How can you best support your daughter as she re- sponds to what the show stirred within her heart & mind regarding adoption & how it shapes her life              
    Allow her to set the pace and range of sharing between you. Restate your willingness to listen and answer any questions she might have or to provide any nformation which is age-apropriate. Make clear that you will support her and will not be hurt or injured by her explorations. Trust the strength of your bond and allow her to delve as deeply as she needs now.
  What she needs most is the certainty that you will be her liferaft as she wrestles with this issue. Resist a fix-it approach as this minimizes the true challenge she is confronting. As you convey the conviction that she is capable of handling, understanding and managing her life as an adoptee. Radiate hope and love.

My 12 year old is devoted to this show as well.  She watched it last night, but I did not see it until today.  I am going to ask her about how she felt, as I am very distrurbed.  Let us hope that that they do the right thing while this plays out.  There were some really good things said about making the right choice, so they could go either way.

Hi Diane and All,

  I am a therapist whose practise consists of traveling across the USA and Canada, seeing adopted kids age 5 through 16 in groups, empowering them to explore what it means to THEM to be growing up adopted.  The groups give them the opportunity to compare and contrast real life experiences, their beliefs/ questions/ fantasies/assumptions amongst same-age adopted peers, reveal their feelings to themselves and others—without having the prying eyes of the non-adopted putting them under the proverbial microscope, dissecting all that they say and do.  The groups work wonders for kids—normalizing what it means to and about them to be adopted, and helping them put their feelings, thoughts, and struggle to build identity into perspective in a safe environment. 

    From what you have shared, my guess is that your daughter may be very fearful that HER original parents could try to take her away from you, and that she may also be struggling with how intense the dynamics are amongst all the triad members (adoptive parents,birth parents, adoptee) with outsiders not understanding why or what the issues are.  Many to most adopted youngsters try to suppress their private thoughts, feelings and questions.  Media portrayals of adoption can blast through the walls they erect to try to protect themselves from feeling different, poorly understood, objects of curiousity for Society’s (peers’) voyeuristic interest in adoption and adopted people.  She may be searching for answers, yet doesn’t want to raise questions and issues with you.  Many youngsters have great loyalty to their adoptive parents and do not want to cause them to feel threatened, jealous because there is another set of parents they are interested in & curious about, and they don’t want to rock the boat.  That is because many to most feel responsible for our happiness and sense of entitlement to be their parents.  These are NOT easy issues for youngsters to grapple with, try to push away and hide from, and keep from others—mostly their parents. 

    Groups for youngsters who are older elementary-age, tweens, and teens are terrific because they give youngsters safe places to explore amongst others like themselves, get constructive feedback so that they learn that they are perfectly normal and OK, and that gives them the courage to risk facing the internal issues they have.  It also helps provide a framework so that they CAN discuss adoption-related issues and the confusion over identity-building with others, namely us—their parents.  Her push-pull reaction of embracing the exploration of adoption at the same time that she pushes it all away with the other arm may be the clue to what she needs—to explore this with other adoptees.

    One of the most important things that I think we can do for our children is to help them know that it is all right to talk with a therapist, and that that does NOT mean that there is anything wrong with them!  Helping them to understand that growing up adopted is confusing, complicated, and naturally leads to issues that others do not have to navigate—is part of our job.  Giving them permission to talk with someone who is skilled and truly understands adoption-related identity issues, and counteracting the stigma associated with working with therapists can really give our children the chance to acquire the tools they need to keep strong self worth and claim all of the complicated facets of who they are.

    Another great resource for maturing adopted youngsters and their parents are adult adoptees who have worked through some of the inherent issues and are willing to be mentors for younger counterparts.  (Not all HAVE worked through this, though, so that is something you’d want to assess before connecting your child with an adult adoptee).  Someone who is older and has already walked the path your child is on can be very reassuring and can help your child feel comfortable talking about what she thinks, feels, wonders, and is experiencing as an adopted person. 

