by Debra Lobel

Created on: April 27, 2009

The best age to tell your child that they are adopted is as soon as they can understand what it means to be adopted. Of course, every child is different so it is impossible to say there is an exact age that would be best to tell a child they are adopted. I believe that many adoptive parents are nervous about telling their children they are adopted. They might feel that their child will feel unloved or not as wanted as a biological child.

I have two children that I adopted at a young age. One was 4 years old when we adopted him and the other was 3 years old when we adopted him. They both came from the foster care system, so we had them for 6 months to 1 year before they were adopted. As their adoption day grew nearer, we wanted to be clear that they understood what was happening.

We bought books about being adopted. There are many of them out there. We would read it to them at night before they went to sleep. Then we would talk about how they came to live with us. Our story went like this:

Mommy and I wanted children. We tried to have one that grew in mommy's tummy, but it never happened. Then one day we realized that there were children who needed parents and we were looking for a child so we could be parents. We searched in many places, and then we found you. When we saw you we knew you belonged to us. We couldn't image not having you as our child. So we told the people who were taking care of you that we wanted to adopt you and we could all be a family. Mommy and I were very lucky. We got to pick you out special because we knew you were the one for us.

Since they were in the foster system, we had a lot of information about their birth parent(s). As they got older we told them why they were adopted and assured them that they would be able to find their birth parents if they wanted to, but they had to wait until they turned 18 years old. We even promised to help them in their search.

Both of our sons know how much we love them. They also tell us how hurt they are that they are not being raised by their birth parents. They feel abandoned by them. We assure them that their birth parents love them but just couldn't take care of them for specific reasons and it isn't their fault that they couldn't raise you. So now they have two sets of parents, one who brought them into this world and one who makes sure that they can find their place in it.

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