Thursday, November 15, 2012
Adoption Kids' Book Review: My New Family: A First Look at Adoption
Counselor, journalist and psychotherapist Pat Thomas has
written a series of “A First Look At…” books, which intend to “promote
interaction among children, parents and teachers.” Her 2003 book, My New Family: A First Look at Adoption begins
by telling adoptees, “You live in a very special family.”
Thomas’ training as a psychotherapist shows through in this
book. The book is measured, comforting, and normalizing. It explains that there are many ways to make
families, describes various family structures, and invites children to discuss
differences and similarities between families. The book expresses, without
explaining why, that sometimes birth parents cannot care for a child as well as
they would want to, and that this leads a child into foster care. It
acknowledges that once in foster care, some children go back to their birth
parents and some do not. The book explains adoption as “living with another
family forever,” and normalizes it by saying that “lots of children all over
the world are adopted – sometimes as babies and sometimes as older children.” Thomas
addresses that families sometimes look different, and says that appearances and
origins “are not the most important things,” but that it is more important to
learn to understand and unconditionally love each other. Thomas’s book encourages
children to talk with their adoptive parents about how they feel, to share
openly about their sadness, and to ask questions about birth parents.
The book does mention birth parents. It affirms that “both…
sets of parents have given you something special,” and it also reflects that birth
parents are sad when they decide to make an adoption plan for a child. The book does not mention open adoption, which
is unfortunate.
Thomas includes a one page “how to use this book” primer for
parents. The primer encourages parents to always be open about adoption with
their children, to be honest when they don’t know answers, to err on the side
of love when giving hypothetical explanations, and to avoid making the child
feel grateful. Unfortunately, the back cover of the book, which was likely not
written by Thomas, explains that the book tries to help adopted children “understand
how lucky they are.” Thomas herself would probably bristle at this phrasing, as
would many adoptees. Ignore the back cover, though, and the book itself is
solid.
I recommend this one to families that are considering
adoption. Reading through it can help you prepare yourself to have a health outlook
towards discussing adoption with your kid.
Happy reading!
PS. When I first started reviewing kids’ adoption books, I
did it in the context of preparing a resource for foster and adoptive parents
at the agency where I was employed. My first set of reviews was entirely from
books in the children’s section of the Pasadena Public Library. People started
suggesting other books to review, and this is one of them, recommended by a
friend and former co-worker. I do enjoy finding new kids’ books; if you’ve got
any books you’d like me to review, please mention them in the comments section!
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