and I really put a lot into them. The seeming one-sidedness of the relationship is very hard for me.
-Some months just aren’t that exciting. We get into our routines and sometimes one week just blends into the next. When I sit down to do my letter I’m completely blank as there is nothing “new” from the previous month.
-Life with a toddler is busy and there are times when I go to bed minutes after he does and the thought of staying up to write is just too much, maybe I’ll do it tomorrow…and then this repeats for a few days and by that time I start to feel like it’s too late for that month.
Obviously, none of these excuses are valid reasons for not updating, but they are honest. The two months that I missed I did at least make sure the following month was extra full of details and fully covered the whole two months. The guilt was intense.
I’m not very consistent with my photo updates. I seem to only do that every few months. The actual task of uploading photos I find very tedious and time-consuming. I have a day job in front of a computer and the last way that I want to spend my evening is in front of a computer. We’re a pretty active family and just don’t sit down until the very end of the day. It is a matter of making adjustments to our routines to make the time. If my son’s mom ever asked about it I would definitely make more of an effort.
Our agreement is that we will update our family blog at least once per week plus send photos every 3 months. E-mails and telephone calls happen occasionally, but not on a schedule. And we recently became Facebook Friends with the birth mother. (Yep, I was the one who asked that question a few weeks ago.)
There have been a few times i the last 18 months that I haven’t updated the blog every week (although some weeks I update more often). It could be because nothing really happened or we got too busy or I was just plain too tired from caring for very young children to have the energy to upload photos and right a little bit about what was happening. I will admit that now that we have an 18 month old and a 5 month old, it’s a lot harder to take photos and update the blog! And recently we didn’t update because we all got a nasty virus and the pictures would not have been pretty.
The photos are also not sent on a strict schedule because I’ll sometimes wait just a bit (week or so, never more) if there is an event coming up or something. I assume I’m doing alright as she has never asked when the photos are coming. Although we have run into some issues because she moves frequently enough that it can be difficult to figure out exactly where to send the photos. Which is why I also send a back-up packet to the agency. Since we live in Europe, it’s easier for them to forward a packet to a new address than for us to do so.
But we have a pretty good relationship and there has never been any tension or unpleasantness between us. I obviously cannot speak for all adoptive parents!
Gretchen
I’m pretty surprised here that nobody mentioned the childrens feelings regarding updates. We have a lot of adoption in our lives and a lot of the teenage adoptees struggle with the openness. For example, my cousin has 2 adopted daughters. When the oldest daughter was 6 she started asking her mom to stop sending information to her birthmom. This continued through the years and she’s now 14 and for quite some time has been able to articulate that she feels that it invades her privacy, that if she wants to provide information about herself, then she will do that herself and that it is nobody else’s right to do so. This has been a huge problem for the daughter and mom’s relationship as the daughter feels disrespected and feels that she has no control over her own life and her own adoption. We know that her birthparents are wonderful people. They were young and made the difficult decision not to parent, and they have consistantly been involved in this girls life in a positive way. But their daughter is for some reason a very private person and she has always struggled with the fact that she was relinquished. She says that it has been too much for her to handle having a personal relationship with the family that relinquished her. Now she doesn’t like her birthmom OR her adoptive mom.
While I wholeheartedly support openness, why does it never occur to anybody that it might not suit the child ?? I honestly don’t understand why nobody ever mentions the feelings or gives them the ability to make decisions, even if they are young.
Jayne, we each answer from our own experiences. I’m glad you came here to share yours. I think that most of us who are pro-openness believe that ultimately we should hand off control to the child when they are ready to assume responsibility and assist them in creating the relationship they hope to have. In the case you cite here, I hope that her parents (both sets) will respect her feelings and figure out a way to honor her need for privacy. If this means that their daughter needs to pull back, I hope they can honor that. It seems natural to me that some kids during adolescence would want more control over their privacy — that seems very appropriate to me.
That said, I think it would be a HUGE mistake not to create an open adoption when the child is small because they MIGHT feel like they don’t want it. The research on adopted adolescences in open adoptions has told us that most adoptees want MORE not LESS connection when they hit the teen years. So if an adoptive parent wants to hedge her bets, she might bear that in mind, too.