Open Adoption Roundtable #16

This will be my first time responding to a roundtable prompt, and I've been waiting to join in! Heather at Production, Not Reproduction provided the following prompt. Check out what others have written here.

 
Imagine your child as an adult describing their open adoption experience. What do you hope they will be able to say about you? How did you view their other parents? In what ways did you support their relationship with them?

Since we are just starting out in our process to adopt, this has been a big part of our discussions recently as we sort through everything. Since we hope to have two children someday, I will write in the plural sense. It also avoids all those awkward his/her references.

We are hopeful that we will have an open relationship with our children's birth parents and that everyone involved is committed to maintaining the relationships. If that is the case, we hope our adult children will feel that the relationships were natural, meaning that they never had to feel awkward about asking any questions or expressing any of their feelings or concerns. I want our children to look back and see that we encouraged them to freely communicate with their birthparents and that we were able to visit them and other birth relatives when possible. Having a sense of family history has been important to me, and I want them to have access to whichever of those stories interest them.

Another blog writer (sorry I can't remember which one) talked about her daughter (?) coming to her with a question about her (the child's) birth for a school assignment. The mom responded that she should call her birthmom to ask those questions. The relationship was such that this was a natural response to the situation. I want our children to have that option. I know we will have to do some work to start and strengthen those relationships, but I think that will be easier to do if we think about having this conversation with our adult children. I want them to know we did everything we could to support the framework of those relationships so they would have them if/when they wanted them.