Unknown Speaker  00:00
I left them. And I'm a psychologist, and a writer, and an adoption counselor, and an adopted person. So when we first started planning this workshop, an adoptive mother named Elizabeth Gross, who you saw in the program, was going to do the workshop with me. And I'll tell you why shortly. She called me about a week ago and said that, since the program had been changed, and I was supposed to be in the spring, she found out that a wedding she was supposed to go to was today in Chicago. And originally, this workshop was supposed to be at one and then she could have gone to the wedding. But she looked in programming, obviously, three. So she couldn't go to this because she's an adoptive mother. And she said her children would be very disappointed if they couldn't go to Chicago to see their relatives, and she had to make a choice. She I'm a Barnard alum, and she is too. And so she had to make a choice between her children, her family, and her school, and this workshop, but I promised her that I would fully represent her as best I could. And that I would give anybody who wants it after this workshop, her telephone number. And I'm gonna go around and find out how many of you are interested we have thought about I do adoption counseling. But I've had many different kinds of rap groups. I don't have a rap group for adoptive parents or potential adoptive parents. And so we talked about starting one. So if any of you are interested, you'll know at the end of this workshop, because I'll tell you something about both of our experiences. The workshops gonna be a closed adoption and on open adoption, but before I start, I want to go around and find out who you are and what you're interested in so that we can talk about what you need here. So you can take who you are and where you are in the triad and what you would like to get from the workshop. We'd love to start and speak loudly because we have to pick it up on the tape. Elizabeth is anxious to have the tape when she comes back.

Unknown Speaker  02:14
I'm a grandparent of two of my daughters have adopted children one is a biracial child and one is not they each have their own biological children. And they both for different reasons decided to adopt the one is three years old and the other one is a six month old biracial baby and I'm here with grandparents interested in finding out as much as I can about adoption Okay. an adoptive mother My child has grown up he's 41 But I want to hear whatever I can learn about what may have happened with him how he's feeling considering the golfing I thought about it for a second. Let's make a decision. So this is what I'm learning

Unknown Speaker  03:24
you're wanting to adopt Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay.

Unknown Speaker  03:32
Wonderful. Children just like to understand wedding

Unknown Speaker  03:39
and I have no personal connection with adoption but I like this topic better than family violence.

Unknown Speaker  03:50
We can get a little family violence adoptive mother

Unknown Speaker  03:59
of six and an eight year old and also have a number of friends who have adopted close close and open adoptions outside the social work space in the past few years I've doubled the number of adopted people or adoptive parents. No. Okay. How old are your

Unknown Speaker  04:37
four year old

Unknown Speaker  04:49
I'm sorry, I can't hear it trigger louder for the tape to my parents.

Unknown Speaker  05:00
My oldest sister, and then when I refused and then eight years later on, my mother was on a diet and I was marking. And she felt really sick. And she went to the doctor. And the doctor said, I'm really sorry about saying you're barren. And that's why I said that. And I was going on my sister's just situation.

Unknown Speaker  05:40
Don't have any personal connection to adoption, but I'm working on a dissertation, this dissertation on the idea of adoption in American culture and 20th century, focusing at this point.

Unknown Speaker  05:55
I'm an early childhood educator and pursuing my master's degree at Bank Street in early childhood education. And we have an adopted child in my class. I'm just, I know, it's kind of new to me how to deal with the whole situation of adoption in the classroom and with the parents. I'm considering adopting.

Unknown Speaker  06:22
Okay, we have quite a range here for the tape. I'll say that we have two grandparents. And we have some adoptive parents. And we have a woman whose siblings are adopted. And we have some women who hope to adopt, oh, we have two people also we haven't heard from, yes, yes.

Unknown Speaker  06:43
I was adopted at birth. And three and a half years ago, my first parents contacted me with a phone call. And then ended up getting married has had three other children for my full siblings. And I corresponded with them for three years. And then I just kind of in this past January, and I'm writing a book about it for basic. Yes. It often comes up when I'm working with sponsors, apparently.

Unknown Speaker  07:25
Right, oh, we have a lot of material here to cover, and we won't be able to cover it all. But what's interesting is, before I came to this workshop, I went to a workshop on single parenting, and everyone there was interested in should they adopt? And if so, how to do it. And I think that this is very interesting, because that I think, of adoption is on a continuum. And it's important today to think of this continuum, because what we have to cover in this very short time is many of the issues on the continuum. Like, if you're going to adopt today, where are you going to find a baby to adopt because there's now a shortage of babies when I was adopted, which was a long time ago, there were many babies, and you just had your pick, you don't today. And if you're going to make a choice, you have to decide if you're ready, as some of the women in this workshop said, and some of them were single, if you if it's okay to be single, or you have to be married? And then are you going to take a younger child? Are you going to take special needs child? Are you going to go abroad and take a child from abroad? And so these issues are very different from the issues that were my adoptive parents faced. And another issue now is, are you going to have a closed adoption or an open adoption. And I think it must be very confusing for people who are thinking of adopting today are who are in the process of raising young children, because the adoption system has changed. So since the time when my generation and generations after me were adopted, when, when adopted years ago, you went to an agency and the agency, the social worker told you, you know, we're going to match you up with the child, you know, the child look like you have the same religion. And it's going to be dislike your child and your take the child, and you're going to go home with it, and you're going to live happily ever after. And that's what people really thought and those days. Now, it's not too different today, even though it seems very different. The difference today is you have no longer the illusion that you're going to take a child home and you're going to live happily ever after without the child ever thinking about the fact that he or she may have come from somewhere else. And one of the reasons for this is that you would turn on the television and you see Oprah and Oprah's got a reunion going on. Well, when I was growing up, there were no radio or television shows or magazine articles about the other mother, you know, one of had to deal with the reality one was in. And today, the choices that I think are interesting is whether you go, how open you are. So the books that I've written in a way, I instantly noticed on the program and said, I've written 30 books, and I don't know where they got that. I'm a writer and a writer on other subjects other than adoption. But I've done a number of books on adopted about there. Anyway, I brought a few of them here. One of them is lost and found. The first one I wrote, actually, was when I had found out let me just tell you very briefly about myself, just to give you an idea of a scenario, but what an earlier scenario was like, my adoptive parents told me my parents were dead. And this was something that a lot of adoptive parents did. In fact, later as when these adoptees grew up, they went to parties, they met other adoptees and one adoptee will say my parents died in a plane crash, and others say mom died in a car crash, and another say mom died of illness. And they were Oh, isn't this interesting, everybody's parents died in this dramatic way.

