What do you do as a birthparent when you realize your child isn’t living the happily ever after fairy tale life you thought they were? In the less open forms of open adoption or if perhaps you are limited to visits due to distance, your child may appear to be happy, but how much of what is really going on behind closed doors will be aware of until they are a great deal older? What do you do when you realize that “happily ever after” didn’t occur for your child?

I have a good friend going through this right now. Her child was verbally abused and mistreated for years now as a teenager his adoptive mother has decided to stop parenting him. She (my friend)is at a loss as to how to help her child, whom I’m sure she feels like she failed, much less at how to deal herself.

First of all, let’s be realistic and realize that there isn’t a happily ever after fairy tale life for many of us. Sure, many of our children have perfectly happily lives and just deal with normal every day child hood struggles, but what about the children we placed that have dealt with bigger things, like abuse? How does a birthmother begin to come to terms with the fact that her child has suffered abuse (be it physical or physiological) at the hands of an adoptive parent?

This isn’t something have had to deal with, so I don’t have first hand experience or knowledge to share with you. I can only speculate and think of how I might deal with it then share that or share what friends have felt when they have dealt with it.

I think if you are experiencing this, if you’ve come to the conclusion now that your child is older that their life wasn’t very happy, the guilt has to be enormous. I think you’d have to work through that guilt and learn to realize that placing your child for adoption was what you felt was best at the time and you had know way of knowing that the adoptive parents were not whom we thought they were. I also suspect you as a birthmother would have a great deal of anger – anger in thinking that your child was having a healthy and happy childhood and anger that the promises made to you by the adoptive parents were broken. You also might feel deceived.

Can you and your child have a relationship or will your child have anger as well? I think both birthmother and child in this situation will need counseling to overcome this obstacle.

I can only imagine the pain and grief a birthmother must feel when they realize that their child hasn’t had the kind of life they had hoped they would have.

Photo credit: Coley's Dad

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