Talking about Adoption with Your Kids

A great question was asked in my Question and Answer post about whether to discuss with your children the fact that Riley (or insert any of your children's friends' names who were adopted) was adopted.

I honestly had never really thought about this until the question was asked here. I have pondered it and have also asked for other people's input from one of my adoption message boards. The consensus seems to be to follow your child's lead. In other words, wait for them to initiate conversations about adoption (or why some children don't "look" like their mommy or daddy) and answer their questions (on an age appropriate level) as they ask. As your children start asking questions, talk to your friends who have adopted if you need suggestions on what to say.

There are also some GREAT children's books about the topic of adoption. One of our favorites is My Family is Forever.


This is a great book for our family because one of the topics talked about is how families don't always look alike. It is a great children's book in general and would be a great purchase for any family. For those of you we know in "real life" (hahahaha!) this would be a great book to have on hand as your children grow up and start asking questions about adoption.

Even though this wasn't a part of the original question, I do want to say that we talk to Riley all the time about his story. All research has shown and experts say that children who were adopted should be told that from a very young age. Since we are Caucasian and Riley is Asian it would not be long before he would notice that he looks different than us. Most children begin noticing the difference around 3 or 4. But, we never want Riley to have "that moment" where he remembers finding out he was adopted as though it were a bad thing or something to have been kept a secret. We feel quite the opposite!

We began talking to Riley about how he became a part of our family since the time he first came home. It was wonderful to have that time to talk to him and figure out exactly how we would tell him his story while he was still young. Now Riley can tell you about how he was born in Korea, his foster mother Mrs. Park took good care of him and sent him a hanbok, he flew in a big airplane with Miss Kim, and Mommy and Daddy were SO excited to hold him for the first time at the airport! It has been so fun to live near an airport because we drive by it almost daily. It has been great for Riley to see the planes and then just very naturally talk about the day he flew in a big airplane and joined our family.