All You Need is Love

0:00Welcome to the Open Adoption Project. We're the Nelsons. I'm Lynette. And I'm Sean. In this episode, we'll be sharing more about our family's adoption experience. We'll talk about juggling multiple birth family relationships. We'll also share our top five tips to create positive and meaningful relationships with birth families. We're really excited to be here with you. It feels to me like it's been such a long time since we've recorded a podcast. We've been out of town for the past month or so. And so we've pre-recorded all of our previous episodes. And so I feel like I haven't been podcasting for a long time. I have missed recording though. Have you?

0:40Um, you know, I miss the conversations. Not so much the editing part. Okay. All right. Well, we hope you enjoy this episode and we hope what we have to share with you today will be helpful and beneficial for you. Thanks for joining us today. When we left off, we were talking about when we adopted our third child and how we had these three kids that were all about two years apart each. They were super young.

1:19And we brought this third baby home and we were in heaven and we were busy. Yeah. I, I try to remember back to that time. And I mean, I have really sweet memories, but also it was pretty crazy having three little ones. Yeah. Pretty close in age. Yeah. It kind of is a blur. Yeah. Great time of life, but pretty crazy. Yeah. Those three kids, it's so fun. They're so close together in age and they've always just been great friends and great rivals as well. Yeah. So with the addition of a third baby, we added new members of birth families to our family as well.

2:01And yeah, so our family just kept growing every time we adopted and yeah, with third baby, it was no exception. Yeah. The kind of exponential growth. Every time we have one, one more child, we add like seven more people to our family. I mean, depending. But it's been, it's been super, super sweet. Yeah. It's the best. It's one of my very favorite things. I don't think I could have imagined before we adopted how much I would appreciate and value and really need these additional relationships that we've had that have come to us through adoption with our kids' birth families.

2:35Yeah. And honestly, I think we've mentioned this before, but when we were a little bit more naive and a little bit younger, when we were going through the adoption process the first time and kind of looking at open adoption as kind of the scary thing, I think that like, I think we wanted to distance ourselves from those type of relationships naturally, maybe because we were threatened a little bit. Yeah. And we just didn't, I don't think we knew what it could look like and feel like.

3:07Yeah. But at this point, we, we had developed some great relationships with our daughter and our first son's birth families. And so it was a little bit more natural for us to begin to connect with not only birth parents, but grandparents and other members of the family as well. Yeah, such a huge blessing. So today we're going to really talk a lot about these relationships, not these specific relationships, but what it's been like to add these relationships, does it feel like a juggle, and some of our tips for how to really make these relationships as meaningful as we can for our kids.

3:46Well, sometimes we have people ask us what it's been like adding to our family with each of our children being born, adding their birth families to our family too and just having this exponential growth. Like, is that overwhelming, especially when you're adding a new baby to your family to be adding all of these new relationships as well. What would you say to that Sean? Yeah, I mean, I think we want to try to give like equal parts of our time and our hearts and, you know, our attention to our different children's birth families. We don't want one to feel like more, I guess from the kids point of view, more prevalent than another.

4:31But that being said, our birth families have been so awesome. Like, they accept all of our kids as part of the family. The grandparents are the very best. Yeah, they just have adopted all of our kids as their grandkids, whether or not they're the biological grandchild of theirs, they're all just so sweet to all of the kids. Yeah, so we're in the beginning, we were a little bit more focused on equality of time and equality of just everything, right? Like, I think we were a little more nitpicky about making sure everything just felt equal.

5:05Yeah. But, but naturally over time, it's just developed really beautifully. Well, you can't really have, you can't really dictate relationship to be equal like that. Like, if you look at our relationships with our own parents and like our kids relationship with these grandparents of ours, like our parents, they're not going to be totally equal to like, people have different love languages, they have different ways of expressing how they care, and it's going to be a different relationship, right?