Unknown Speaker  11:11
And I found out from a relative in my family that my parents had died in a different way than I had been told. And so just, I was so shocked to hear they had died a different way, I wouldn't have to find out how they died. And I wasn't even brave enough to go to the agency to find out I sent my husband. And I didn't understand I had been a foreign correspondent, then in Asia, but many years in the Far East. And I was a correspondent, Vietnam correspondent in Japan, I didn't understand why I wasn't brave enough to go to this agency. My husband found out that they weren't dead. And then I was faced with the search. This book, I wrote a book about that what happened when I searched for my mother, when my father and what I found, and psychologically, what I realized about what I was doing, psychologically when I was growing up, and what I was doing psychologically as an adult, and what was going to change psychologically, is that tried to integrate this. This book Lost and Found is about interviewing, this was written, this was published in 1979. So it's an old book, even though it's reissued in Ada. But it's old and not old, not old, in the sense that the psychology of what it feels like to grow up adopted, and not to meet your birth mother not to have your birth mother, at your birthday party to not to know who you came from, who gave birth to not to look at a mirror and see someone who looks like you. And the second half of this book is about the beginning of the search and reunion, which is when adoptees first came out of the closet and this we're talking now about the seven days in the 1970s we had legalization of abortion, we had women beginning to have babies out of wedlock and keep their babies. And so we had a whole change in the moral system and, and societal mores. So this book just began charting what happens in Reunion. This book, which came out about two years ago, is a psychological overview in which I tried to understand what I had experienced and what other adoptees had experience and what the children who are being adopted today, the children have experienced and what they might experience too, because there is a kind of parallel between those kids being adopted today. And those kids who are adopted before we share a lot in common. And I think it's very important for people who are thinking about adopting today and who have adopted grandchildren and have young adopted children to understand that even though they're the new adoptees, the younger generations have very different circumstances, they're going to psychologically experience a lot of the things that the older generation of adopters experienced. For one thing, when we talk about open adoption, which is happening today, we have to see that on a continuum because we have to think about what is open mean? Open to some people means you tell child is adopted. Open to other people might mean you meet the birth parents, or you've talked to them on the phone or a lawyer is arranging something and is going to send correspondence or pictures back and forth. Are you going to exchange names or not exchange names? Are you going to put in a special phone and then take it out after the adoption and not have any more contact with the birth family? Or you're going to have which is the far end of the continuum and there are pockets in this country where this is happening? Where the birth mother and father and birth grandparents become very close to the adoptive family. And the adoptive family is not threatened by the birth mother and the birth mother is not threatened by the adoptive family and they the child grows up knowing who his clan was and was playing is and integrates it. First I just want to say a few words about my experience. And then I want to talk about the experience that is gross, the adoptive mother who couldn't be here today and who is in an open adoption, and has two children and open adoption.

Unknown Speaker  15:17
My own experience was the I was what in this book I call the good adoptee meaning that when, when a child has experienced loss in this society, a child with, you know, within a marriage, let's say that a child's parents die, really die in a plane crash, or really die in a car crash, or really have some illness. All of society is very concerned about them, the child usually is sent to a psychologist, and everyone is thinking about the child and working with the child trying to help the child adjust. And no one thinks that an adopted child has a lost just as great as the child in the married family, the adopted child has lost its parents, both parents has lost his clan has lost the names of the cloud, which was born to has lost his ancestors has really lost everyone, and has lost them in a kind of Holocaust, which is, in some ways, I did a book on the Holocaust, someone who died in the Holocaust. And I thought about a lot of this as I met survivors and children of survivors, and realized that as happy and wonderful thing is adoption is the adopted child is really a survivor, but from a holocaust that he doesn't even know about, or she doesn't know about. Because the child doesn't know why they've already lost the parents doesn't know, the circumstances the parents are in, we're in then already now doesn't know the names of the family. And it's really, it's really alone in the world, and alone in the world, meaning that the child has this wonderful adoptive family, but still is not really of that family in a sense of biologically being born into it, and feels a sense of aloneness. I've been in this book working with the idea of trauma. And the fact that this is really a cumulative trauma that this adopted child is going to experience no matter how loving the adoptive parents are because the child has been separated at birth from the woman who carried that child in her uterus. And we know now from prenatal studies, that the baby is much the fetus is aware of things. And the newborn baby is aware of things. So this baby has a kind of trauma when it's born. And it I think it has another trauma when it's told it's adopted. Because it's really not very good news to hear that Mommy loves you very much. But you didn't grow in mommy's tummy. This child has to deal with this in some way. And then the next message is, and you can't know who's told me you ruin our if you if the mommy says today I met that mommy. But where's that mommy that mommy isn't here that mommy isn't going to come to your birthday party, even though I've met her. The child gets the message and the child does what I call dissociates. And the one of the reasons that I'm against the closed adoption system is that I feel that it's a system that encourages, in fact forces dissociation on the child. And what I mean by dissociation is, the child is going to split off. And by that it's going to just split off cut off from Nam himself from consciousness and live in that adoptive family as if there is no other reality there is no other family. And this is where he is. And when you split off, you pay a psychological price. And I do counseling with a lot of adolescent adoptees and and adult adoptees who are beginning to realize the price that they paid in that splitting off. And the price that I paid was when I told you that I was told my parents were dead. Now a child who secure and in a regular family if they were told someone died at Alhambra. You know, they they might ask some questions. And as an adopted child, I did not ask where they were buried. I didn't ask to see pictures. I didn't ask what their names were. I didn't ask if there were any other if they had brothers or sisters. I just completely split it off. And I think that this is what a lot of adopted kids even now coming from other countries are going to have to do because the child is a survivor and is already survived one loss, can't afford to lose the adoptive family. And there is a fear that if this child goes too far, that maybe this family will also give them up. adopted children have a great fear of abandonment. And this fear of of annulment is something that makes them very cautious and very careful. And what I call an Lost and Found I call the good adoptee. And in this book I call the artificial self. I started thinking about the psychology they adopted in terms of selfhood in this book, and

