{"id":5145,"date":"2011-03-17T06:53:58","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T11:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/?p=5145"},"modified":"2025-04-30T13:12:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T17:12:12","slug":"talking-adoption-with-a-7-year-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/17\/talking-adoption-with-a-7-year-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking adoption with a 7 year old"},"content":{"rendered":"

We don’t talk about adoption a lot around here because quite simply we forget that Eva was adopted.<\/p>\n

But sometimes it pops up.<\/p>\n

The other day Cole made some comment in the car about me “sorta” being Eva’s mom. I corrected him and told him that I am just as much her mom as I am his (and his two brothers as well). He asked if he or Blake or Austin were adopted. I said no.<\/p>\n

He asked if Eva has two moms. I said, “well yes. But I am the only mom she has ever known.”<\/p>\n

All the while thinking I need to be better prepared for when these convos just pop up out of the blue. He has asked me before, and I think he just can’t wrap his brain around the whole thing. He used to go around telling people we bought her. Sigh. That killed me.<\/p>\n

He asked me why anyone would want to give their baby away. Ah. That loaded question.<\/p>\n

I explained to my best ability what I knew, and balanced it with what I could actually tell him. And tried to assure him that her first mama loved her enough to want a better life for her. Is this the truth? Well, all that a 7 year old needs to hear. Because of course he went on to ask if I thought about giving him up when he was a baby.<\/p>\n

I mentioned on here before about how I try not to let people bother me, the “she’s adopted” whispers don’t always<\/em> make me sad. But I know they might make her sad someday. She is our child just as much as the ones that I carried for 9 months. And whoever doesn’t get that? Well, not my problem.<\/p>\n

The older boys don’t talk about it. Eva is their sister, plain and simple. They have told me that they forget she is adopted. In fact, Austin’s friends probably love her more than any of the other kids friends. Who would have thought this from 13 year old boys? Austin says probably once a day “Eva’s awesome”. Out of the blue. For no reason. And I just nod, “yep”. It’s crazy to think that he was the one that questioned it the most when we told the boys are plan to adopt. Now he’s the one that tells me she needs a sister. 13, it’s not such a bad age.<\/p>\n

Should we be talking about it more? I guess. I want to always be open with her, yet not have it define her. I would love suggestions from those that have gone down this road.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, here is a pic my friend snapped with her iphone<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For those that have been asking me about iPhone pictures and trouble getting them onto the blog-<\/p>\n

I have the flickr app on my iPhone and I load the pics onto flickr right of my phone. Then I can pull the pics from flickr and put them on my blog (I do this on the computer). That way the pictures are bigger and don’t get wonky.<\/p>\n

Let me know if you have other questions about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We don’t talk about adoption a lot around here because quite simply we forget that Eva was adopted. But sometimes it pops up. The other day Cole made some comment in the car about me “sorta” being Eva’s mom. I corrected him and told him that I am just as much her mom as I am his (and his two brothers as well). He asked if he or Blake or Austin were adopted. I said no. He asked if Eva has two moms. I said, “well yes. But I am the only mom she has ever known.” All the while thinking I need to be better prepared for when these convos just pop up out of the blue. He has asked me before, and I think he just can’t wrap his brain around the whole thing. He used to go around telling people we bought her. Sigh. That killed me. He asked me why anyone would want to give their baby away. Ah. That loaded question. I explained to my best ability what I knew, and balanced it with what I could actually tell him. And tried to assure him that her first mama loved her enough to want a better life for her. Is this the truth? Well, all that a 7 year old needs to hear. Because of course he went on to ask if I thought about giving him up when he was a baby. I mentioned on here before about how I try not to let people bother me, the “she’s adopted” whispers don’t always make me sad. But I know they might make her sad someday. She is our child just as much as the ones that I carried for 9 months. And whoever doesn’t get that? Well, not my problem. The older boys don’t talk about it. Eva is their sister, plain and simple. They have told me that they forget she is adopted. In fact, Austin’s friends probably love her more than any of the other kids friends. Who would have thought this from 13 year old boys? Austin says probably once a day “Eva’s awesome”. Out of the blue. For no reason. And I just nod, “yep”. It’s crazy to think that he was the one that questioned it the most when we told the boys are plan to adopt. Now he’s the one that tells me she needs a sister. 13, it’s not such a bad age. Should we be talking about it more? I guess. I want to always be open with her, yet not have it define her. I would love suggestions from those that have gone down this road. In the meantime, here is a pic my friend snapped with her iphone For those that have been asking me about iPhone pictures and trouble getting them onto the blog- I have the flickr app on my iPhone and I load the pics onto flickr right of my phone. Then I can pull the pics from flickr and put them on my blog (I do this on the computer). That way the pictures are bigger and don’t get wonky. Let me know if you have other questions about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":19054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iphone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/IMG_8853-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19069,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions\/19069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elisalou.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}