Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew
Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew
“Birthdays may be difficult for me.”
“I want you to take the initiative in opening conversations about my birth family.”
“When I act out my fears in obnoxious ways, please hang in there with me.”
“I am afraid you will abandon me.”
The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children’s unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids from feelings of fear, abandonment, and shame.
With warmth and candor, Sherrie Eldridge reveals the twenty complex emotional issues you must understand to nurture the child you love–that he must grieve his loss now if he is to receive love fully in the future–that she needs honest information about her birth family no matter how painful the details may be–and that although he may choose to search for his birth family, he will always rely on you to be his parents.
Filled with powerful insights from children, parents, and experts in the field, plus practical strategies and case histories that will ring true for every adoptive family, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew is an invaluable guide to the complex emotions that take up residence within the heart of the adopted child–and within the adoptive home.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars A must read for every adoptive parent!
We adopted a little boy from China three years ago and are in the process of adopting a daughter from Ethiopia. We wish we had read this book three years ago. It is a reality check for adoptive parents that can be hard to read but the insight Sherrie Eldridge provides is invaluable to understanding your adoptive child. Ms. Eldridge provides tools for assisting parents dealing with attachment issues and various behavioral issues. The book is all about getting everything out in the open: openess in talking about the adoptive child’s history, their feelings about themselves, their grief over their losses. We highly recommend this book.
1 Stars One thing I wish you to know before buying this book…
Full disclosure: I was adopted by my parents when I was four months old. I always knew I was adopted and my parents later had a biological child just over three years after they adopted me.
Sherrie Eldridge’s book says a lot about her own mindset, but there is not a lot of rational examination about adoption.
Ms. Eldridge believes that adopted children are victims who suffer an injury that never heals. These victims must be treated like victims. If they do not realize they are victims, they need to be indoctrinated into feeling their victim-hood. It’s analogous to the guilt and victim industries that have thrived with regard to race, gender, socio-economic status, disability, disease, etc. Just like any industry, the individual circumstances are unimportant and inconsequential compared to the social template which Ms. Eldridge seeks to apply. Ms. Eldridge wraps her opinions in the pseudo-science of the adopted baby’s primal experiences which supposedly haunt the psyche of every adopted child for the rest of their life. She offers no evidence to support this view, but it is clear that it reflects her personal perspective.
I’m sure there are adopted children who share Ms. Eldridge’s perspective, but there are a lot of us who do not. I won the lottery when my parents adopted me. I know that there are two people who will never fail to support and love me. Among people I have met, that kind of unconditional love is extremely rare regardless of ties of blood or love/friendship.
I guess my point is that I do not consider myself to be a victim. I think that individuals are not preordained to react in a certain way to any given circumstance, such as adoption. I have not seen any evidence to suggest that primal scars haunt my subconscious.
In conclusion, this book is a great insight into the emotional baggage of Sherrie Eldridge. It has no relevance or value to those contemplating adoption or dealing with the challenges of raising an adopted child. Save the money for something a little more objective.
4 Stars Valueable Book to Add to Collection to Best Be Aware of What Your Child May Experience
As a new adoptive mom I was eager to try to “do everything right.” One of the first post-adoption books I bought was this one by Sherrie Eldridge. It’s a great book that I encourage an adoptive mom and dad to buy and re-read perhaps every 3-5 years, maybe even handing it onto their child when he or she becomes a teenager and has a lot of questions about the feeling they are having (Another excellent book is Eldridge’s Twenty Life Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make”)
Eldridge is an “adoption coach” and was adopted herself and birth. I have since had the chance to meet her and later interview her for HopeKeepers Magazine. She has a great passion in helping adoption children - of every age - cope with the natural feelings of loss and grief that can accompany even the best of adoption circumstances and sometimes not surface until years or decades after an adoption.