Unknown Speaker  20:19
they're very similar. The good adoptee was adopted, I was a good adoptee who tries to please wants to make everybody happy, who are live as if life as if really born into this family. But in some sense, deep inside feels like an imposter. It feels like an a fake and feels unreal, you get a lot of older adopted people saying how unreal they feel. The bad adoptee was the adoptee that a lot of adoptive parents bring into the clinics or bring into one's practice. And in some way, the bad adoptees may be more healthy than the good adoptees, because they're the ones that are going to ask a lot of questions and act out. Because they're going to realize they're not going to get an answer. And they may act out anti socially, they may be hyperactive in class, we have a lot of hyperactivity with our adopted kids, and why shouldn't they be hyperactive carrying a lot of things inside that they can't quite figure out. And there's a kind of anxiety, that sort of hyper alertness that a lot of adopted kids. The I don't call, I don't call the good adoptee and the artificial self, true or false, when it caught if any of you have looked at psychology talks about the true self and the false self. And Artie Lange also did. But I think that you can't do that with adoption. Because in adoption, you always have to think in terms of duality. Because both things are going on the child is of the family. And it's not the family, the child, the adoptive mother is the mother and it's not the mother. And if one can think in terms of duality, well, I think one doesn't have to feel threatened if one can think in complex ways. So in terms of the good adoptee and the artificial self, they're both true and they're both false. There's a lot of truth in each one. Because I was raised in the closed system, and because I saw so much pain that a lot of adult adoptees have, they have problems with intimacy, they have problems with jobs, they they have, I don't know, or you have an older, you have the older child, I don't know what the experience is. But a lot of problems that come from this very early sense of feeling like an imposter of having to constantly be the kind of, even though it's not a false self or kind of sense of not being really authentic. And I began to think that really would be better to have open adoptions. But it's very hard to have open adoptions in a society where the records are still sealed. They have opened in England in 1975. And they were about to open in this country. In the late 1970s, when a special lobby group was formed the National Council for adoption to keep records sealed in this country. And they have succeeded. Until last July 1, Tennessee opened the first state to open in half a century. And this lobby group came in with a Christian Right. And there's now a court case, I don't know how many of you aware of this happening in Tennessee, Tennessee trying to open its records the Christian right the National Council for adoption in court and will it's now going to the federal court, the district court in Cincinnati is going to give a opinion next month. But this is how difficult it is to have open adoption in a society where records are sealed. And it's still assumed that a child will not know or live with, you know, both families in some kind of some kind of harmony.

Unknown Speaker  23:56
Now, let me tell you about Liz gross. She went to Barnard too, and I knew her Barnard and she wanted to adopt she wasn't able to have children and she knew that I worked with a lot of birth mothers, which I do as well as adoptees and some adoptive parents and she asked me if I could help if I had any advice. Now this was 16 years ago. I can't believe Sam is now 16 And I happen to know a birth mother because the birth mothers would come to us and say we will only you know what I mean by birth mother. We the whole language thing is so difficult now, some people say biological mothers some people say birth mother but a woman who places her child for adoption is now called either a biological mother or birth mother. I prefer birth mother and actually natural mother you find in all the historical documents but many adoptive parents felt threatened if the word natural was used, because it makes them feel unnatural. So anyway, there was a birth mother who felt she was unmarried living with a man for few years. As she was in her late 20s, and she felt that she would like to give her child up for adoption that she just felt she couldn't raise a child herself. She herself had, her mother had disappeared early in her life, she had been raised by an aunt. And she had no sense of mothering. And she asked if I could find someone. And so I told Liz about this. And she met Sandy. And they both talked about how they would remain friends and how Sandy Crowe, we see Sam, and it was really quite beautiful. They even went on television together, you know, there was a period when old adoptive parents and birth mothers run same shows and and how they were going to always meet and so forth. What happened is one of the problems with open adoption. And I want to say that even though I believe in open adoption, one, one of the things that one has to always be aware of is it doesn't mean that if it's an open adoption there, no problems. And then it's got everybody's there. For me, this is the other thing. Now open adoption agencies say, so take the child and live happily ever after. It's very hard to live happily ever after. If, if you have broken up families, if you have a child who's lost the original plan, they're going to the child may be a happy child, and they grew up into a happy person, but they're going to be complexities. And open adoption is going to have other complexities that most adoption didn't have. For one thing, even though adoptive parents are very worried that the birth mother is going to come back and steal the child, and you've all know the baby Jessica story and the baby Richard story. A lot of this was found up by the National Council for adoption as lobby group, because it's very rare for this to happen. And in those cases where it did happen, those two cases, those were not legal adoptions, and the parents, the birth mothers come back after four weeks and ask for the child. And then the lawyers tell the adoptive parents run it through the courts a few years and then you'll get to keep the child which is what happened. What happens a lot is that the birth mothers are the ones who disappear, not the adoptive parents, because the birth mother, the adoptive parents are in a kind of settles situation. But the birth mothers is an ox, and she may meet somebody and that man doesn't want to be here about another kid from you know, something that happened earlier, and may say let's have our own kids and forget that. So the birth mother is in a kind of tension. And this is what happened with Liz and Sandy. Sandy felt very uncomfortable about meeting Sam after a few years. And she felt that, first of all, the grief for her would be too great to see to see him. And also that this man that she was now with and who she did marry, didn't want to see Sam. So Liz was in a spot to this kept up the corresponds, I must say that this is really an incredible adoptive mother. She is she's been in there from the very beginning struggling with all the issues from everybody's side, and particularly how her children feel. So she put up Sandy's picture by salmons bed. I didn't know that she told me this later. And because Liz was a pioneer, this is 16 years ago, and no one knew really what open adoption was, what it was going to be. And all of the adoptive mothers then and I think now on the East Coast, we don't have that much open adoption are still pioneers and sort of forging the way and others will follow in their path. Anyway Liz put up Sandy's picture and Sandy sent it's really happening isn't it? Can we open a window? Anybody have any ideas about let's open the door? Let's start are we start with opening the door? I wonder if we can put on the air conditioner to try

Unknown Speaker  28:36
do you want to try it? That way Oh, okay. Well, let's keep going. Yeah, mate I'm getting anything doesn't feel like it. Nobody warned us about this the other classroom wasn't this was this room