5:35People are different and that's okay. You can't, you can't dictate a relationship to be equal with another relationship. Yeah, even if you want to, it just doesn't work. So do you feel like it's a bit of a juggle having all of these relationships? I mean, maybe in the beginning, I kind of felt like that. But again, over time, relationships develop naturally. We've probably mentioned this before in previous episodes, but birthday parties were kind of the way that we made sure that all of our birth families were included.

6:12I think in the beginning, we were like, let's schedule visits with this, this child's birth family, then this child's birth family, then this child's birth family around the holidays and those type of things. Well, and depending, yeah, also depending on the relationship that the birth parents have with each other, you either want to schedule things apart from them or maybe it's together. It just depends, right? Yeah. And we still do that to an extent, but now where we have larger gatherings, like, like big birthday parties where we invite everybody or around the holidays, they know like lots of them come by either on Christmas day or around that time.

6:50They know that they're welcome. They know that our doors open and our kids almost come to expect it, right? The grandmas and grandpas, birth parents, they're here and they're just part of it. Yeah, I think that's been one of the hardest things with the pandemic when we weren't able to have those giant birthday parties for the kids with our fourth child being born. We kept hoping, it was at the very beginning of the pandemic when we met his birth parents and we kept saying, oh, well, this will all pass soon, right? Like COVID-19 is not going to last for more than a few weeks or months, which sounds ridiculous now.

7:28But we kept saying, oh, after it passes soon, we'll have everybody over and have a big party. And of course, it didn't happen soon. Well, it finally did happen, like for his first birthday party, right? Yeah, finally the CDC said we could do outside gatherings. Yeah. And we had members from all of our kids' birth families at that party, which was really fun. Which was great. And it was really nice to have that again. I really missed that. It's one of my favorite things. So yeah, having those birthday parties and just trying to offer time.

8:01I do think one thing that's worth mentioning when we're looking at balancing different relationships is that, you know, birth parents come from different financial situations or other type of backgrounds where, you know, one birth parent might bring a birthday present on one kid's birthday and another might not. And it's kind of hard to help our kids understand how that works. But yeah, I don't know. What would you say?

8:34Yeah, I mean, you just want to be sensitive to different financial situations. When you have family members who are able to be a little more equal with how they show their love, that's great. But I don't know. People show their love in different ways. I think another thing that's important to consider is the feelings of each child, right? We hope that we can foster relationships with birth families such that the kids don't feel jealous, you know, of each other because someone has a closer relationship with a member of a birth family and someone may not.

9:15And our kids, our family are so competitive, and it probably comes from both of us. Yeah, we're pretty competitive. That everything's a competition to them. And so when things don't look quite equal to them, they notice, and it's easy for them to point it out. And so we kind of have to do some refereeing almost and just help them help paint the picture and help them understand why some relationships look the way that they do and how we can still have really good relationships with other people, even if we don't see them as often.

9:52Or it feels a little bit or looks a little bit different. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's a great life skill anyway for us to be trying to foster. But it can be a hard conversation, especially when they're younger and they don't really get it. Yeah. Yeah. So, we encourage all of our birth family to, you know, connect with Levon and give, give attention to all of our kids, but naturally, it's, it's hard work.

10:23Yeah, it's a lot of work. Well, and I think it's pretty expected in our own family culture that each kid is going to have a special relationship with their birth parents right. And then with the grandparents, it's a little bit more. I mean, yeah, it's just a little bit more shared attention, right? Like, like you understand that you grew in your birth mom's tummy and you have this really special bond. And that's unique. Like you can't expect her to have that same bond with everybody else.

10:57Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, one thing that we try to help our children say too is like, if one of them are like my grandma, it's like, no, it's grandma. Like it's all of your grandma and or my grandpa. I think we're pretty much to the point where the kids just call everyone grandma and grandpa and they don't really see them as a mine or hers or his. That's true. It can be hard because when you're talking to other people outside of our family that don't understand that people always do want to know like whose grandma is that?

11:30Grandma biologically, right? And it's okay to ask that, but it can create a little bit of drama with the kids sometimes when that's the focus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like just feeling like, oh wait, is that not my grandma? But I think they're getting old enough that they understand pretty well. Yeah. So we're going to share with you just a few tips that might help you create positive and meaningful relationships with your children's birth families.

