Talking to children about their family and what happened to them during their early life can be overwhelming for many parents and carers of care-experienced children. It can be daunting to explain to children why they couldn’t stay in the care of their biological parents. Parents and carers often worry that children may feel that they are not viewed as part of the family if they bring up their biological parents, but acknowledging and openly discussing a child’s past can help them to understand themselves and to feel accepted in full, knowing that they do not need to be ashamed of any part of themself.
In this article, children’s book author Holly Marlow shares a range of strategies for opening up conversations about the child’s personal experiences and incorporating discussion of different types of family into everyday life.
When to Begin
Start as soon as you can
Many people struggle with how to actually start those first conversations about foster care, kinship care, or adoption. Numerous experts agree that it is best to start these discussions as early as possible, even before the child can talk so that they never remember the time when they learned that they were adopted or that they have an unusual family. If the child has always known that their family is not the first family they lived with, they won’t feel as though they have been lied to, which can be very damaging to a child’s sense of identity and belonging. Drip-feeding information makes it easier for a child to process in small chunks, so start off with the basics and add more detail as time and their understanding improves.
Putting it in writing can help order your thoughts
If you’re particularly nervous about starting these conversations, creating a written record of your child’s significant life experiences can help structure your thoughts and make them feel less overwhelming. Conversations can be less intense if you both have something to look at, but even if you don’t end up showing the written account to your child, it gives you the opportunity to consider the sort of terminology you want to use and how you will explain sensitive and emotional parts of their story. Some people prefer to use simple wording such as “birth Mom and birth Dad,” however, if a child has attachment concerns, it may be more appropriate to use wording that sounds more different than their new parent’s titles. For example, if the adoptive parents are “Mom” and “Dad,” it may be less confusing to refer to birth parents as “birth mother and birth father” or even by their first names or terms such as “Mama Sarah.” Other parents and carers feel more comfortable with terms such as “first parent” or “biological parent.”
Where to Begin
Start with the present
When talking to a child about their early life, it is important to first remind the child of the family they belong to now, particularly if they struggle with attachment issues or struggle with their sense of identity. To make sure you don’t forget this step, you can put photos in an album or scrapbook in the order you want to discuss them, or if you have separate photo albums of your child’s biological and previous foster families, simply put a framed photo of your family in front of the albums, so that you have to move it in order to get to the photos of previous families, then you will be reminded to ground your child by talking about your current family first.
Once you have set the scene so that the child feels loved and reassured that they belong in your family, you can delve into where they came from and the various families they have been part of. For very young children, this will be quite a short, simple conversation. You can show them the photo of your family and say, “That’s our family!” and talk about how you are all connected, saying, “These are your brothers, and I’m your Mom!” then move on to the photos of their birth family and explain who everyone is. For example, you might say, “That’s Sarah! You grew in her belly, and she cuddled you when you were born. And that’s Ben! He cuddled you too. You lived with them for a while, then you went to live with your foster family,” then show them a photo of the foster family and say their names and “they looked after you until you came to be in our family.” If you are expecting the child to remain part of your family forever, be sure to add, “and now you’ll stay in our family forever,” to reinforce that they will not be moved to another family.
Add more detail over time
Children find repetition reassuring, so you can use the same few sentences to explain the child’s life story to them for weeks or months, and as the child grows and you feel confident that they understand, you can add more details. You might use that example to include more detail, saying, “You lived with them for a while, but they didn’t keep you safe, so then you went to live with your foster family,” and then a few weeks later, you could add more detail, explaining “but the social worker was worried that they didn’t keep you safe, so she asked the wise judge what to do, and they decided you should live with your foster family.” You can later elaborate further, explaining that “they wanted to be your parents, but the social worker was worried…” so that children know that they were wanted.
