Last night my daughter was talking about how she wanted to be a mom someday. “But I’ll probably have to take medicine,” she said, making a face, “Because you have to take medicine and Grandma has to take medicine.”
Looking back on it, I could have just said something like, “Different people may need different medicine at different times” and been done with it. But I said something that I thought would be reassuring for her, then wondered if maybe it wasn’t.
What I said was, “Actually, you know what? Those are the kinds of things you get from genes, and you don’t have my and Grandma’s genes. “ I think I said something about “They come from your birthmother.” (Obviously I should have said birthfather too, but we’re more used to talking about the birthmother.)
I had always considered having different genes an advantage to the girls. My family has a health history of breast cancer, lung cancer, heart attack, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, depression, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, anemia…you get the idea. Nothing terrible like muscular dystrophy or Huntington’s that would make us think we shouldn’t have kids, but enough to be a bit rueful at what we’re passing down to them, especially to the girls. And my husband’s family has a history of glaucoma, which is about the one thing I can think of that my family doesn’t have a history of.
I know some people hesitate to adopt because they “don’t know what they’ll get”. I always felt that for us, “Door Number Three” was a very good bet. (My husband watched me fill out a health history form once and said, “We’d better adopt. Our child will die of filling out forms.” )
So when people would ask, “what do you think the girls will do when they really understand what it means to be adopted?” my reply usually was, “Fall on their knees and thank God, probably.”
But something in my daughter’s eyes last night, something I can’t describe, made me think she didn’t see it that way. She changed the subject so skillfully that I couldn’t respond. Now I’m left wondering if I should bring it up again.
I thought we had dealt with this before when she read a book stating “if you have freckles, they come from your parents”. She thought she would get freckles as she got older. Since this is not likely, I explained that physical appearance comes from birth parents, who are many times but not always your forever family parents.
But as I’m learning, many things have to be said over and over before they can be understood. I’ve written about the time she said, “Grandma Jo is your birthmother AND your mom? That’s weird!” Another blogger had the same experience; you can read about that here.
I have tried to be positive about her genes, saying things like, “Your birthmother wrote down that she liked to sing. I bet that’s where you and your sister get your beautiful singing voices.” (They sure didn’t pick them up around here.)
But I don’t want them thinking that everything comes from genes.
I guess it’s just another situation where I’ll have to think on it for a while…stay tuned.
Please see these related blogs:
Raising an Adopted Child Part Three: the Preschool Years
How Much is Genes, How Much is Environment?