This is a situation that happened last week to a close friend of mine who is an adoptive parent. She shared it with me because it was a concern of mine, but not necessarily in this context that happened to her.
My friend and I talk almost daily and she gives the bests advice about situations as an AP. I told her that she needs to have a blog, because her experiences are real and others could benefit from it. So, she gave it to me as a topic last week since it happened to her. She is a frequent visitor on my blog, so I am sure that she will comment.
This was a great topic for adoptive parents, especially adoptive parents that may have a child that has other siblings.
Here is the story:
My girlfriend was at a play zone spot with another longtime friend last week in a neighboring city/county. She had both of her young children there playing and they were inside of the different jumping activities within this establishment.
My friend said that they were sitting there while the children were playing and these two little girls walked up with her oldest child holding the her child's hand. Her other friend said
" Who is that holding X's hand? and "who are they?"
Her child was spotted by two of his older siblings who have been adopted by another family. To make a long story short, he was the baby of all of the siblings when they were adopted. Two of the siblings were there with their new foster/adoptive family and recognized their younger sibling. They are young elementary age students themselves and recognized their youngest sibling.
What was thought to be said by the girls were, "Take us to your mommy." He did not say anything to them and he did not recognize them, but he took them over to his mother.
My girlfriend recognized the little girls as they walked up to her and their new foster adoptive/parents walked up behind them. The siblings told my friend that they recognized their brother while they were playing and called him by name.
They had not seen their youngest sibling in about a year since the visitations had stopped and different siblings adoptions had taken place. Many believe that it is best to let the families and caregivers bond and become accustomed to their new family before visitations are continued.
This set of sibling's adoptive parents did not know my friend's child because they were not the foster parents of those two children at the time when all of the children were having visits before the different adoptions were finalized. However, my girlfriend and the new adoptive parents of these siblings had spoken over the phone but they had never met. So, now they had officially met this set of adoptive parents in person.
The interesting thing about this story is that as a prospective adoptive parent, one of my major concerns was if we received a baby from our same city versus interstate, what if we ran into the birth parents out at the mall or anywhere else.
While this may seem silly to others, this was a valid concern of mine and somewhat initially worried me until I talked to the agency early on and that is something that is also covered with the birth parents and the adoptive parents regarding "chance meetings" and how will people be addressed, if this does happen. I definitely did not blow it off as something that couldn't happen. More so, the birth parents would recognize us as the adoptive parents if anything, versus the baby, since babies change quickly and it would also depend on the number of visits a year a family agrees upon.
Some birth parents may not want that to be approached out in public because they may not have shared with others that they made an adoption plan for their child, or that they even had a child. It works both ways.
While I was originally concerned with the possibility of running into a birth mom or family member at a public place when we started our adoption process and had tons of questions. Here we have 2 young elementary age children who recognized a preschooler/toddler that they had not seen in a year, that is their sibling and adults had nothing to do with this at all. Children continue to amaze me!
Yes, originally when she told me I was like "Oh Lord, what happened." It was like one of my biggest fears or concerns coming to life. I believe that as an adoptive parent, although you do want to have a level of openness with the birth parent, there is also a side of me that wants to live a normal life with my child so that these "chance meetings" that are very well possible, do not cause any issues. I have found that circles do run small. Even in major cities.
Here we are living in a major metropolitan city and she is visiting a play zone in a neighboring county and happened to be there the same day as two of her child's siblings.
I wonder if anyone else had these fears or concerns as an adoptive parent or prospective adoptive parent. It is a valid concern. While each of us may have different concerns as adoptive parents who are adopting domestically or internationally. We each have concerns that arise within our processes or after the adoption takes place.
