My Son Misses His First Family, Who He Has Never Met
Why adoptees should be told they were adopted early in life
“I miss my first family,” my youngest, Silas*, blurted out to his brother while playing construction simulation games on their iPads. “Do you miss your first family, Jacob?”
“N-n-no,” he stammered as he designed a new home in his game. He was caught off guard by his brother’s question and sounded as if he didn’t want to think about it.
“You don’t?” Silas asked, looking at him quizzically. “You don’t miss your first family?”
“No,” he said without looking up. He didn’t want to be interrupted by such an intense conversation.
I paused the lecture I was listening to on my headphones to hear what they were saying.
My heart sank at his words, both for his loss and my own. Whenever he mentions his first family, it’s a constant reminder that he’s not truly mine.
And I’m not his.
At least from his perspective.
Telling my son he was adopted
I wasn’t prepared for these feelings from Silas. Not with the longing he seems to experience.
Silas came to live with me when he was just six months old. Before that, the only family he knew was his first foster family. He went straight into fostercare from the hospital and has never met his first mother.
Yet, his body remembers her from inside the womb. Unborn babies begin to hear their mother’s voice as early as 16 weeks and, while in the womb, develop a preference for her smell and voice.
Deep inside, he remembers his first mother.
Adopting older children
It was different with my other two children. They were ten and three when they first came to live with me. They always knew they had another family, so I was prepared for their longing.
Though Jacob doesn’t remember his first family, he did remember the other foster homes he lived in before joining us, and his transition was much more challenging.
But I was the only mother Silas ever knew. He needed to know the truth.
Why adoptive parents should always tell their children they are adopted
- The child has a right to know.
- They need to know they can trust their adoptive parents. When the parents don’t tell them they were adopted, they are lying to them.
- It will help them as they struggle to form their identity.
- It can help them understand the differences between themselves and their family.
- Eventually, they are bound to find out another way, and when they do, it will be devastating.
One organization makes the adoptive parents agree to tell their children they were adopted as part of the adoption process.
“I tell prospective adoptive families that children who were adopted as infants should not remember the day they were told they were adopted. Rather, it should be something they have grown up knowing.” — Christie Lader
Telling Silas
The day I told Silas he did not grow in my tummy, he appeared shocked.
I had always talked about his adoption, just like Lader said in the above quote. When he came to live with me, I was still fostering other children, and I wanted him to be comfortable with the term. As he grew, I made sure he knew the difference between adoption and fostering so that he didn’t have to fear leaving our home like the foster children did.
We even celebrated his adoption anniversary every year.
As a result, I was ready when he started asking questions.
One day, when he was about to become an uncle to his big brother’s baby, we had the talk about the birds and the bees. After learning how babies were made, he casually asked what it was like when he was in my tummy.
I told him the truth.
He was stunned.
Every ounce of my being didn’t want to tell him. I wanted to hold on to that strong connection I have always felt with him. I wanted to be his only mommy a little bit longer. After all, I was the one who swaddled him close to my body during our early morning dog walks. I was the one who got up several times a night to rock him as he suckled on a bottle of warm milk.
I was the one who changed his diapers and gently poured warm, sudsy water over his body in the bath.
He was my baby.
I was his mommy…
Until that day when he wasn’t.
After the shock wore off, he was full of questions, some I could answer, others I didn’t know. And then there were the ones he just needed to be older to hear. Questions I dreaded him finding out.
I told him a version of his story that a four or five-year-old could understand. Though he was six at the time, mentally, he was younger.
Stories of kids who weren’t told
If you search online, you will find stories about adoptees who didn’t find out they were adopted until later in life.
They were devastated.
I read of a young man who didn’t find out until he was almost 18, and the truth nearly destroyed him. He became so angry and depressed and fell into self-destructive behavior and suicide attempts.
Another woman, whose story you can read here, discovered accidentally when a cousin let it slip. She was 48 years old!
After hanging up the phone, she stood stunned in silence as she let the news filter through her mind. Though it was quiet in her home, she described the sound of a train crash ringing through her ears at the news. With this call, she learned that everyone in the extended family knew about her adoption except her.
For a personal account of what it was like for an adoptee to find out she was adopted at 38, read this Medium story.
The benefits of telling him young
After we talked, I asked him if he wanted to see her picture.
He said yes.
Whenever a foster child came to live with me, I immediately conducted a social media search on their parents, where I was able to collect pieces of my child’s past. For safety reasons, I needed to know as much as possible about their first family.
This is also how I judge if their first parents are safe enough to contact after their adoption. My kids need to know their first families.
I need to make sure my family is safe.
There’s a reason they were removed from their homes in the first place.
With Silas’ first family, it was easy. His first mom was very active on social media. She had a half-dozen accounts open on the same platform and I gathered a lot of pictures.
However, it doesn’t appear to be safe for me to try to contact her and tell her I have one of her children. I know her heart must hurt wondering about him, so I check several times a year. And I pray for God to let me know when it’s safe.
He seemed happy to know what she looked like but wasn’t interested in his father. However, he seems to miss his sister despite never having known her. She was born a year after him.
How this affects me
The amount of pain I feel for all of my boys has so many levels. I want to reach out to his first mom, but it’s unsafe. I’m afraid I won’t be able to find the sister born after him; she doesn’t show up on her mom’s social media anymore.
I think she was adopted, too.
With Jacob, I haven’t been able to locate his first mom online anywhere. I have no idea where she is and if it would be safe to reach out. Given the circumstances of his adoption, I don’t think it is.
Then there’s my pain that surfaces every time he says he misses his first family. It’s a constant reminder that another mother is in his heart.
Shortly before Christmas, he woke up one morning and said he wanted to go see his first family and that he missed them.
“Have you been thinking about them?” I asked, trying to sound lighthearted despite the lump in my throat.
“Yeah,” he said solemnly. “I think I should go see them.”
I wanted to cry.
He’s only seven, and he already wants to leave.
“I understand. But I don’t know where they live,” I told him. “And if you go, I will miss you.” I tried to hide the tears that wanted to flow as I turned away to get his clothes from the closet.
Suddenly, he lifted his sad face as a big smile spread from cheek to cheek, and with arms stretched wide, hugged me and said, “You can come, too, Mommy! We both can go!”
This made me chuckle. Yet, at the same time, I wanted to blurt out,
“But I don’t want to go to your first family. I don’t want to share you with anybody else. I don’t want to hear you call another woman Mommy.”
I said none of those things. Instead, I took a deep breath, prayed to God for wisdom and control, and said, “You know, I think I understand how you feel. I miss Ryan* and Dakota* just like you miss your first mommy.”
Ryan* and Dakota* are twins I placed with another family in adoption at birth. You can read more about that story here.
My words transformed the atmosphere. As he thought about what I said, he came over to me, smiled, and said, “I will never leave you, Mommy. You’re my best mommy ever!”
Yes, adopted children need to know the truth. When adoptive parents withhold that information from their children, they are behaving selfishly. As parents, we must put our children’s needs before our own.
I’ve already lost two sons that another mother raised. And I’ve temporarily lost my oldest adopted son, who returned to his first family when he turned 18.
However, as the saying goes:
If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it was not meant to be.
I know God has great plans for all my children. I’m confident he will come back one day.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the children.