Thursday, March 8, 2012

Teens & Adoption

An article at GalTime about adoption issues in the teen years:
During these years when teens are figuring out their identities they take multiple factors into account. And they do all of this within the context of a developing brain, raging hormonal upheaval, and parents who are often befuddled and bewildered by their behavior and about what to do.

It is no wonder why the teen years sometimes become a time of struggle for adopted teens. They have additional questions that they ask including:

1. What were my biological parents like?

2. Am I going to turn out like them?

3. Why did they give me up? They didn't even take the time to get to know me.

4. Will I be abandoned repeatedly since I was already abandoned by my biological parents? Imagine how hard it must be for the adolescent to experience and deal with the loss of an unknown person.

5. Do I have other siblings?

6. Will I get to meet my biological parents?
What's scary is the thought that a teen adoptee may not already have answers to these questions! Do I have other siblings? Really?! You haven't already talked about this with your kid?!

The author, a Ph.D. psychologist, offers some suggestions for helping teens deal with these questions. I find the advice pretty superficial, but at least it's a starting place, I suppose. With an 11-year-old, I'm already obsessing about the coming teenage years!

No comments:

Post a Comment