Unknown Speaker  29:14
okay. Anyway, every year Sandy sent I'm gonna make this very brief every year. I just want to hit certain points, though, that we can come back to that we see psychologically what's going on every year Sandy, who never appeared send a present. And when Sam was and Sam asked very few questions, when Sam was about nine, he got this fantastic gift of a dog, which was a clock and Liz said oh my god, this sounds so beautiful. So what you better write a really nice thank you note. And Sam said, I thought she was dead. And Liz was just blown away because there was her picture and and other presidents had come but Sam just I guess in a child's way just as assuming that if she wasn't there, she must be dead. In a closed adoption system that I grew up in, even though I was told they were literally dead, I was living as if they were as if dead. Because if a child doesn't see his parents or know about the parents, they are as if dead to him. And there was Sam and an open adoption, and the parents are still as if did to him. Since then, Liz and her husband have taken him to see Sandy once, but he went with his younger sister and the children play in the grownups talk, he still hasn't really been alone with her, she's now moved down south. And we're hoping that he can go down there maybe, and spend a weekend and get to know her. He has some kind of learning disorder. And and I don't know whether this is related to adoption or not, because one important thing to mention is that when you're talking about adoption, and adopted kids, they're all different. You know, they're born with different genetics. They're born with different temperaments. And so you can't say that each child is going to react to adoption the same way, or to what I call these cumulative adoption traumas. But Sam is very quiet. And he's very thoughtful boy, and I dedicated this book to him. i This is a book I wrote a few years ago on what, how adopted, parents can tell the kids their true real adoption story, rather than some kind of, you know, fragmentary story. Because adopted, children grew up with what I call a broken narrative. You know, most kids you're born and you know who your parents are, and you know who all the relatives are, and your narrative grows with you. But with adoptive kid, there's no beginning to their narrative that they were born in a foreign country and brought here they didn't know that country didn't know their parents. And it's like, and their main characters are missing from their narrative. So I always encourage adoptive parents who are telling their kids about adoption, whether they were born in this country, whether they're born abroad, to keep as close to reality as you can, as close to the truth so that the child has a sense of authenticity, and has a sense that you're on the child's side, because you want to be the adoptive parent wants to be close to the child, and the child can share everything. Children who grew up in a closed adoption system, tried to protect their adoptive parents, they knew the adoptive parents will be sad if they talked about adoption, or the kids ask questions. So the kids didn't ask any questions. Some adoptive parents say to me, Oh, my child never thinks about adoption, because you never ask questions. And I say, Well, maybe that's not a good sign, because it would be much more healthy. If a child was asking questions. Why wouldn't someone ask questions about who they were born to and where they came from? Anybody? Would we think about how this earth was formed? We study fossils we study mummies that we find frozen and snow, why wouldn't any human being want to know who they came from and, and what their who their family is? This adopted one other child and that child to put an ad I think, I actually didn't check with her I think probably put an ad in the paper, as you know, many parents are find that children that way. Now, the whole social child welfare system, as far as I'm concerned, is broken down, which makes me very sad. Because even though the agencies were a lot of them kept secrecy and privacy, and protected the adoptive parents more than the child, I still think that children were more protected with agencies than the lawyers who are now handling adoptions for big money. And they're not keeping records the way they should. And I really worry about these future generations of adopted kids in these very haphazard legal arrangements that are made by untrained people. This got a child from an Appalachian family, very poor family. Because Sandy had come from an educated family and was much closer to her own class. This woman, little Annie's mother is from a poor family very young. She was in her early 20s, I think, had an older child of three who the grandmother was raising, and felt she couldn't keep this child. And Annie has Liz has been incredible. She has gone down there. She's met the family taking both kids. And Annie has met her sister. And one of the one of the things I was talking to Liz about this is I think it's much harder for adoptive parents when adoptions are open, because here you've got you've got to worry about all these parents, these of these other families and what how much you're going to see them or not see them your children's questions, your children's worries, because there was a period when and his mother had another baby and said, I don't want any to come down now because I'll be busy with the baby. And then Annie felt very rejected. So then, if the adoptive parents and the child write the birth mother and she doesn't write back, or if the birth mother has an agreement with the adoptive parents that they will let her come and visit the child. And then the adoptive parents get threatened at a certain point and And they withdraw. So you get many variations on this. I think the early years are harder for adoptive parents when the child is young, but I think the rewards are. And we hope this is going to be true that the adoptee is going to integrate this, as he or she grows up, is not going to have to split off the whole reality part of his or her life. And he's going to be sharing this with the adoptive parents, as he or she is growing up, so that it's not going to have to go on what we call the search. And the search is in the last half of this book, the early years. And the search isn't the last half of this book, search and reunion, what we're finding when adoptees go in search, what those reunions are, like the complexities of them because the birth mother is also split off, may not have told her new family about the adopted about the child she put up for adoption. And she's going to have to reorganize her psychic reality. And the adoptee has to reorganize his and the adoptive parents have to are often very threatened and they have to organize, reorganize, there's so there's a lot of emotional chaos and pain that comes when the adoptee is grown. And we're hoping that open adoption is going to help in in that way that everything will be more integrated as the child is growing up. So I think I'll stop there and open this up. And let's try it. I know some of you have come with specific situations. And it might be kind of interesting. If you share it with us. Maybe we can Did anyone come really? With a certain? Like? Yes. And you don't have a voice? This is part of our problem. We're going to need a trance an interpreter you've got the person with laryngitis is telling the person next. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  37:06
You've talked about a lot of difficulties in adoption. Can you talk a little about the more positive?

