When children reach early adolescence they begin to think in abstract terms. By the age of twelve or thirteen adopted children have a better understanding of why children are placed for adoption. During this age adopted children are able to recognize their adoptive parents were the ones who were responsible for taking care of them in every way. Children are able to understand adoption as a “legal transaction” and that it was a transfer of parental rights from their birth parents to their adoptive parents.
Our children face many different developmental stages and milestones along the way to adolescence. As little preschool children they began to understand “How” adoption happens. While in the elementary school years adopted children explored “Why” adoption happens. By the time an adopted child reaches adolescence they need to determine how adoption has shaped their lives in specific ways.
Adolescence is the transition from childhood to adulthood. This is a rough time for all children as they move from being dependent to independent and separate from their parents. Adopted children face separating from two sets of parents, their adoptive and their biological parents.
Most teenage children struggle to define who they are as unique individuals. Young people this age experiment with ways to assert independence while maintaining connections with their family. This is the time in life when children struggle to define themselves and become unique individuals.
Adopted child face a slightly more complicated process of becoming independent. Not only do they need to move from dependency in relation to their adoptive parents but, adopted children also need to separate from their birth families.
Adopted children don’t always accomplish development of their personal identity consciously or communicate what they are feeling verbally. Abstract thinking allows adolescences to consider what “Is” and what “might have been”. Children develop a sense of identity when they look at the people whom they are most similar, their parents and siblings. Young people evaluate how they are alike and different from their family members.
Adopted children develop their identity twice. First in relation to their adoptive family and the environmental influences that have shaped their lives. Adopted children then evaluate and develop their identity based in terms of their birth family and the genetic influences their birth family played and how they shaped the child’s life.
The process of developing an independent identity is not easy for any adolescent and adopted children may not put their feelings of comparisons into words, they may explore identity issues and have a sense of being uncomfortable with themselves. They may need more information about their biological origins and have a sense of yearning or emptiness.
Adoptive parents can help their children move through this stage of adolescence by sharing the information they have about the biological family. Discussing the future and some of the reunion options they may or may not have. Sharing photographs of the biological family, birth parents and other siblings may help them connect with their genetic origins.
Adopted children have abstract thoughts about what it means to be adopted and what does it mean to have been adopted by these parents? What is different about how I grew up? What would it have been like to grow up with my birth family? Adolescents need more information in order to develop a healthy sense of independence.
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