I think it’s best for children to decide how they feel about their bio parents. Putting bio parents down doesn’t help the child. I think a lot of bio parents never dealt with their own trauma which caused their children to be abused or neglected. For many kids they may love their parents but hate what they did or are doing. I can say from personal experience I grew up with an alcoholic father. I care about him but I hate how he cared more about drinking vs his kids. I agree with you about having an open discussion about their bio parents. We should focus on what is best for the child. Completely forgetting their first parents isn’t always the best thing for the child.
More people need to SUBCRIBE and see your content! Thank you for yet another caring, thoughtful, and thought-provoking conversation. More people need to hear this, because most of us think as you pointed out in too black and white terms of bio parents= always bad, when many bio parents have been in the foster care system themselves as children Every family will have a different story to navigate, and contact with some unsafe bio parents would obviously not work, but nuance is important. I feel your children will have a better chance at becoming well-adjusted adults with your level of appropriate contact and fairness to both sides in your particular situation. What a gift to your children AND their bio family, even though I think it could be challenging at times for you or any adoptive parent, but it seems like the long-term healthiest way forward. I especially loved your efforts to point out positive traits, etc, to your children inherited or learned from their bio parents. Wow. As someone with no kids and in the considering/learning stage of adopting older children from foster care, I always learn a lot from your videos and it is not sugar coated and a lot of the info is not info I hear from other sources. Please keep up your important work helping kids and families. Thank you!
I have an adopted sibling and work with special needs children. I won't bring up any of my own experience. I just want to point out that the previous family is messed up in some way. Yours is not, so treat them with the care you would of a drug addled extended family member. Unless you have some necessary reason, the kids will not see and barely think on the parents. If you believe it will help your kids to talk to them then so be it. But the feelings and state of the bio parents are of little to no concern.
@@ebeleingram8048 okay, it’s helpful to see where you are coming from having a sibling who is adopted. I understand there can be some complex and super painful situations regarding bio family. I know that it’s not possibly in every case to maintain contact, but there are definitely benefits for some kids. I think it also depends on how old the child was when they are adopted. Our kids were older, and had tons of memories about their parents and brought them up constantly. This is an interesting study about the topic if you are interested! www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2928481/
I do agree with this comment very much so. I’m an adoptive mom (stepmom adoption) of two girls who have very very strong negative feelings towards their bio mom. She was very abusive, very grossly negligent, and allowed the girls to be SA’d as toddlers. And they remember it all. Yes. Bio was adopted from foster care. However- I don’t pity this woman. She very clearly knows right from wrong and her being in the system is no an excuse to be a child abuser. Now, I will not talk down about her to my kids and what they do as they become adults it’s completely based on their own feelings. If they bring up a traumatic event they remember, I listen and support them. But when they are old enough (18) I will not lie to them and they will be able to read all of the reports. I just feel like everybody’s adoption journey is different. My kids were abused, badly and then. Abandoned at my door step literally, indefinitely. It’s as if the stork dropped off two little toddler girls to me. I feel in situations where the bio parents were very abusive and aware of what they were doing, they do not deserve a golden star just for popping out kids, and though I love and agree with most of your videos, I do disagree with this one specifically. No adoptive parent should be glorifying child abusers just because they had a bad history and never got help for it as an adult, so they decided to harm kids. When we see pedos on the news, people do not stop to think of their history or what happened to them. They get locked away and sometimes even murdered for their crimes. But child abusers deserve understanding, and forgiveness just for giving birth?? Hmm….
I think it’s best for children to decide how they feel about their bio parents. Putting bio parents down doesn’t help the child. I think a lot of bio parents never dealt with their own trauma which caused their children to be abused or neglected. For many kids they may love their parents but hate what they did or are doing. I can say from personal experience I grew up with an alcoholic father. I care about him but I hate how he cared more about drinking vs his kids. I agree with you about having an open discussion about their bio parents. We should focus on what is best for the child. Completely forgetting their first parents isn’t always the best thing for the child.
Yes, I agree! It totally makes sense that you would have those mixed feelings about your dad in that situation.
More people need to SUBCRIBE and see your content! Thank you for yet another caring, thoughtful, and thought-provoking conversation. More people need to hear this, because most of us think as you pointed out in too black and white terms of bio parents= always bad, when many bio parents have been in the foster care system themselves as children Every family will have a different story to navigate, and contact with some unsafe bio parents would obviously not work, but nuance is important. I feel your children will have a better chance at becoming well-adjusted adults with your level of appropriate contact and fairness to both sides in your particular situation. What a gift to your children AND their bio family, even though I think it could be challenging at times for you or any adoptive parent, but it seems like the long-term healthiest way forward. I especially loved your efforts to point out positive traits, etc, to your children inherited or learned from their bio parents. Wow. As someone with no kids and in the considering/learning stage of adopting older children from foster care, I always learn a lot from your videos and it is not sugar coated and a lot of the info is not info I hear from other sources. Please keep up your important work helping kids and families. Thank you!
Wow, thank you so much for your kind words! 😊
Excellent thoughts. We hear about this topic a lot.
Our girls see their bio mum every month.
They are their maternal bio grandparents and aunts just as they do their other grandparents.
That’s so great you are able to keep those relationships for them!
Thank you for this video. May I ask, what do your kids call you? Is it mom as well? I will definitely be subscribing.
The woe is me argument makes no difference. Forget the previous family whenever possible.
Interesting take. Tell us more...
Just curious, are you an adoptive parent or an adoptee?
I have an adopted sibling and work with special needs children.
I won't bring up any of my own experience. I just want to point out that the previous family is messed up in some way. Yours is not, so treat them with the care you would of a drug addled extended family member. Unless you have some necessary reason, the kids will not see and barely think on the parents.
If you believe it will help your kids to talk to them then so be it. But the feelings and state of the bio parents are of little to no concern.
@@ebeleingram8048 okay, it’s helpful to see where you are coming from having a sibling who is adopted. I understand there can be some complex and super painful situations regarding bio family. I know that it’s not possibly in every case to maintain contact, but there are definitely benefits for some kids. I think it also depends on how old the child was when they are adopted. Our kids were older, and had tons of memories about their parents and brought them up constantly. This is an interesting study about the topic if you are interested! www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2928481/
I do agree with this comment very much so. I’m an adoptive mom (stepmom adoption) of two girls who have very very strong negative feelings towards their bio mom. She was very abusive, very grossly negligent, and allowed the girls to be SA’d as toddlers. And they remember it all. Yes. Bio was adopted from foster care. However- I don’t pity this woman. She very clearly knows right from wrong and her being in the system is no an excuse to be a child abuser. Now, I will not talk down about her to my kids and what they do as they become adults it’s completely based on their own feelings. If they bring up a traumatic event they remember, I listen and support them. But when they are old enough (18) I will not lie to them and they will be able to read all of the reports. I just feel like everybody’s adoption journey is different. My kids were abused, badly and then. Abandoned at my door step literally, indefinitely. It’s as if the stork dropped off two little toddler girls to me. I feel in situations where the bio parents were very abusive and aware of what they were doing, they do not deserve a golden star just for popping out kids, and though I love and agree with most of your videos, I do disagree with this one specifically. No adoptive parent should be glorifying child abusers just because they had a bad history and never got help for it as an adult, so they decided to harm kids. When we see pedos on the news, people do not stop to think of their history or what happened to them. They get locked away and sometimes even murdered for their crimes. But child abusers deserve understanding, and forgiveness just for giving birth?? Hmm….