12:01Or if you're hoping to adopt maybe some things that you can think about as you're anticipating those relationships. Yes. So for our first tip, we were thinking it's really important to just be honest, be open, be transparent, have that open dialogue that you aren't afraid to share what you're feeling, what your family is needing. Just be vulnerable, I guess. Be transparent. Yeah. I mean, obviously in any relationship we are kind and loving and caring, but we also need to be clear in the way that we communicate.

12:39I can recall having a conversation with one of our children's biological grandmothers. She listens to this podcast regularly. I remember it was just shortly after he was born and I was like, we want you to be part of his family so much. But just know in our family, that means that not only do you get him, but you get her and another him and me and Lynette, right? So we come as a package deal and we tried to communicate that and try to communicate that clearly to all of the birth grandparents so that they can understand the culture that we're trying to develop in our family.

13:20And that's now like, I mean, hindsight, right? But that's now a beautiful relationship and our kids are so loved on by that particular grandmother. Such a fulfilling relationship. And yeah, if you weren't able to vocalize that initially, I don't know if we would be able to have such a fulfilling relationship. Because it's just, yeah, I agree. You said that so well, honey. It's just so important to talk about your expectations, talk about your family's needs.

13:50Don't sweep things under the rug, like, you know, communication 101, right? You don't want to just pent everything up and hold on to it until you explode. You want to just always be open to letting conversations happen as they need to. On that same note, our second point is kind of the flip, right? We want to be open to receiving honest feedback and open feedback from our birth family members, right? And so giving them the opportunity to share how they feel about relationships.

14:21Yeah, yeah, I think that's also that goes with being really welcoming to it. Like, you want to make sure that your ego is checked, like you're not going to be offended by them sharing what they need. Like, just be like want to hear it and be obvious that you want to hear it, right? You want to be open to receiving that feedback. You want them to know that it's safe for you to hear whatever they need to tell you. You just want to make sure, I think birth families often are a lot less likely to air their complaints or tell an adoptive family what might not be working well in a relationship.

15:01They're in a really vulnerable spot. They have less control over the relationship in many situations. And so I've heard so many birth parents just talk about how they're so grateful to get whatever contact or relationship they're able to. And so I think it's really important for adoptive parents to make sure that we're really looking for and soliciting that feedback to make these relationships as positive and meaningful as we can for birth parents.

15:35Want to go to our third tip? Sure. So our third one is to remember your why. Why does this relationship matter? Remember why you care about open adoption, right? Ultimately, it's because we love our kids and we want adoptees to have the relationships and feel armed with all the love they can to help them throughout their lives. Yeah, and I think as we've interviewed both birth mothers and adoptees, hopefully that you've seen and felt the blessings that can come from an open adoption, from having relationships and connections.

16:16It's not always easy. It's not always like the beautifully painted picture that we might want it to be, but having connection, having a relationship is really beautiful. And when it comes down to it, it's about our kids and about them feeling loved, them feeling supported, and them feeling connected to who they need to be connected to. Yeah. Yeah. So along with that, remembering your why, I think part of that is being willing to put the work you need to into these relationships. You're investing, right? You're investing time and energy.

16:55And it might be overwhelming sometimes, but if you remember why it matters and why it's important, it's a lot easier to find that time and to make things work. Our fourth tip is to pick your battles, choose your priorities, let petty things go and address what's most important. Along with the last one, keep your focus on your child and what's in their best interest. And don't focus on your personal feelings, your ego. Just focus on your child. I know that sometimes we have some members of our kids' birth families who will often use adoption language that I don't love, but honestly, it doesn't bother my kids at this point.

17:37And if it's just making me cringe, that's not really what matters. It's not worth arguing about or creating division over. It really just doesn't matter. Yeah. And I think this goes back to just regular relationship type of advice, right? That we're not going to bring up an argument for everything we disagree on or when we have different points of view. Right. Obviously, there are moments when there's something that needs to be addressed, we bring it up and we do that in love and courtesy.

