Comments from children

If you’re an adopted child, please email us with your own comments about your adoption! These comments will be replaced frequently as comments are received to ensure many get a chance to place their views!

Lulie, age sixteen

I’ve always known I was adopted. In fact I don’t remember not knowing. Being adopted was a subject which was always discussed openly and freely in our family.

Gayle, age sixteen

I didn’t find out I was adopted until I was ten. Some of my friends started asking me how in the world I could have a brother who was born in June if I was born in September of the same year. I was curious too – and that’s when my Mom explained that my real mother had put me up for adoption because she had too many problems. I don’t think it made any difference to me not knowing the truth before then because I probably would have been too young to really understand. I didn’t care when I found out and I don’t care now. I’m happy the way things are.

Carla, age twelve

I don’t think about being adopted all that much. Once in a while I do, and that’s usually when I’m mad at my mother. Sometimes when I’m really mad, I’ll daydream about what it would be like to be living with my real mother – with the lady I was born from. I don’t really think of my birth mother as my real mother, because it’s the mother I have now who takes care of me when I’m sick and who’s always there when I need her. She acts just like a real mother to me. She doesn’t treat me any differently to her other children. My parents have four kids in all – two are adopted and two are not. It would probably be dangerous not to tell your child she’s adopted, but I think it’s OK if I just pretend I’m not. But parents should always tell the truth. They should never lie to you.

Timmy, age twelve

I was told I was adopted when I was about two, but I had no idea what it meant. When my parents said ‘You’re adopted’, I thought they were saying ‘you’re a doctor’, and I kept telling them, ‘No, I am not a doctor!’ I hated the idea of being a doctor because I hated doctors. I still hate them because I can’t stand the shots. When I was three, my sister, Rebecca, was born, and that’s when I realized where babies came from. My Mom explained that being adopted meant I grew in somebody else’s tummy, so it was at this time that I started asking any woman who came into the house if I had grown inside her tummy. I must have made a complete fool of myself.

- (from a book called ‘How it Feels to be Adopted’ by Jill Krementz)