Unknown Speaker  37:11
Yes. Okay. Well, I'm an adoptee. So and I wanted to adopt. And I think that a lot of adopted people want to because first of all, it's the only family system I knew, was an adopted family system. And it and I also felt that it would be interesting that I was I would have been a good adoptive mother because I knew a lot about how adopted kids felt. And I almost did adopt a child when I was a correspondent out in Japan, I was married to a man who was not adopted, and said, well, let's have our own kids first, you know, because it seemed to him sort of unnatural if you're, if you're going to have your own kids. So I did have two children. And somehow my life has been very busy and I didn't adopt. I really felt so strongly in the workshop, the last workshop when the single mothers were talking about it. And some mums and dads really wanted to have the experience of having children and I love having children and I love. I've done a lot of children's books, I've done children's theater. And I was once asked to do a blurb for a book by a woman who had decided not to have children, and all the wonders of not having children. And I was rather amazed that I couldn't write a blur for it. And I guess it's because I'm really pro child, I consider myself a children's rights advocate. And I think it's wonderful for people to have children any way they can. But I also think it's very important to think about the psychology of the child, and what the child was clear, because I've gone to a lot of meetings where prospective adoptive parents are meeting with lawyers and having their own meetings, and all they're talking about is what country to go to, you know how to arrange it? Where do you find out how to put an ad in the paper. And it's like, it's almost like buying merchandise. And it's not thinking about this is not like buying a Cabbage Patch Doll. This is not even like buying a dog. Though my dog has more pedigree papers and background and most adopted kids have, you know, I would take a dog unless you knew its background. I think that I think that it's very important to have counseling with people who know the psychology of adoption before one adopts because adopted kids are like other kids and the adoptive families like other families, but they have certain things that are different. And it's very important to understand that difference. And so that one sees the naturalness of that difference and isn't threatened by it and understand what the kid is feeling. And if because, right I taught in this book, I have a chapter or a section on the conspiracy of silence. And by that I mean the child is growing up and nobody's talking to him about do you ever think about where you came from or what you know, even if you were adopted at birth, You know, who your mother or father were, what they look like. And as the child's growing up, it's like, there's a silence. Teachers don't talk about it, the minister isn't talking about it, there's a certain topic you don't talk about. And it makes you feel very alone in this book, which unfortunately has gone out of print, but I like to think was ahead of its time that I don't know Anyway, in this book, the child asks where he comes from. And the mother, the adoptive mother says, well, it's not really that important where you came from, because what's important is that you're with us and that we love you. And, and that's, the child says, I think I know where I came from. And to me, this was the important part of this book was this picture, which I asked the artists to do. Can you all see it? It's the baby falling through space. And I think that baby falling through spaces inside of a lot of adopted kids and adults, because it's like, even from from somewhere, this is the survivor, you don't know where you came from. And you don't see those people you're not connected to them. And someone else that, you know, picked you up when you were falling through space. And I think this is, I think that's really a kind of bond that the adopted child has with adoptive parents, that they really are aware of that and feel that they share that with the adoptive parents. And it's a kind of loyalty that the adopted child has to the adoptive parents. And because even though the adoptee searches for the birth mother, that doesn't mean that the birth mother is this great goddess, this birth mother, someone who has abandoned that child. And that's something that's inside of the adoptee. And so the adoptee is carrying this duality of the long for mother, and yet that mother was the abandoning mother, and the adoptive mother, who is the good mother and the loving mother. But it's not the real mother, the biological mother. And so there's always this, these two things happening inside. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  42:01
I'm struggling with as a teacher, with the idea of, we have a child who, you know, we were told that he's adopted, but he was not yet told he's three. And, and my instinct as a teacher is that honesty and openness is always the best way to go about things. But obviously, I'm not going to bring something up like that, that the child doesn't know about from his parents. It's not my it's not my place. But I guess I'm kind of an I did a little bit of reading. And, and I'm wondering, you know, along with the honesty, and openness is also the question of telling children what they're ready to hear, when they're not telling children things that are extraneous, they're not here yet. And I'm, so I'm kind of struggling with this issue of both from my from my own knowledge, and for counseling parents, as a teacher, about the process of telling children, you know, whether it's kind of toxic, the the word adoption is out from the time that they're adopted. But, you know, when different elements are brought up, you know, I mean, this is the age I know, practically every year, the issue of birth comes up in nursery school. And that's, that's a key issue. And when the issue of birth comes up in our school, you know, what, what I mean, I'm just kind of trying to anticipate like, what kinds of questions might come up and how that's how I'm gonna need to deal with that for an adopted child, knowing

Unknown Speaker  43:35
what what's interesting here is, what's interesting here is that you have parents who have not told the child we're telling teacher, I think that's kind of interesting, because if they're trying to pass, why are they telling the teacher, this issue of when to tell, and I talked about this in the both these books is really difficult, because you'll get so many different psychological opinions on this, there are people who really believe you should always say you're adopted from very early age, and the child just gets used to it. And there are some therapists who really believe that you have to wait until the child is older and is better able to handle it. And I, I feel that no one should ever say this is the right answer, or that's the right answer. Each family has to find it for itself. The problem with not telling is that if parents don't want to tell it's like they have a shame factor, and something unnatural, and I think that the child is going to pick that up. And also, I'm not sure that that many families have that much choice because there are other children in families, their cousins, you know, their, their the neighbor's kids. Somebody's going to know it's a very hard secret to keep. So the child is going to hear from someone else if the parents don't tell. And I think that really is probably the best answer that you just don't have a choice unless you move to another part of the country and decide to really try to keep it a secret. And I think not telling a child at all is really immoral. Because every human being that comes on earth comes with a certain Genetic endowment and historical background. And you don't own a human being when you were taught, taking a child and making it part of your family and giving it love, but you're respecting what, who that child is. And so you do have to tell. And then if you're going to tell the teacher, and you're not going to tell your child, a child could eventually even be deceived at that, that other people know, a lot of adoptees have told me that they weren't told until a little later. And then they found out that everybody knew. And you always have a kind of paranoid feeling. People know things about you that they're not telling. And I think it takes a certain trust away from the child's feelings toward the adoptive parents. But I would tell this parent to do reading and to, you know, read books and maybe do some counseling, because they're, obviously have a problem about it. And they're giving you that problem in some way. You're here, they should be here, you know? Yes, yes.

Unknown Speaker  45:56
I agree with you about the authors in terms of challenge. Stress, never question. But I want to say two things in terms of teachers, because some of the doctor can adoption themselves. I think in adoption, relevance is important. And

Unknown Speaker  46:15
adopting what relevance

Unknown Speaker  46:19
we have to be careful not to attribute more to adoption actually has many aspects to life in any way. It's not only its relevance, and your classroom with this particular child can use the teacher, that child should be viewed the same way that you didn't know when he said, you know, because if the child, there's no reason to bring into the situation to report any particular behavior of what's going on, it's kind of a moot point. Because, you know, it doesn't stay on the

Unknown Speaker  46:53
situation, until I envision the possibility, which we have to think about, as teachers of, you know, when a different parent whose birth next month, what she's going to do, and question of birth comes up, and kids are talking about my money to I mean, sometimes those things, I mean, I'm not anticipating that I'm certainly not going to bring up that somebody's adopted. But if a child says to me, that I come from my mother to, you know, things like that, that,

Unknown Speaker  47:19
that features of their presence on this earth, that they weren't born into the world, and they have to know that they have in common that with every other child, and it's important for parents to be enforced that even. And so, in the child, as the teacher was eyeballing, you know, from my mommy, I don't think a child would ask her to teach, I could be wrong, I think that they do go to that state where they ask, and you could tell their child or

Unknown Speaker  47:49
what have you in your home?