Though some have written in reviews that it lacks specifics of what age you should tell your child what, I see that as a benefit. Each child develops differently and has a vast array of interest (or lack of) in their adoption-related questions. Parents know their children better than anyone else and this includes when their child is ready to address certain adoption issues and what amount of information they actually want (or do not want yet). I don’t believe it as much to do with age, but rather their emotional maturity and interest. For the author to have provided specific ages, some parents may have followed that guidelines and given their children too much information too soon.
In this book Sherrie educates adoptive parents of the many unique issues that adopted children may face, anger, mourning, and shame. Sometimes as adoptive parents we believe it will all work itself out. And in some cases it may, but we should never let our own fears or lack of awareness bring harm to our child by not considering what they may be dealing with emotionally and not expressing outwardly.
There are times while reading the book I felt it dwelled on the negative and blamed all problems one may encounter in their lifetime on the fact that they were adopted and didn’t have those feelings of loss sufficiently recognized. I hope I can raise my son so that he never blames anything that could go wrong due to him being adopted.
Instead, I hope my husband and I raise a well-adjusted, independent, responsible and compassionate man who will take full responsibility for both the positives and the negatives that happen in life.
So beware that if this is the only book you read on adoption and you are considering adoption or have recently adopted, it may “freak you out a bit.” Don’t worry. Your child won’t grow up to be a sad, confused adult just because he is adopted.
Still, I feel there is enough value in the book that we put aside our own feelings and read books like this so that we can recognize when and if our child is experiencing loss issues that may stem from adoption. . . or from anywhere else.
3 Stars good and bad
I believe reading this book gave me a valuable insight into the concerns and feelings of adoptees, but I think this book was flawed in that the writer’s view of how she was raised got in the way of some of the messages. There was one passage, the writers states that her parents should have acted a certain way and even gave an example of what they should have said. I remember saying to my self “who talks this way?” Because of her upbringing, it tainted the book with negativity. HOWEVER, as a hopefully soon parent to an adopted child, I did find the book valuable in recognizing the problems and issues that do come up.
1 Stars Caution for potential adoptive parents
I would have given this book a ZERO star rating if it was possible. I am an adoptee (very happy to be one–I love my parents!) and am in the middle of the adoption process myself. I found this book to be absolutely awful. I agree w/ the other 1 stars reviews that say this book is overly dramatic and overly negative. I will be speaking out often to tell any social worker or adoption agency to be very careful when they recommend this book to prospective adoptive parents. If this book is suggested to anyone—-it should be with the clear message that SOME adoptees might feel some of these feelings….. but this book, in my opinion, is more of a ‘worst case scenario’ in how adoptees feel. It is the ‘extreme’ and not the norm. I kept thinking: PLEASE speak for yourself! DO NOT speak for “all adopted children”. Another adoptee reviewer went as far as to say she kept wanting to tell this author to ’shut up’ and as awful as that sounds….I have to agree. I felt the exact same way. And I kept reading w/ an open mind and tried and tried to ‘hear her out” so to speak. I am opposed to the title because it implies all adoptees feel this way. It would be more appropriate to call the book something like “20 things some adoptive children MAY feel and would like you to know” but that is much less catchy.
It would be wrong to invalidate another adoptees feelings—they are his or hers alone. But they SHOULD NOT be applied to ALL adoptees! And this book does that. It is important for all adoptive parents to be aware of the (possible) struggles or issues that an adoptee may face. Key word is “may” face. Not everyone has such a painful adoptive experience. I certainly didn’t. If you are thinking about adopting—and you choose to read this book (honnestly—I would STRONGLY advise against it) just know this is not how ALL adoptees feel. The adoptees I know do not feel this way. And I second another adoptee reviewer who said “your parents are the people who raised you”!!! I couldn’t STAND this book. This is my first and only book review—I felt compelled to write this review in support of potential adoptive parents who are reading this book and getting a very inaccurate and depressing picture of adoptive families! I think there should be more books about positive adoption experiences….but the thing is….people who are happy to be adopted (like me) are too busy living their life like any other person. We don’t “feel” adopted. We just feel “normal’ so it would not occur to many of us to write a book about adoption!
Filed under: Parenting Advice Book Reviews