      Television shows, films with an adoption theme, news articles about adoption or search/reunion, and literature (anthologies by adoptees or birth parents, fictional characters whose lives are touched by adoption) are all great starting points for discussing adoptions and associated issues.  Parents can refer to these and ask open-ended questions.  They need to know, however, that sometimes their youngster will answer right away, sometimes they need to think about what you are asking before they are ready to share what they think, and sometimes they won’t answer at all.  All of these reactions are normal.  The most important part of handling adoption discussions in this way as a parent, is that you are conveying to your son or daughter that you KNOW growing up is complicated and involves lots of intense questions and feelings, regardless of whether they can and will admit to that or not.  Its a great foundation for giving our children a foundation for examining this for themselves, and hopefully talking with us, now or later in their lives.

Jane A. Brown, MSW

Hi all,

Thanks for your helpful responses to the Glee question.  An important part of the adoption thread was the glorious reuniting of Rachel & her glamorous birthmother.  A scene that seems very attractive to my daughter.  We are in a semi-open adoption and I happen to know that my gal’s birth-mom has not had an easy time since the adoption and has not thrived at all.  I don’t want give that info my daughter, though she need to explore those questions. Do I discuss this fantasy outcome with her, or just let it go?  Thanks again.

Our kids are 5 and 8, and they love the show but are really too young for some of the themes so we always watch it together. We’ve decided we need to screen these episodes now until this plot line is finished - they’re just too young for this. We’ve always been completely open and candid about their origins, and we not only answer their questions but introduce the topic every so often to let them know we can talk about it any time. But we’ve never even touched on the topic of a birth mother wanting a baby back - we’ve stressed that a forever family is FOREVER, and that adoption is a one-time event in their past that cannot be changed. We don’t want to introduce any confusion or fear at this young age, so we’ll be screening these!

I created an online petition about this story line which, as an adoptive mom, makes me so angry.  I hate that they are portraying adoption so unrealistically.  If you agree, please help!  Sign and share:  http://www.change.org/petitions/fox-and-the-writers-and-producers-of-glee-stop-perpetuating-ignorance-about-adoption-on-glee

Thanks!

As someone who hasn’t adopted yet, I have to say several things troubled me about the story line. I don’t recall how Quinn nad Puck’s baby was placed for adoption, menaing I don’t remember them going to an agency or lawyer, or even how they came to know the woman who adopted their daugther. I am not sure what theirlegal arragement was, but I was unsettled with a lof of what I saw. Especially the casuality of it all.
  Having said that, I am thinking that the show is really trying to focus on the characters. Right now Quinn who was the “beauty queen,” and seen as infallible by the other glee members is going through a change. She’s fallen off her pedestal and is trying to get back on top (sorry to be so dramatic) I am imagining the show will show that she cannot just go and “get full custody” of her daughter as she stated in the end, and that she is not really ready to be a parent just becuase she dyed her hair back to bpnd and rejoined the glee club. But like I said, there was no signing of anything as I recall it seemed to me that they just allowed this woman to take the baby home, so perhaps it was not recognized legally.

I do hope that the show approaches this with a little more sensitivity, perhaps the online petition could suggest they have an adoption consultant work with them on the story line?

laura

I am so grateful I saw this thread before we watched the show with our 12 year old adopted daughter.  I adore Glee for how it celebrates the differences and special talents in kids, but my husband and I were horrified by what we saw.

The adoption storyline is thoughtless, ill-researched and completely irresponsible.

As a 31 year-old adopted woman who met her bio-mom when I was 20 I have a lot of feelings about the adoption plot-line in Glee. I overall love the show, Glee cracks me up in a million different ways and I think it’s great show that handles all sorts of cultural and social issues/ideas well (particularly homophobia). However I don’t think it does very well with adoption.

Every adoption story is different. I’ve always known I was adopted, was raised with a younger brother who was adopted as well. When I was 20 I asked questions that in one evening introduced me (by phone) to my bio-mom. Over 11 years later she and my half-brothers and my maternal biological family are a huge part of my life and the life of the family who raised me. I’m incredibly lucky. The trust and strength I was raised with has been a huge part of why I was comfortable (more or less) looking for my bio-mom. Her strength and trust in herself, me, and my family made everything even better.