Unknown Speaker  47:53
That You Might Not Have Known, you don't know that we had been adopted? And I guess so one of my concern is that I agree with you that openness, but sometimes I'm getting the feeling and I don't know if it's accurate, that you are saying that this is such an overtime experience for a child that it just covers every single aspect?

Unknown Speaker  48:14
Well, I do believe that being adopted is the core of the identity of the adopted person, I do believe that. And I believe there's been a lot of denial in society about who the adopted child is and what the adopted child feels. And the denial is, you know, through love because the family wants to make the child part of that family. But I think in doing that they make the child invisible. I think that it's a human need to know who gave birth to and to think about gave birth to, because adoptees who are old enough to articulate will talk about maybe this is a Thanksgiving dinner table. And they look around, and everybody's related to everybody. And they all look alike. And they talk about Uncle Mo and they talk about great grandfather who came from somewhere. And that child is thinking these are my family, but they're not this is this duality, but they're not my family. And these, you know, these are my relatives, but they're not my relatives because I don't look like them. And so part of a child is preoccupied with that. But often that's not shared with the adoptive parents. And this is what I call dissociation. Because the child splits this off as a kind of psychological need to live as an adopted child. If the family is going to not bring it up or discuss it or.

Unknown Speaker  49:37
Yeah, well, then it depends upon what they're discussing. Because I think it's very important for the especially now with the young adoptees to meet the birth family and to have some kind of ongoing relationship. That doesn't mean they come for tea every Sunday. But some adoptive parents tell me Well, I tell the child that you know he's adopted or she's adopted and say we met your needs Mother, but then it's as if the mother has disappeared, again is as if dead.

Unknown Speaker  50:05
But what about your friend tried to get this woman involved in? I'm sorry. Your friend's mother didn't meet the child for years. And what does that child thank you for four years? This woman is there and she doesn't want it doesn't matter.

Unknown Speaker  50:23
It's very confusing. Yes, I mentioned that to say that open adoption is confusing. Adoption itself is complex. I think the in the old system we tried to make nice and enter take away of the psychological complexities of it. I think it's if we can be aware of the psychological complexities, I think that we can then meet them with some kind of ease that will put the child at ease rather than covering it up and saying, you know, everything is fine.

Unknown Speaker  50:54
Because I'm speaking now.

Unknown Speaker  50:58
No, doesn't permit us. It doesn't permeate everything adult, you don't go to the market and say this is my adopted child? Of course not. It's just being psychologically aware that, okay, if it's near the child's birthday, maybe it's the time to talk about the other mother. And maybe there's certain because a lot of adult adoptees talk about being depressed at the time of their birthday, and uncertain if they think if a child feels that the adoptive parents are thinking into his or her feelings, then the child will feel more natural or ease. Because a lot of adoptees have the need to deny their feelings. A lot of adopted people, adults will say, I don't think about adoption. I don't care about adoption. What do you think that's really startling? I mean, who wouldn't? Think about that they came from some other plan or want to know something? You know, that means that's what really happened. And, yes,

Unknown Speaker  51:49
I think it's important to validate that, particularly for me as a not adopted adoptive parent is to validate that my two children may fall somewhere along the spectrum. And I don't really know where they're going. And so where are we doing my conversations, even with bringing up adoption or children or for listening to the ways direct or indirect that they may bring it up, is to validate that there may be a wide range of ways that people may feel or deal. For example, my husband, who was also an adopted child person, has never felt the most desire to search for his birth family. And we talk openly about that. On the other hand, my son's godfather remembers the day, he's also adopted remembers the day that he became aware that to be chosen by the word family, that the family is quite another. And he will say very openly, this is a wound that I carry to this day, this is never healed. He's the psychologist. As much as possible, try to and as the children get older, you can talk about it a little more sophisticated terms. But I think it's very important to recognize that you don't necessarily know how each individual without the child is going to deal with what is a very psychological, psychologically complex task. And whether totally open adoption or totally closed somewhere on the spectrum is, quote, the best or whether you do the best you can to admit that any of those options carries a wide realm of complexities which, in our case, I think I would have been very open to open adoption, and neither of the birth mothers were involved. Were willing to consider that Well, that's one aspect of birth mothers that voice your children will have to contend with, I can't make your birth mothers, other than

Unknown Speaker  54:00
Well, let me say something what happened? This is interesting. What we're seeing is that a lot of adoptions that were closed at birth are opening when the child is eight, or nine or 10, adoptive parents have come to me and said, My child is asking a lot of questions. The birth mother didn't want to be contacted, then what do I do? And they go and they contact the birth mother who was then in a different place herself. So that the fact that we say closed doesn't mean it has to stay close. And in a way what search and reunion are all about is really opening closed adoptions. So that if we can think in terms of flow, and not just you know, the maybe the worst part about the closed system was that it was just static. It is not the ones narrative stay broken at the same place. It never was repaired. It just, you know, everything was static, like the kingdom that falls asleep and nobody wakes up. But in when it's open on any place in the spectrum, then, you know, again, if the adoptive parents aren't Where, and if they because adoptive parents also dissociate, they dissociate the infertility or they dissociate, even the pain may be even if they have other children after adopting, they dissociate that pain of that particular period. So if one can stay psychologically open, then one is available to change and the child or to what, you know, sensitivity? Yes.

Unknown Speaker  55:24
Well, I have integrated my birth family and my adopted family for myself in the sense that I'm developing an ongoing relationship with members family, I saw them again after the initial reunion this past July, and it is helping you in terms of identity. And we're talking about what, again, you mentioned, being concerned about the adoptive parents feelings, I didn't have to search. So I didn't have that guilt of

Unknown Speaker  55:51
your found by.

