I heard a sad story about a teenage adoptee who is having a hard time coming to grips with having been abandoned as a child. Unfortunately, that is the history of many adopted children, particularly in poor or overpopulated countries where leaving the baby abandoned is the cultural way of relinquishing parental rights. We even have this happening in the United States through the safe haven laws, which allow birthmothers to "abandon" their babies in specific places and immediately relinquish their... more

In my post What if Your Adopted Child Really was “Unwanted”?, I received a very sad comment from OwensMama about her situation. Her 3-1/2 year old adopted child’s birthmother did not want him, and OwensMama is agonizing over how to talk with him about this as he grows.

Here is part of OwensMama’s comment:

[The adoption] paperwork contains a direct written sentence from his... more

In my post Reassuring the “Unwanted” Adopted Child, I shared that my son believed his birthmother placed him for adoption because she did not want him. This could not be farther from the truth. However, as John pointed out in the comments, there are adopted children whose birthmothers truly did not want them. How do you help an adopted child to cope with this level of rejection?

I posted about my... more

My son broke my heart the other day when he said, “My real mom didn’t want me.” Even though I know that feeling “unwanted” is a normal issue for an adopted child to work through, it surprised me for these words to come out of the mouth of my six-year-old child. I have heard that being “chosen” does not alleviate the pain of first being “unchosen” for an adopted child. How can adoptive parents help a child work through these feelings?

What makes this even more frustrating is knowing that he was never... more