What About Me Mommy??

As an adoptive mother I am always fairly sensitive to how my children who are adopted may feel about things.  Do they feel like they are able to identify culturally with someone in our family, our community of friends, etc.  Am I being sensitive to the fact that they may have questions, fears, and so on about their adoption, birth parents, and their entire biological "identity"?  It is easy to be sensitive to, intentionally aware of, and self-educated about the questions and the various things that adopted children may encounter as they get older and the more they understand about what their "story" really is.  Each of our 3 adopted children have their own story that we share with them openly. One of them has known their birth family, one will one day know their birth family, one will never get to know theirs.  We are in contact with two of the birth families and have open relationships where we can ask questions that may arise.  We are prepared in a sense about how to discuss each of their adoptions, what we weren't prepared for were the questions our home grown daugther threw at us.


In our house it is a common joke that we will one day be sending our home grown child to counseling because she wasn't adopted.  Little did we ever think that being the only biological child in our home would cause her such great distress.  With our heart grown children, they have each other to identify with, they have multiple members of the family that may be feeling or wondering the same things.  Their siblings will be able to empathize various things about their life.  Addy doesn't have that.  Addy, in a sense, sees herself in solitude, where she can't relate or empathize with her siblings.  Being home grown does not give her a sense of superiority, rather a sense of difference that she experiences alone.  This is an issue we had not prepared for.... 


What a blessing it is that Addy was heart grown too, just like her siblings.  It wasn't with us though, she was heart grown with Christ.  In our family we all get to experience the joy of being adopted.  Christ adopted us into His family and we have been grown in His heart.  Addy has an adoption story.  It may look different than a worldly adoption but none the less it is her story and she too can share in that similarity with her brothers and sister.


(The link that I posted in the comments below did not paste properly so I have included it here. This is an excellent article about biological and adoptive children.  http://www.zimbio.com/Adoption+And+Foster+Care/articles/19/Parenting+biological+adopted+children)