On Monday, I wrote about the pain of the adopted teenager telling his adoptive mother, “You’re not my real mom.” That got me thinking that adoptive mothers are not the only people who have to deal with this. What about birth mothers who are in open adoptions with their birth children? I can see them getting hit with even more painful words, such as, “You walked away,” or other such variety. That’s got to hurt even worse than being told that you are not the “real mom.”

I can see the open adoption scenario now. The adopted child has an argument with his adoptive parents. He walks out in anger and goes to see his birth mother, certain that she will “take his side.” The birth mother chooses to support the adoptive parents, and the adopted child lashes out in anger, “What do you know? You’re not my real mom, anyhow. What do you know about parenting a child, anyhow, since you gave me up?”

Whereas I can only think of one dagger for the adoptive parent (“You are not my real parent”), I can think of multiple daggers that an angry adopted child could throw at a birth mother. If the birth mother is already feeling regret or insecurity about her decision to place the child for adoption, those daggers could do some serious damage.

I know that a lot of people are interested in their family tree. They like to trace their ancestry back as far as they can. I know one woman who can trace her family tree all the way back to the 1400’s in Scotland. Wow! When you come from an abusive family like mine, you really have no interest in filling in the family tree. I am more interested in moving forward, not in looking back.

The family tree seems to be a popular school assignment for grade school kids, and that can be a challenge for the adopted child. Some adopted children, like my son, would take a family tree assignment in stride. He knows that I am mom and his father is dad, and he would just build his family tree without putting much thought into it.

However, other adopted children might not take to a family tree assignment quite as easily, especially if the other children in the room are talking about how they got their green eyes from Grandpa Phil and their raven hair from Grandma Jean and the adopted child doesn’t look a thing like her adoptive family. I can understand how a family tree assignment can be hard for an adopted child in this situation.

I heard someone say that an adopted child should not be included in a family tree (and I actually refrained from smacking him in the head when he said this!)

My 16-year-old son is currently in Tegucigalpa Honduras with 30 other area residents helping children and families improve their lives. The group, led by a local Christian radio station, took an entire playground with them. The playground was garbage here; a school gave it to them. The team members, including my son, spent hours in a factory sanding and repainting the playground equipment. The team also took school desk, that my family and area youth groups, cleaned, disassembled, and painted. These were gladly donated as they were headed to a local iron and metal foundry. The team will be providing home improvement projects for area families, you can check out some of the photos posted on the way.fm website if you are curious about the living conditions. One home they are remodeling is 10-feet by 15-feet, and houses a family of six. The floor has large boulders and the team will be smoothing it out and pouring concrete for the family. Check out this video clip to see missions in action, helping these Honduran children stay in their country of origin.

Our Guestblogger is Melissa Nilsen who resides in Minneapolis with her husband and two-year old daughter. She writes articles on open adoption and blogs about being a birthmother and mom. Check out her personal blog or read her articles on Tapestry Books on-line.

I like open-adoption because we can all talk about what's going on in our lives. I like knowing who my birthmother is and what she likes. And I like meeting the people she's related to—who I'm related to.

- Nicole, adopted-daughter and birth-daughter of nine years"

We all ask questions about who we are. You might say, we are each on a lifelong quest to discover what makes us unique and individual, what we are supposed to do with our uniqueness, and where, in life, we are going.

So we have established that open-adoption is generally the clear choice for birthmothers and often adoptive parents too. A few years back I spoke on a panel at an adoption agency alongside five adoptive couples. Several of the adoptive mothers commented that when their children’s birthmothers hadn’t called for a while they actually began to miss them. One adoptive mother said, “after our daughter was born and we brought her home, I really craved being around her birthmother.” But what about the children?

Isn’t the greatest priority in any adoption to raise secure and well-adjusted children? And isn’t an adoptive parent’s first and most important responsibility to protect their adopted children? So what if your child’s birthmom is unstable? Disrespectful of you or your family? Unwilling to honor you as the real parent?