Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew

I am adopting 2 boys and when I first read this book it totally scared me! It seemed like there was no way that anything positive could come out of adoption. At the same time, my older sister was adopted as a child and I could see so much of what was written in what played out in my family growing up.

This book is real and it is important to learn from the pain others have gone through to try to ease that for the future generations of adopted children. This book does complain - that's often what we do. But while doing so, it sheds light on the internal pain that many people who have been adopted can feel.

Do not read this book as your sole source of information though. There are a number of books that offer practical advice that will give hope and understanding on how to talk positively about adoption, how to love your entire family without guilt, and how to give the love that the child needs.

On a side note: I let my mom read this book and at first she was upset by it. She had done the best job she could to raise her adopted child just as she did the rest of us. After some time away from the book and after several talks, she came to understand that by "ignoring" the differences she was not helping her daughter and just because her daughter didn't bring up the adoption didn't mean that she wasn't thinking about it all the time.

Adopted children have a range of specific needs as a result of their backgrounds. These are described by Sherrie Eldridge in her book "Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew".

As an adoptee and an adoptive mom, it had been for many years my opinion that people wrote adoption books with the main objective of making money or becoming an 'expert'. I have seen a few really good ones over the years, and quite a few bad ones. When the following book crept across my review-table years ago, I barely gave it a glance, mentally classifying it as more rubbish about how adopted kids are particularly messed up.

Oh, how time can change our thinking! Some of my kids are older now and we have walked through their developmental changes, their yearnings, their wonderings. That search-for-self can be so very painful, but does it always have to be? And must every child agonize through it alone? I was wrong about this book. I have recognized that it is a useful guide to parents, and I want to give it my highest recommendation today.

Each month I will review one or two books that are think are the Good Ones. They will not all be newly published. Some, like this one, will be re-visited and given the proper review that I now know they deserve. In fact, in the review department, I have more books than I can possibly read. If you are a good writer and are experienced with reviewing, please contact me and I'll be glad to have publishers send samples!

Excerpt from Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew
By Sherrie Eldridge (Dell Publishing)

The special needs of adopted children as expressed in the child's words:

Educational Needs :
* I need to be taught that adoption is both wonderful and painful, presenting lifelong challenges for everyone involved.
* I need to know my adoption story first, then my birth story and birth family.
* I need to be taught healthy ways for getting my special needs met.
* I need to be prepared for hurtful things others may say about adoption and about me as and adopted person.

Emotional Needs:

I need help in recognizing my adoption loss and grieving it
I need to be assured that my birth parents' decision not to parent me had nothing to do with anything defective in me.
I need help in learning to deal with my fears of rejection-to learn that absence doesn't mean abandonment, or a closed door that I have dome something wrong.
I need permission to express all my adoption feelings and fantasies.

Validation Needs :

* I need validation of my dual heritage (biological and adoptive).
* I need to be assured often that I am welcome and worthy.
* I need to be reminded often by my adoptive parents that they delight in my biological differences and appreciate my birth family's unique contribution to our family through me.

Relational Needs:
* I need friendships with other adopted persons.
* I need to be taught that there is a time to consider searching for my birth family and a time to give up searching.
* I need to be reminded that if I am rejected by my birth family, the rejection is about them, not me.

Spiritual Needs :
* I need to be taught that my life narrative began before I was born and that my life is not a mistake.
* I need to be taught that in this broken, hurting world loving families are formed through adoption as well as birth.
* I need to be taught that I have intrinsic, immutable value as a human being.
* I need to accept the fact that some of my adoption questions may never be answered in this life.

It would be wonderful if there were an outline...a course-book that came with every human born or adopted into each family. Many of the things above, such as 'I need to be assured that I am welcome and worthy', could be used with any child, anywhere. It is a gift of the greatest value to give your child the knowledge that they belong somewhere, they are wanted and cherished. I highly recommend this book, and hope you will learn from it, as I have. Perhaps a little bit later than I should have, but that is the benefit fo life: It gives plently of second chances.

Martha Osborne
Adoptee and Adoptive mom of five, Editor of [...] Adoption Magazine.

The author here seems to have a very one side view of being an adoptee. I'm fairly certain that if prospective parents read this first, many would run screaming from the adoption experience. I have no doubt that the author experienced the emotions she's describing, but it really does give a very negative view of adoption. I stopped reading half way through.

I am adopting from Africa and was so excited to get this book. Then I read a few chapters and felt mislead. I thought that this would be information that adopted children would want their parents to know, but I felt that there were not 20 questions, but one theme and 20 ways to state it. I also felt that the author was very depressing about adoption that in some way these children are damaged far above all other kids and won't ever get over it without intense therapy. I will admit that I didn't finish it, and probably won't.

This is the best adoption book I've ever read. It enables adoptive parents to understand their adoptive child(ren)'s losses at a much deeper level. I wish somebody had told me about this book years ago - it would have significantly altered my parenting strategies with my two adopted children.