Fantasy vs Reality

Hi everyone, welcome back to Blogville. I am sipping on a wild raspberry hibiscus herbal tea as I write to you. I really did not know what flavour to choose today for our visit. Something sweet and flavourful because I want to reach out to adoptive parents and talk about fantasy versus reality in the hopes of encouraging that they can talk with their children about it too.

As I’m sure you are aware, your children and youth think about their birth parents. What you might not know is that only rarely are they comparing you with their idea of what their birth parents might be like. In case you had not noticed, if they take place at all, these comparisons tend to occur when you have disagreed with your child or youth, given them a consequence, or otherwise put some kind of expectations on them. After all, their birth parents would never be so ‘mean’.

In your child or youth’s mind, their birth parents would let them have a tattoo, or let them stay the weekend with friends, or give them a bigger allowance, or whatever the current issue is. That being said, I appreciate how hard it is not to state what their birth parents did not do, that is . . .stick around to parent them. This is where self-control comes in, I mean yours of course, not your child’s. 

The closest other scenario I can think of involves step-parents. I have noted that even when children cannot stand them, those same step-parents sure come in handy to throw in their biological parents’ faces. I mean, they might not have any idea how their absent biological parents might handle a scenario but somehow they know they would handle it better than their step-parent, and they tell them so. Even when children or youth are living with both biological parents, their friends’ parents usually serve as great models with whom they can compare their parents to at any moment (i.e. “Rebecca’s mother said she can go!”). The bottom line here is that the child or youth that you are parenting is stuck with you, your rules, your expectations, and your parenting style, no matter how you came to be their parent. Adoptive parents just somehow seem to be easier targets at times.

I think the greatest hurt occurs when adopted children are comparing their adoptive parents’ behaviour to their birth parents’ imagined behaviour. How do parents compete with that? I think adoptive parents must have to bite their tongues a lot in order to avoid saying negative things about their child’s birth parents, don’t you? I remember wanting to shout at my mom about how much better and more fair my birth mother probably was but then I stopped myself. I was both hopeful and afraid that my mom might tell me to go live with her. There were exactly twelve steps to stomp on as I made my way upstairs to my room. I can still feel the shake of my childhood bed as I threw myself down on it in anger. I remember thinking that my parents were jerks and being unfair and fantasizing that my birth mother would be flawlessly amazing. I was sure of it. I imagined my tall, slender, and beautiful birth mother entering my room, putting her hand on my shoulder and telling me that she would never treat me like that, and further, that if I lived with her, I could do whatever I wanted. My inner child was both shocked and disappointed when I later met her adult children and they informed me that she was pretty much just a normal, sometimes even irritating parent, the way most parents are. No wonder my mother never said a word. . . she must have known in her heart that no matter what, parents parent in what they believe is the best interest of their children, despite their children’s reactions.

In my mind, as I was being raised, I could do better; just as I believe many adopted children also felt. I have heard biological kids wishing that their friend’s mom was their own mom, or that their gym teacher was their dad, or in general that their parents were not their parents. For an adopted person, there is some confusion about this thinking, often making it hard to understand birth children’s ‘fantasy parent’ thoughts. After all, in our reality, our birth parent(s) actually believed that someone else could do a better job parenting them than they could, or wanted to, and they gave away their parental rights to us. Therefore, hearing their friend’s wishes/fantasies about changing parents can be confusing to adopted people who often know nothing more about their biological parents than the fact that they left them. This makes it hard to understand why someone would even consider replacing the parents who wanted and kept them.

As you are likely aware, I am also confused by the ‘real parent’ thinking in our society. I mean most of us know that society has it wrong, the adoptive parents are the ‘real’ parents and the biological parents are exactly that, the biological or birth parents. No more, no less. Birth parents may be responsible for the child being on this planet, but their adoptive parents are responsible for helping the child learn to contribute positively to society and care for, or at least about, the people they share this planet with. Always having to explain/defend the fact that your real parents are the ones who took responsibility for you, not the ones who biologically created you, can be tough.

It is also easier to accept the idea that the birth parents could not cope with parenthood at the time the child was born, and that everyone had agreed that the child would be better off with their adoptive parents. After all, if this was not the case, there must have been something wrong with the child for them to have been rejected and available for adoption right? Despite being told that her parents had made my birth mother place me on adoption, I have always tried to cope with feeling that it was something I did as a newborn to make her walk away from that home for unwed mothers, leaving me behind, and never looking back. 

Let’s talk a minute about open adoptions; where there is ongoing contact between the adopted person and members of their birth family. The birth parent, or even a grandparent wants to know how the child is doing while the adoptive parent is actually parenting of the child. The adoptive parents’ parenting responsibility does not change in an open adoption even where a birth parent is able to send gifts, write letters, or even have visits while the child is still a minor. The adoptive parents may have to put boundaries around gift giving (don’t send a horse, we live in a condo) but openness can be good when it makes sense for the child. The adoptive parents may have to pick up the emotional pieces after a visit between birth parents and their birth children but I believe the child may feel less rejected when they have openness with a member or members of their birth family. As I did not have openness, this is purely speculation. However, openness may be a topic for another blog, so I will leave that topic here.

My birth mother was a great mother to the children she was later able to have and raise once she was settled down and in a stable relationship. Her relinquishment decision following my birth allowed me to have loving parents. She gave me the gift of parents who were already settled down in their stable relationship and ready to be parents. But oh, how growing up with such a loss allowed me to fantasize. In my child’s mind my birth mother was perfect when my parents were imperfect, she was kind when I thought they were being mean, reasonable when compared to my unreasonable parents. Only as an adult did I finally realize the truth that my parents accepted me, loved me, and lived with me while trying to raise their daughter to be a good person. All this, despite my not having been born to them, sorry for your loss birth mother.

My dear adoptive parents, you cannot stop your child from thinking about and comparing you to their fantasy birth parents, any more than you can stop fantasizing about what your birth child might have been like. All you can do is put all the fantasy and reality in the adoption process into perspective and live your best lives. 

Thank you for continuing to read my thoughts my Blogville friends. I do love hearing from you whether on here, or via my email, [email protected] 
Until next time.