Explaining why children couldn’t stay with their birth parents
One of the most daunting parts of these conversations can be explaining the reasons why a child couldn’t stay with their birth family. If you know that social workers offered support to the child’s birth family before the child was removed, it’s important to share that information with your child. It’s hard to tell your child about upsetting things that happened to them, but you can help them to understand by using child-appropriate explanations, such as “she forgot to feed you sometimes, and you cried because you were hungry” and “they argued a lot, and it was scary for you.” It is vital that children who have been removed from the care of their birth parents know that this had to be done to keep them safe. Otherwise, children may imagine that their birth parents were mistreated and feel that they should right that injustice by reaching out to them, which may not be safe. Children may also wrongly assume that it was in some way their fault that they were removed, imagining that perhaps they weren’t loveable enough or that they were a particularly difficult child to look after.
Creating a Memory Box
Another helpful tool for guiding and instigating discussions of a child’s early life is a “memory box” to store small items relating to special memories and significant milestones in their life. This might include the outfit they wore when they were born (if you have it!) and the outfit they were wearing when they first came to live with you. If you have both of these, you can show the child the difference in size between the outfits to help them understand how much they had already grown by the time they moved in with you. This can be easier for children to understand than telling them that they were a number of months old. You might also include some of your favorite outfits that you used to dress them in so that they can see that you feel sentimental about the time you have spent together and you treasure memories with your child. You might add the program that listed them in the cast of a school play, medals they have won, copies of birthday invitations from parties you threw for them, age badges from their birthdays, previously favorite toys they have now outgrown, or souvenirs from trips you have been on together, such as shells from the beach.
If your child came to you with clothing, books, and toys that were given to them by their birth parents or a former foster carer, try to find out exactly who gave them each item, and make a record of this to go in the memory box. Telling your child, “Your birth mother gave you that toy,” shows them that you’re not trying to erase all memory of their birth family from their lives and that it is safe to ask you questions about them and to talk to you about any emotions they are experiencing.
Photo albums are always helpful for showing children the things you have done together, and this is even more important if you are a foster family and don’t know yet whether you are the child’s final family, so make sure you label those photos of milestones with key dates, so they can see when they lost their first tooth and wrote their name for the first time!
Normalizing Discussion of Families in Everyday Life
Try to humanize birth parents
Your child needs to know that there is more to their birth parents than their mistakes and struggles. Talk about the less heavy stuff, such as their talents, hobbies, and interests. Casually mentioning “your birth father loves this kind of music” or “your birth mom is great at drawing!” can help show your child that it’s alright to talk to you about their birth parents and that you don’t see them as terrible people. They may also enjoy learning about the talents and interests they share with their biological family. If you know a lot about their birth parents, or if you are in touch and able to ask questions, you may even be able to read your child the children’s books that their birth parents enjoyed during their childhood.
Role Play
Role-play games are a great way to normalize foster care and other family structures. You can sort dolls or dinosaurs into families and decide which of them “grew in their Mom’s belly” and which are foster families, kinship families, and adoptive families. You can assign toys the roles of the social worker and the judge and act out what happened. This can simply be to show your child that there are different types of families. Or, if you feel that your child needs to discuss their emotions, you can use role-play games as a way to talk about how the children in the game might be feeling.
Use media to normalize discussion of families
TV shows have become much more inclusive over the past few years, and there are more and more shows that include adopted or fostered children or children living with extended family. Try to introduce your child to these so that they can see other families like theirs! Stories are also a wonderful way to normalize different family structures, and there are many children’s books available to support parents and carers in explaining why children were taken into care and what might happen to them in the future. It may also be worth sharing some books with your child’s friends and classmates so that they understand a bit about your family and so that you can be the one to field any tricky questions they might otherwise ask your child.
You’ve got this!
Hopefully, these tips and example phrases have helped you feel more empowered to start talking to your child about their foster, adoptive, or kinship family. Remember, it’s always okay to say, “I’m not sure how to answer that question. I will answer it, but I need a bit of time to think about the best way to explain it.” Just take it one step at a time. You’ve got this!
About This Author
Holly Marlow
Holly Marlow is the author of “Adoption after a Biological Child” and award-winning children’s books including “Delly Duck” and “Cousins by Adoption.” As a parent to biological and adopted children, Holly strives for a gentle, therapeutic parenting style. This led her to create stories to help children to understand some of the emotional and practical complexities of foster care, kinship care and adoption.
