The truth will out

Well, my first major test as an adoptive parent has come and gone, and I think I flunked. At best, a C-. Unpreparedness is, of course, no excuse. Parents, like Boy Scouts, must be prepared always.

I've talked to my kids about being adopted, I've read them stories, I've given them words with which to validate their situations, I've lent an understanding ear. Of course, since both my kids are almost exclusively concrete thinkers, and adoption is a pretty abstract concept, the stuff mostly goes over their heads. My 9-year-old daughter will listen intently as I talk and read and emote, but when I ask her if she has any questions, she tends to say, "What's for dinner?"

And so, I thought there was time before the harder questions would come. And so, I was taken by surprise when one of my six-year-old's classmates looked me in the eye and told me that my son wasn't my real son.

Now, I'd always planned that when a kid said something like this to me, I'd feign surprise and say, "What? He's not real? He looks real to me!" And the kid would laugh, and I'd say some platitude or other and get out of there.

But of course, this took me aback, and so I just said, "Yes, he is." And the kid said, "He is?" And I said, "He's my real son and I'm his real mom." And then the teacher chimed in and said, "I didn't say that, I said he was adopted." And I muttered some platitudes about adoption just being another neat way to form a family, and the teacher said, "I just said that he didn't grow in his mommy's tummy," and looking at the kid's face, I could tell that he was thinking about my boy hatching from an egg or being found under a rock. Unclear on the concept, but knows something's different alright.

There are adoptive parents of my acquaintance who would skin the teacher alive for having revealed such a personal piece of their child's history. This is an obsessive topic for them--who to tell, how much to tell, when to tell, where to tell, why to tell, whether to tell at all. I tend to be more of a blabbermouth. I've been entirely forthright with my children's teachers, administrators, and just about anybody who sees them on a regular basis. I've asked that when the "family life" unit is taught, adoption be mentioned if at all possible. So I don't suppose my son's teacher thought I'd mind if she shared this bit of his background with the class.

And I don't, exactly. Full disclosure seems the best policy, and I do firmly believe that adoption is as legitimate a way to form a family as any, and thus no cause for secrecy. Yet I would have liked to have known, and to have suggested some appropriate words or appropriate stories. It's clear that his classmates aren't clear about what adoption means, though they know how to be mean about it. Perhaps this will be the reward of our forthcomingness, to frame the subject in such a way that first and second graders will find it to be unremarkable.

I told my son's classmate that your real mom is the one that loves you and feeds you and helps you with your homework and kisses you goodnight and reads you stories and takes care of you. That's what I want my children to know, and their friends as well. If they're real friends, it will be enough--and if not, better my two should start developing snappy comebacks in elementary school than be confronted by the issue for the first time in their teens.

Honesty remains the best policy. But I liked it better when I didn't have to think about it.