18:12Yeah, remembering the importance of the relationship. But yeah, petty things that don't really matter. We really just try to let that go and everyone's happier when we do. Yeah. And the last? Yeah, number five, don't compare. Every relationship is going to look different. Kid number one's relationship with their birth mom is going to look different than kid number two's relationship with their birth mom. Relationships with these grandparents might be different from the relationship with these other grandparents.

18:44There's just it's just not fair to compare these relationships and expect them to look the exact same or feel the same with our daughter. She is the only one of our kids who doesn't have any birth siblings at this point. And it's something that she gets really sad about. She gets jealous every time her brothers talk about their birth brothers. She loves the idea of having a sister and will often talk about how she hopes she gets a birth sister someday.

19:15She's so cute. But I mean, it's hard for her to see those relationships and not compare. And I think she's doing her very best with it and she's doing a good job. But it can be hard. And then also her brothers all have relationships with their birth fathers and hers is a lot less. More of what I would say is maybe semi open with her birth father. Yeah, it's hard. I mean, it is a challenge to have these different levels of openness within your family when you're trying to

19:51not compare when you're trying to keep things positive. Yeah, I think when I'm thinking about comparison to I think it's really, really important that even if I mean this is not our personal experience. But even if, you know, we might be frustrated with a member of our children's birth families like we don't let our children see that right. Like if yeah. And again, this is more content that I've seen others post.

20:27But don't talk negatively about your family members. Well, I think it's great to keep talking about it. It's important for people to hear that. It's really important. You don't want your kids to hear you talking negatively about their birth family. This is probably different for everybody. But I would say our relationship with a lot of our kids biological grandparents feels kind of like for us, an in law relationship. And so if we're spending time with biological grandparents, it feels kind of like I'm with my in laws and Sean.

21:04Maybe it feels kind of like he's with his in laws where you have this relationship and you love each other and it's through someone that you mutually all love that this relationship started right that it was formed. But at the same time, it can be really hard. Like with my mother in law, I wouldn't go up to her and just say, Hey, you can't give my kid that sugar. I don't know. I can't think of a good example. But with my mom, I would totally say that right? Like stop feeding my kid the junk. I'd tell my mom that but I wouldn't tell my mother in law that because I would expect Sean to do that.

21:40So it can be challenging when you both kind of feel that role of like child in law to initiate any conversations that are more challenging. Yeah, and I mean, I think maybe building off of the in law comments like there are so many like jokes and like satires about in law relationships, right? And I mean, a lot of it's funny, but really like, there are some people who talk so negatively about their in laws.

22:13And that's got to affect not only the relationship they're going to have with those their in laws, but also the relationship between husband and wife, right? Absolutely. And so being positive, obviously nothing is going to be, you know, 100% like perfect, but being as positive as you can when relationships don't look exactly right or when somebody does something or says something that might frustrate you or, you know, make you roll your eyes. And I think it's a fine it's kind of a complicated dance right you want to be authentic, but you also want to focus on the good and see the good.

22:56Definitely. So I don't think it's good to just pretend everything's good if there are true challenges, but at the same time, trying to find the good in the relationship. Yeah, I feel like that's really important, especially as adoptive parents when you're talking about your kids birth family, you want your children to know that you love their birth family, because they're part of them right and when your child feels the love that you have for their

23:27birth family. It reaffirms to them that you love everything about them right you love where they came from you love these people who love them too. And that's important, you want them to feel wholly accepted and wholly loved. Yeah, we have a friend who is a caseworker and she posted on her Instagram probably, I don't know a month or two ago but it's still stuck with me like she was having a conversation with this adoptive parent, and right in front of her child she was really bad mouthing her child's birth mom. And this friend who's who's a social worker was like, people like people are real people and have emotions and feelings, and just be kind, especially when they're about, you know, maybe more

24:18sensitive type of relationships. And so, just not comparing is, in my opinion, a great way to enjoy the relationships instead of finding fault in them. And that's really important for adoptive parents, especially managing different relationships if you have multiple children that were adopted. I think it's even more difficult to help your children, not compare.

