When your preschooler asks questions about adoption, use these age-appropriate answers that emphasize your family’s love.
Let’s Play Adoption
Want to get your young child to open up about adoption? Stop talking and start playing!
Parenting Strategies for Blended Families
When your family includes biological and adopted children, how do you make sure everyone feels included?
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.
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.
What’s in a Name? For an Adopted Child, A Lot!
When a child joins a family with his own history, his own culture—his own name—parents may want to look beyond the pages of a baby names book.
Adoption Goes to Preschool
Sometimes, a behind-the-scenes talk with the teacher better serves your child than a class presentation.
Family, Far and Near
Planning a trip to see second cousins or great aunts? Before you travel, help your child and relatives expand their conceptions of family.
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.
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.
When Therapy Is in Order
Sometimes, a teen’s behavior calls for outside help. What to watch for and how to find the right adoption therapist.
Helping Your Preschooler Feel Good About Race
Preschoolers are starting to notice racial differences. Adoptive parents have a responsibility to talk about them.
“Getting Rid of ‘Gotcha Day'”
What do you call the day your adoptive child came home? In this personal essay, one mother explains why “Gotcha Day” can be offensive for some adoptees.
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.
“Was I Alone in the Hospital?”
Seeing where she was born—where she stayed with her birth mom and where we met her—gave my daughter greater confidence in her adoption story.
Is Adoption Sad?
We may feel one way or the other, but it’s our kids who must decide.
Wanting to Be Like Everyone Else
Your preteen just wants to be cool. But how can he, when he’s “different”?
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.
How to Explain Adoption to Family and Friends
The way you respond to questions like, “What is adoption?” can influence how a person understands adoptive families–and explains them to others. Use these ideas to correct misinformation and set a positive tone.