Continued from part 1....

Do birth grandparents grieve too?
Just as birthmothers grieve the loss of their motherhood to the children they placed for adoption, birth grandparents may feel a sense of loss and grief at times too. They also tend to grieve the loss their child (the birth parent) is experiencing too.

A Few Tips
Here are a few great tips from Brenda Romanchick’s article, Can a Child have too many Grandmas?

While it is not up to you to control the relationships between your family and your child’s adoptive family, ther are a few things you can do to educate them:

• Teach them what you have learned about the adoptive family. Whether it is important holidays that the adoptive family celebrates, or their style of gift-giving, passing on known information will make contact easier on everybody. Knowing, for example, that the adoptive parents do not allow toy guns in the house will prevent the possibility of an awkward situation. Letting them know the communication style of the adoptive parents and your child will also give them an idea of what contact may be like. If, for example, it takes a long time for your child to warm up to strangers, family members will know not to expect the child to run to them with open arms.



• Let them know that all children are created equal. This is especially important if there are other children in the adoptive family. The best way to do this is to remind them that they are accepting the entire adoptive family into their lives, not just your child.



• Prepare them for possible emotional fallout. All of us remember what those first visits were like. Just as you have had to learn to deal with the bittersweet quality of open adoption, so will your family members. Many of our parents especially may find that visits bring a new dimension to their loss.

There are not a lot of resources for birth grandparents out there but below are a few that I’ve stumbled across in the past in my online journeys that birth grandparents may find helpful.

• Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Supporting Birthparents



• Birth grandparents: What is your Role?



• One Grandmother’s Story


• Lifegrandmothers