24:49And so, it's, it's a lot of work to help paint the picture like, hey, with this, this grandma and grandpa like we go to their house for this holiday every year and that's part of our relationship with them. And with this grandma and grandpa we typically, you know, travel and go on a vacation with them or something. So, it's all about that grandma xyz right and just help kind of set expectations and help them see that each of those experiences are for all of them. And it's not just for one specific child that it's all about love, it's all about the love that other people have for our kids.

25:31And really when it comes down to it, I think we've said it in my times that's really what it's all about. Yeah, absolutely. I think it was CS Lewis that said comparison is the thief of joy. I think he's right. We don't want to compare, like even comparing to other adoptive families. It's just not healthy to create our expectations based on others realities by enjoy and where we are and what we have.

26:01And I think we'll be happier. So in summary, our five tips are to be transparent and authentic, be receptive and welcoming to feedback. Remember your why. Pick your battles and don't compare. That is what we have tried to do to help our relationships with our kids birth families to flourish. And I mean relationships are always evolving, but I would say we have really great relationships with our kids birth families were really lucky. It's really fulfilling and we feel really blessed.

26:34Yeah, for a long time in our family, we had three children and three birth families though saying it that way it sounds really weird because there's just so many people and so many, you know, so many aspects of open adoption, and it took us time but over those five years or so like it felt really natural and normal. And when we considered adopting again, there were less unknowns, I think, as we were going into what a relationship could look like. And we knew like going into adopting baby number four that not only would be adopting another baby but having other

27:15members join our family and growing our extended family and when you say those five years you're talking about those five years between our two youngest kids. That's right. Okay. But I remember when we were talking about adopting a fourth, thinking, if it were going to happen we weren't sure. But we'll talk about that in our next episode where we talk about our story it's a bit of a yo yo story, but remembering being almost like looking forward to adding not just a baby but other members to this big tribe of our family. Yeah. It's absolutely my favorite thing I can't imagine having our family any other way.

27:53Their birth family, our kids birth families are incredible and 100% our family. Yeah, they're the best. So, I mean this is really an episode of a bunch of unsolicited advice from us right. I mean not completely unsolicited we do get people asking us what we would suggest for these relationships, often. So, semi solicited advice, but we would love to hear any thoughts that you have things that you feel like we might have missed on our list, or any thoughts you have on how you created and fostered positive relationships in your life, whether they're adopted adoption

28:31centric relationships or otherwise, we would love to hear what you think. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We really appreciate all of our listeners and we love hearing from you. If you have any questions any feedback we would love to hear what you think you can contact us on Instagram at open adoption project, or you can email us at open adoption project at gmail.com.

29:06We also are looking at scheduling interviews for the next couple of months. And so if you or someone that you know, would like to be interviewed on our podcast, we would love to hear from you we love getting a range of different opinions and thoughts and experiences to share and hopefully help the adoption community. Really learn and grow together. Yeah, and I think about back to the interview we did with Tamara right. We want to be an echo chamber right like our experiences are our own, and we think that they're pretty great right.

29:42But just because we do it one way doesn't mean that we think that other people have to do it the same way right and so having a variety of opinions and experiences shared will help paint the picture of what adoption really looks like so we do have a couple schedule or we're coming up here in the next few weeks, and we're looking forward to sharing those episodes with you. And we'll also share how baby number four joined our family and coming episodes as well.

30:12Yeah, we're excited for that as a podcast we are reaching a lot of people and we would love to connect with and help even more. If you're listening to this on Apple podcast please take just a moment to give us a review. And type out even just a sentence or two, it really helps the more reviews, and the more comments that we have the, the higher will show up when people search for podcasts about adoption. So if you could do that for us, that would be really helpful, preferably a positive review.

30:42Right. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the open adoption project. See you next time.

31:14Bye.

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