Question
So this is not so much a behavior question but a how to explain question. As you know my son is adopted and we do yearly visits with his biological parents. Last year we did FaceTime because of COVID but this year we will do it in person with the precautions needed for everybody to be safe of course. He is now about to be 4 and we have always spoken about adoption openly in the house as we don’t keep it a secret. I asked him if he remembered ( let’s refer to bio dad as XYZ and bio mom as ABC ) and he said, “who is XYZ and ABC?”
I think we are at the point where we need to be more specific about who they are. We have never had to explain because they were just people he met and would play with for 2 hours. Now we feel we need to explain a bit more or do you think we just keep it as “two people who want to play with you”? I don’t know lol.
I don’t know what wording to use for him to understand. I have told him that he grew in ABC’s tummy like his brother grew in mine but that’s about it. I get stuck on how to continue the explanation. And as far as XYZ is concerned, my son has two moms so how do we explain he has a biological father but he’s not his dad? We feel it’s the harder one to explain.
Help… should we just leave all of this for when he is older?
Answer
This is a timely question and I want to honor your Mom gut on this one. Elli, You know he needs more information because you can tell that he is now categorizing everything. This is normal for children between 3.5-6 years old. They are all putting information into tiny buckets of information.
So it is time to expand on the idea but keep it at his age level. The first and most important ingredient is being concrete.
So you can say to him that ABC and XYC were the people that put all his body parts together. ABC had and egg and XYC had a seed that made him grow. Just like he builds towers and legos, they built him for you and his mommy to be able to adopt and love him.
Tell him that they feel proud of what they built just like he does when he makes something beautiful and that's why they like to see him every once in while to see how he is continuing to grow.
That is the truth but in an age appropriate way, no complications just quick facts. Every year the story will expand. Every year you will share more and he will have more questions. I congratulate you for honoring his story.
Let me know if this helpful....