Whether your adult child at reunion articulates the need or not, they probably can benefit from unconditional love from you.
However, I will begin with a warning to proceed slowly and cautiously. Providing unconditional love to your child may be scary for them and overwhelm them.
In How to Support Your Child at Reunion I mentioned that unconditional love is one essential way to support your child at reunion.
Here are some of the ways for birth parents to provide unconditional love:
1. Accept your child without reservation for the person they have become. A complicated set of factors made them who they are today. Since you had little input into their upbringing, they might not be all that you wished for them, or they might have exceeded your expectations. However, the person that your adult child is today will benefit from you fully embracing them for who they are today.
2. Never tell your child, “Well, if I had raised you….” Bite your tongue if you ever think of saying anything similar. You did not raise your child and that was no fault of theirs. They had no choice. Therefore, inferences that they would have become a better person had you raised them will likely not be well received. Criticizing your child’s faults at this late date is an extremely poor idea.
3. Growing up adopted could have had many effects on your child. Your child might have grown up wondering why they were not “good enough to keep.” Sounds harsh, right? I know that it does, but the fact is that some adoptees wonder why their original parents did not parent them. A number of adoptees have the feeling that they were not “good enough,” and this feeling follows them throughout their lives. At reunion, birth parents have an opportunity to set the record straight. Make certain that your child knows that relinquishing them to adoption was more an indication of the times, and/or your deficits or issues, not theirs.
4. Consider this: We choose our friends because we like their personalities, have similar interests or may think alike. Our friends are loved because of who they are – people we have chosen. Family members are part of our lives through genetics. Although adoptive parents sometimes choose children, most families are created through bloodlines. Every human on the planet is created by one woman and one man, and other blood relationships come about from your first mother and father. You usually love your parents because there is a bond created by blood. Being raised by your parents may strengthen your ties, but even when you are not parented by birth parents, they are still family, and part of your roots. Parents love their children simply because they are, not due to what they are like. That is unconditional love.
5. Never threaten to withdraw contact or your love based upon any conditions. Your relationship may suffer and/or not survive if you base your love for your child on their fulfilling your expectations. Telling your child that you will end the relationship if they do not call more often or anything along these lines may be a fatal error.
Some adoptees have had wonderful lives with loving and accepting families. Others have not been so fortunate, and may never have felt accepted. Birth parents at reunion have a chance to give their children their whole acceptance and unconditional love. Our children deserve that.
Further resources:
Photo by Jan Baker 2007