Our eight-year-old has been telling his classmates that his birth mother “gave him up” because he was “bad.”
Sharing Difficult Details with Your Child
Experts offer talking tips and sample language for discussing neglect, abuse, abandonment, and other painful parts of your child’s adoption story.
Child-Created Lifebooks
Even if you’ve made a scrapbook or lifebook for your child, kids this age like to tell their own stories. Here’s how to help.
Adoption Films for Family Movie Night
Use this guide to plan a family movie night or two this season. These flicks will captivate your kids, and open up adoption talks long after the credits have rolled.
Breaking the Racial Sound Barrier
In a society that considers “color-blindness” a noble attitude, parents may worry about talking about racism, but we must do it. Here’s how.
“A Past Without Pictures”
My daughter was eight years old in the referral photo we received during the international adoption process. That’s the oldest photo she will ever have of herself.
Adoption Scrapbooks Made Easy
Tips for capturing the journey leading up to your child’s adoption, and the precious moments after, in scrapbook your family will cherish forever.
Helping Preschoolers Understand Adoption
Through normal, imaginary play, children in the preschool years can conquer their fears, conjure their birth mothers, and learn to understand their stories.
Explaining a Birth Parent’s Drug or Alcohol Abuse
“How can we explain birth family’s drinking or drug use?” Older child adoption expert Gregory Keck, Ph.D. answers a reader’s question.
Budding Curiosity – Adoption Talks with Preschoolers
AF takes you inside the mind of your preschooler, and offers tips for answering their first questions about adoption and talking about how you became a family.
A Tale to Treasure
Follow these pointers to capture your child’s adoption story in a personalized picture book.
Helping Your Child Understand a New Sibling
How to prepare your child for a new sibling.
The Second Time Around
You’ve decided you’re ready to grow your family — again. Here’s help with answering the questions you didn’t have to ask the first time you adopted.
6 Questions Every Adopted Teen Wants Answered
In this excerpt from Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens, we take a look at what goes on in the minds of teens, and offer advice for talking with them.
A Growing Awareness
Between the ages of nine and 12, children register the meaning of adoption–and this can bring harder questions and more complex emotions. AF takes a look at what’s going on in the minds of preteens, and offers advice for talking with them.
Talking Matters
If you look like your child, you may be spared inquisitive glances or nosy questions about adoption from strangers. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to discuss the topic.
Answering Kids’ Questions About Reproduction
Kids’ questions about sex are a tad more complicated when adoption is involved. Here, our experts give you the answers you need.
Is Adoption Sad?
We may feel one way or the other, but it’s our kids who must decide.
Star of the Week
Fielding questions about adoption at school starts early. Is your child ready?
The Evolving Conversation
Should parents initiate talk about adoption or wait for their child’s questions? Sometimes you lead, say the authors, and sometimes you follow.