Unknown Speaker  55:54
But I still have and my adoptive family is very supportive of my progressing relationship with my birth family, but I would love for, they're still separate to each other. Even though I'm, I'm, I'm the meeting point in a way, and I'm able to integrate them for myself. But there, I deal with each of them separately. And I know my birth parents would be open to meeting my adoptive parents, but I don't know if it's vice versa. And it would make me feel more complete if we could all meet together with my three birth siblings, and my two siblings are my adoptive family. All together, but I don't know if that's possible. And it's mainly out of concern for my adoptive parents, do you know of a good way to go about trying to make that happen? And

Unknown Speaker  56:47
the best answer to that is that when you talk about reunion, you're not talking about one moment of time, like the moment you meet or the first meeting, it is really a process over time. So that eventually this may happen may not people need the person who's found needs time to sort of, you know, the person who's searched has been through a process of searching and deciding to search and so forth, the person who's found needs a longer time. And the adoptive parents in that sense, were also found, because they didn't go through a process with their child searching and knowing childhood search and so forth. So it, it just a process. And then again, there are no rules, you know, that they have to meet or not meet, just just let let it unfold. I think a lot of people are very, you know, they get sort of anxious that they think something isn't happening immediately. Just like when you do search, and you find your birth family think you're going to change completely. And then, you know, wake up the next morning, and you're the same and the adoptive parents think they've lost their kid, they wake up the next morning and the same. And so just a kind of letting it letting it just evolve. Oh, and sometimes it takes that process can go on for years. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  58:00
Why would anybody want to know when my parents raised their sisters? They asked me, she said that she didn't always know. Because she knew all she needed to know was that she was my parents are. Because

Unknown Speaker  58:23
she was walking.

Unknown Speaker  58:26
And there was no, there's no sense of lawlessness. And I've talked a lot about it. And she expresses that she's like you asked him about that she feels that she was gonna get a lot of opportunities. But she realized that somehow our parents were not saviors. But like, we're like that, therefore we have like a better relationship with that dancer.

Unknown Speaker  59:06
Well, when a child is the way your sister is reacting now, it's very influenced by how she reacted when she was very young. She had to put together a sense of self and kind of psychic reality. And one of the perils of opening that up like going on a search or search, what is it you have to dismantle a lot of the filth that you have constructed? And this is very threatening for a lot of adoptive people. And I think it's a reason why a lot of people don't tamper with it, and don't search. And I think also adoptees have a lot of anger toward the spirit parents, you know, like they dumped me and why should I go look for them if they don't mean? So a lot of issues like that and to get into a certain psychological position. And you think you're just going to stay there because you don't know what you would find someone may reject you. If you go and look for them. So you're talking about Good adopting, says this is where I want to stay. She was worth

Unknown Speaker  1:00:16
it was very amusing. My oldest sister had a pair of cowboy boots, and I was graded on the cooking the cowboy boots. So they came up to my head, we put

Unknown Speaker  1:00:23
a cowboy hat on, or you saw the arm

Unknown Speaker  1:00:26
to the picture of it. And so I

Unknown Speaker  1:00:28
still have I mean, they were they were not very nice teenagers, but now as adults, and prove that they really reconcile all of that within themselves, and think that they're really just struggling

Unknown Speaker  1:00:38
people, because

Unknown Speaker  1:00:42
we're just presenting it as a very sad experience.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:47
I think there's a lot of sadness in it. I think there's a lot of happiness and sadness. Yes, I think it's very sad when an adopted person doesn't feel secure enough to find out about where they came from. I don't I never encourage anyone to search the mean, if somebody is comfortable where they are, one should never tamper with that. But it just means that they're sort of frozen in a certain place. And that influences who you are later in life to the choices you have, in flexibility, your anger at other women, a lot of adoptive men do a lot of hostility and anger toward women, because they haven't resolved some of that feeling of being abandoned and rejected. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:32
Understand, it seems to me that especially for younger I just can't put together the scenario. Having another second mile around the physical presence. I think the existence is important. And it's my opinion that that should be available to the child as long as possible. And information when a woman has requested basis in support, you potentially have it. But I cannot. I just I anticipate a lot a lot of complications from the physical presence. And not to mention for the parents without physical presence insurance life.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:39
Yes, I think you're right. You know, what you're saying is right. It's interesting when Liz and I were discussing her her two children and all of these complexities. At one point, I was overwhelmed by the complexity. And I said to her, this, you know, if you had to do over again, would you adopt in the closed system or the open system? And she was really shocked by that question. She said, I only know the open system. I mean, this is what adoption is to me. And this is an I feel that I'm really helping my children. And this is what I would do. This is what I've done. And this is what I would do. And I thought that was really nice, because you see, we only know the closed system. A lot of adult adoptees, I know are also very frightened by the idea of open adoption, because they say I can't imagine my adoptive mother, you know, putting up with another mother. And when we're structured in the closed system, we can't then imagine the other but people who are in the open system can't imagine the closed system. For example, there was one girl who is about now let me just finish there was a girl was bad. I'm sorry, speak louder.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:45
Your friend really wasn't in an open adoption situation present. And involved.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:52
I call that an open situation. Again, I said open this is on a continuum. She was doing everything she could do in the reality of her child. And

Unknown Speaker  1:04:00
situations where it really was a present birth family and an adoptive family and ongoing.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:07
Yes. Yes, I do know some and I know somewhere when the adoptive parents just want to get away because they can't stand, you know, they just need a vacation. They will take the child to either the birth grandparents or to the birth parents. In other words, there is it's like an extended family in a way even though it has a lot more charge to it a lot more hot points than you know, than an ordinary if any, or I don't think any extended family is really ordinary, but it has, you know, special tensions. But yes, I do know, though, that those families that I know, have gotten their children to agencies that were open adoption agencies that had a lot of pre adoption counseling with the adoptive parents and with the birth parents.

Unknown Speaker  1:04:50
When the child's play, how do you visualize this from your child's point of view because they were cognizant to counseling pre adoption From the point of view of a child developing preschool how do you how do you think that that becomes integrated? See, I

Unknown Speaker  1:05:15
think, I think it's no more complicated than the child who doesn't know who he is where it comes from carrying that anxiety through school.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:24
There are options in between. I mean, I'm just trying to find out something more specific about the the vision you have of this child and their two families, and how that feels to the child and how that's good for the child.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:48
I think it feels natural to the child the same way that the closed adoption, like the sibling, your sibling, feels that that closed adoption feels natural, I think, a child develops according to the reality that the adoptive parents present that are in the home. If the adoptive parents are anxious about something, the child is going to be anxious. If the adoptive parents present something as natural, I think the child will accept his natural. And I'm not saying it's not complicated, especially if you see, it's even more complicated today than it was in my generation. Because years ago, agencies really did try to match families. And my adoptive mother, my birth mother could have been best friends, they will come very much the same kind of backgrounds. Today, we're getting different kinds of backgrounds, there's one social worker was telling me in the West, a lot of people are giving up children or or married couples, were giving up their youngest child almost like third world countries. And these are people who are different kinds of people, then the adoptive parents are a lot of the single women now are not young, high school kids, but are girls who've been on drugs. And so we're getting a disparity now and making it harder for an open adoption will be harder for the adoptive families, I think. But I still think in the long run, it's going to be better for the child to have worked through the reality of his life, rather than a kind of what, what I call a ghost kingdom. Yes,