But it’s still been very hard and confusing and continues to be from time to time regardless of the genuine love that has grown.

All of this is a long, long way to lead up to my issues with the Glee story line. I think Rachel is the only character portrayed even vaguely realistically in this. She is surprised and confused and overwhelmed and open. Her bio-mom’s character is incredibly frustrating and shown in a way that does nothing to express the fear, confusion, sadness and excitement a real mother might/does feel upon meeting their biological child that they gave up for adoption. The plotting her character goes through in order to meet Rachel only to freak out and then later adopt Quinn’s child is simply absurd. It is a television drama but the writers of Glee have shown they’re capable of treating life experiences of such import with greater care.

I have a lot more to say on this (apparently this hit a nerve) but I’ll spare you all for now. I should say it made me feel great to see that this thread existed when I went searching for it.

In my opinion, even bad or marginal story lines are often useful jumping off points for discussion about adoption. I’ve always made it a practice to watch whatever my daughter watches. I didn’t have a bad reaction to the Glee plot. My biggest comment was that Quinn wouldn’t have much of a chance to get Beth back and my daughter and I discussed why. We’ve been searching for her bio-family for over a year and think we have finally found them (in Russia). The show that was most provocative and has given us the most to talk about is Switched at Birth, where two girls are raised by non-bio families and find out when they are teens. All the questions they have about their bio families are the same or similar to those my daughter has.

Anyway, I try to not have any topic off limits, and there aren’t too many shows I have kept her from watching. There was a really bad movie a few years back involving bears who’d been adopted by humans that just looked icky—we did skip that one!

As an adoption therapist and adoptive parent to many now-grown sons and daughters, I have thought a great deal about the impact—positive and negative—media has on adoptive families.  I have observed, over the years, as adoptive parents have attempted to shield their youngsters from media they disagree with, or portrays adoption negatively or incorrectly, and select only those books or films or videos that they approve of.  Because I work with the children in groups—I see thousands across the US and Canada each year—I have come to recognize that this may well not be the best approach.  When our children are disallowed to have firsthand exposure, they often are influenced far more, and negatively, by what their peers share with them about THEIR interpretation of the media portrayals.  Our youngsters’ hidden belief about us when this is the case is that WE are so fragile that WE can’t handle misportrayals OR that we want to keep the truth from them in hopes that we can protect them from pain, which is unrealistic.  They tend to act as chameleons, doing whatever they can to shield US with the mistaken notion that it is their job to be our happiness. 

    I believe that the best course of action is for us to view films or tv shows like these first, formulate questions and a list of discussion points, talk with our son or daughter about the media portrayal and view it together, and then have a heart-to-heart conversation afterward.  Sometimes kids are not willing TO have such conversations immediately afterward.  Their emotions are too stirred up, or they need time to process their own reactions a bit first, before they are ready to talk with us.  That, to me, means that we may need to initiate conversations more than once.  i.e. “I know that we talked about this before, but I have thought about it since then, and am guessing that you may have, too, so I’d like to discuss it a little more with you.” 

    I’ve also come to see how important and constructive it is for our kids—at these developmental stages—to have conversations about growing up adopted with other adopted young people, with an adult who has some adoption expertise leading them into these conversations.  The opportunity to compare and contrast thoughts, feelings, questions, and experiences, and learn that how it is for you is similar to how it is for most others normalizes the experience of growing up adopted.  That is when our youngsters feel most competent and confidant, and are more likely to discuss all-things-adoption with us, their parents. 

    Another observation I want to make is that my adult sons and daughters are more apt to talk openly and honestly with me/us now, about those topics we raised when they were teens.  They often denied that they had any thoughts of feelings then.  We initiated conversations regularly, anyway, because we knew that they WERE thinking about adoption and race-related topics, regardless of the brave front they put on.  Those seeds did not bear frult with all of them in the same way or at the same rate.  Some were willing and able to talk with us at a younger age than were others.  The only right or wrong was that WE and not they needed to be persistent and invite conversations, rather than allow the issues to become the elephant in the living room. 

Jane A. Brown, MSW