Unknown Speaker  1:07:17
we're doing outcome studies of these areas, forms of adoption to try to elucidate what some of the factors are, whether there are key key things what do the psychological and sociological function if you will, close to adoption, adoptees versus open adoption. And that is something

Unknown Speaker  1:07:41
that a lot of there are a lot of papers written about this. And unfortunately, they're written by people who have biases on both sides, like the National Council for adoption has its papers about how terrible it would be and the people who are pro adoption, of course, write psychologically positive papers. But there is one team, Professor Ruth, of what is her name? McCoy, I think it is down at the University of Austin, they've done an open adoption study, there are a number of them that are being done on various scales. And one of the things that MC Roy found, which I thought was interesting is that open adoption works, if it's completely open, that sometimes it's the middle point, that can be confusing for a child, like when Sam sees his mother's picture, and yet the mother is never around. And so he thinks maybe she's dead, does it? There's a lot of psychological confusion. Because the the adults in the system are confused. They're not. There's no coherence there. And there's no coherence justice, there's no coherence in the closed system either. And the child senses that lack of clarity and lack of coherence, which I think produces high levels of anxiety in the adoptee adopted, we get a lot of

Unknown Speaker  1:08:58
we'd be very interested in is the the issue of how our child may function and carry weight, but it would seem to me that there are a bunch of developmental tasks the doctor needs to accomplish and I can certainly envision the countless cancer accomplishment to be vastly different than closed in the open system, I'd really be fascinated than looking at whether with these various manipulations and talking about and how it seems and what we might think based on whatever we know that development of the psyche, whether what we talked about autism ultimate outcome or shift some of the trajectories we do know for example, when when, a few years ago, prior actually I think we're adopting I read a lot of stuff that was out there being a doctor kids are over represented in mental institutions and a bunch of stuff As recently as it was the Harvard health letter, I actually had a column on adoption, where they pointed out. They said that along the way, teenage years, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, adopted children will often have more problems that not adopted children, by the time they were adults appear to have reached comparable levels of functioning.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:26
I want to answer that point, you say that the clinics can keep records of the families when they found this come in. But adults don't go to clinics where they can keep statistics you might have adults in in Alcoholics Anonymous, or AAA, or so we have no way of tracking and adults to know. But we do know, as you said, that we that there are a disproportionate number of adopted kids in residential treatment centers, and in the adolescent wards and hospitals. And this, this is part of my concern, because I'm concerned about the child. And I think we this is why I'm thinking that we should open the system, when we know what has happened to the adoptees in the closed system.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:10
But we can also be looking at what happens to these athletes in various forms the open system,

Unknown Speaker  1:11:16
we will find that out. Yes. As as time goes on. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:20
I agree that those are represented because you may have children who are adopted as teenagers, you know, they don't sweat out children who were

Unknown Speaker  1:11:29
adopted. Now we're talking about No, I'm talking about at birth children. I'm not talking about older, I'm not talking about older placement children.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:39
Those things aren't broken now. To which you're adopted. So we try to save it as

Unknown Speaker  1:11:49
well, we know. You see, you don't want you don't want to believe it is the it's very painful for adoptive parents to think that their kids might have some kind of complex feelings.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:05
I don't know that it's borne out by Devin. I don't believe it completely. But I don't think it's

Unknown Speaker  1:12:14
well, I'm not presenting fact sheets, I'm presenting psychological overview. And just to open up one's thoughts, if one is going to adopt if one has a young child, and one has an adolescent child, if one has an older child, they're all be different all the circumstances, all the families, but it's just an overview of the psychological complexities.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:37
Just as much as you refusing.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:46
I'm not sure I want this made louder, but make it less.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:55
Bias.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:56
Yes, of course, I'm biased. I'm an adopted person. And I'm a psychologist, I'm, of course I'm biased. I'm biased for the adopted child. Yes. And but I'm biased in a way that's not saying you must do this, or must do that. But just to be aware of all of the possibilities of raising an adoptive child what that child will experience. I know some adopted parents say that they you know, they go abroad to get their child because then they don't have to worry about a birth mother coming and snatching the child away. And I think that this is very sad because that child is going to be even more lost psychologically, if there's no way of knowing how he can or she can reconnect. Yes.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:52
And sometimes it will become so many different kinds of procedures. And there are other solutions. And we realize it's complicated. And we say yes, but that's how it is. And what we need to do is talk about conditions. And if there seemed to be something that was actually the nature of arguments say that I've taught so many children with dependency divorce, and each one of the different families a child is juggling. And everybody says yes, we realize as far as that is the reality of it. My own daughter has a father who slipped back into life. And I'm still we were driving I can walk into a polling station. And people told me that this is not gonna work. And if we get a very nice you know, it's because it continues, but most people will say, Well, of course it was the best he can be used for that, like with the current thing seems to be well, of course it's better for the so why is it that when you're saying was better for people to have

Unknown Speaker  1:15:01
But your daughter knows her mother, your mother. And therefore, she's connected to a biological family that she has knowledge of. And, and so it is that for the adoptees, the total disconnection, I guess that I'm really talking about

Unknown Speaker  1:15:19
reacting to if you're getting the feeling in my heart of hearts, I think that open adoption is probably the way to go. Pretend to think that's the system to work towards. But I must say that what I am hearing and feeling for you today is that unless by raising my adopted children, in a fully open situation, regardless of whether that is not under my control to do so, then I am raising them suboptimal, and I am no react, I'm sorry, against that. And so I am against the other and I have I've tried a variety of ways to say no, I can't number this may be open to a spectrum, or just like you're dealing with a messy reality of a father of your child, you may or may not want to have evolved, but you do the best we can, that many of us who are in adaptive situations in a time of enormous flux, in terms of how we were able to have our children how the agencies have worked with us work in fact, the birth fathers have said they wanted may not be able to do we in our party most often and we do our best to navigate through.

Unknown Speaker  1:16:36
So I think you're saying what I was hoping I was saying, and I'm really sorry that you heard it differently. Because that really is what I'm saying. I'm not saying you rush out and do something I'm saying to have a kind of awareness. That's all and is this art our time is up. What Thank you for having returned