Friend who adopted children ten years ago always refers to them as adopted

[Sunnymeg]

This is probably me being unreasonable, but my friend's behaviour is starting to grate on me. I have a lovely friend who has a birth daughter aged 16 with her husband. They subsequently adopted twin boys five years ago who are now eight. Whenever she talks about them to anyone she meets, she will mention that they are her adopted children, but the daughter is hers . She will do this whether the boys are with her or not. I cringe inwardly for the boys when we are all out together and she speaks about them. I have other friends who have adopted who just refer to their family without any other comments. I don't understand why she doesn't do the same. The boys are from her ethnic background, so as far as I can see, random strangers don't need an explanation.

[Haffdonga]

Weirder is describing her daughter as 'hers' , implying her sons are somehow not hers. It flies in the face of most recommended adoption practice and good old fashioned common sense, so I guess she must have her own personal good reasons.

(You wouldn't usually tell a random stranger in a cinema queue if your child was born by caesarian or conceived hanging from a lampshade. Nor would you explain to anybody who likes their T shirts that they have different fathers, for example. So it is strange that she's sharing such personal information.)

[LaurieFairyCake]

It might not be 'attention seeking' though. I think that's quite a harsh way to look at it.

There was so much stigma about adoption when I was young. I'm quite glad that my friends are so proud to adopt - they consider themselves so lucky to have been able to. It's a difficult and very expensive journey for some people.

Someone in my foster support group is adopting for the third time. The first time was almost 20 years ago and it's utterly changed in that time - they were turned down as they wanted to adopt a child who wasn't their ethnicity/culture that they were fostering. They weren't allowed to. Caused no end of problems with a really tragic outcome. Legal challenges etc.

[BillSykesDog]

I hate this idea that there is a prevailing wisdom about what adopted families 'should' do which they are pressured to conform to by people who often have no experience of these sort of situations. Remember 30 years ago the prevailing wisdom was that it was a dirty little secret which should be kept hidden. Just because something is currently a mainstream preference doesn't mean it's right for everybody.

For all we know this is the boys preference and they don't like being referred to just as her sons because they feel that erases a part of their identity and a connection to their birth family that they don't want to lose.

Not all adopted children are going to feel comfortable being totally subsumed into an adoptive family in such an immersive way. Lots of them have conflicting feelings about their birth families and adoptive families and struggle with feelings of disloyalty or feel that they're losing a part of their identity they don't want to lose.

If that's what her and her sons feel comfortable with, why should they be socially pressured to do something else? It's really no business of anybody but the family concerned.

[Porcupinetree]

My DH used to work with a man who we always thought was quite odd because when asked anything about 'his children' he would launch into something along the lines of:

"They're not mine, they are my partner's children. Boys 1 & 2 are with her first husband, boy 3 and the girl are with a boyfriend before she met me"....

But we definitely didn't think anything more of it until we found he had been charged with sexually abusing them.

I'm not saying same is true for OP's friend but I would feel uncomfortable for those boys, seems sad that they have to be labelled as anything other than her children.

[SquinkiesRule]

OP I think your friend is being unreasonable. She is announcing to every tom dick and harry that the children are adopted.
My Dd is too, and that is her own private story to share with whoever she chooses. Usually she chooses not to share this unless someone is close to her as she finds their questions upsetting like"what about your real Mum" Well she has a real Mum, me. I'm the one who has cared for her from a baby, I'm flesh and bone not plastic, real in every sense of the word.
I don't distinguish between her and my older children, they are all ours, all love the same, and all deserve some privacy.

[BillSykesDog]

What if they don't want to be labelled as her children? Why should they have to be labelled as that because of a lot of tutting busybodies if they don't want it? And we have no way of knowing that they don't. If everything else is going well in the family then there is probably a good well thought out reason for the distinction.

And comparing it to a case of sexual
abuse is just disgusting.

[mountaintoclimb]

I once saw a TV chat show with a famous actress and her son of a bout 1o years old who she introduced as her adopted son. He blushed bright red and looked very embarrassed. I thought it was very cruel to announce it so publically. For all we knew, he hadn't told his school friends

[mountaintoclimb]

I once saw a TV chat show with a famous actress and her son of a bout 1o years old who she introduced as her adopted son. He blushed bright red and looked very embarrassed. I thought it was very cruel to announce it so publically. For all we knew, he hadn't told his school friends

[BillSykesDog]

I think not continuously referring to your children 'as my adopted sons' is really not the same as ignoring/denying their adoptive status.

It depends what the children want though really doesn't it?

I have a friend who has adopted a little boy who was placed with her as a FC originally at 3.5. He refers to them by their first names not as Mum and Dad. He has contact with his Dad but not his Mum because she is in prison. He remembers being with his Mum and he loves her. And she loves him but because of various problems in her own life she is utterly incapable of looking after him.

It wasn't smooth sailing and he was very, very resistant to being part of a new family as he felt loyalty to his 'old' family and wasn't happy with using labels he felt didn't belong to his new family like Mum and Dad.

Now he doesn't mind being referred to as one of the 'sons' (he has two brothers), but to my mind it doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to think that some children who are in these conflicted situations are going to feel uncomfortable with just being described as someone's son if that's not a label they don't feel entirely comfortable with yet. (I know my friend had to deal with some public meltdowns over being referred to as his Mum when he wasn't happy with it).

I really think what is best varies from family to family and they may well have their own reasons. It's nobody else's business.

[Sunnymeg]

My friend does have a tendency to overshare things, so perhaps it is just that. I'm in two minds about whether to bring the subject up with her or not. According to DH, who has spent more time with her husband than I have, her husband just refers to them as 'the twins' or my boys or just by their own names when talking to others about them.

[BillSykesDog]

Wasn't aimed at you Mrs

[BillSykesDog]

The tutting busybodies comment. That was aimed more at people making allusions to abuse etc

[ReallyTired]

There may well be a whole load of baggage you don't know about. Pretending that the boys are her biological children may well be as inappriopiate as a step mother pretending that her step child is her biological child.

Rather than worrying about labels, are these boys loved? Are they treated as well as the mother's biological daughter? Are the children happy? If the boys are happy and well looked after then the op should mind her own business.

[BlueberrySky]

I wonder if it has more to do with the questions that parents of twins get. I have a friend who is an identical twin, people would come up to them in the street when they were little and ask their mother questions. So by saying straight off, they are adopted she stops all the 'twin' questions.

DH's son is adopted. When talking to people I say that we have 3 kids, my two boys and Dh's adopted son from his first marriage. Just wraps everything up neatly and means that no one thinks he is mine, which he would hate.

[Saramel]

My husband adopted my DS who he had been a father to for 16 years. We don't deliberately say anything or not say anything about it. He refers to DS as his son but people some people do know he was adopted. The only time it causes embarrassment is when people start talking about how much DS looks like his Dad. The funny thing is that when DH worked in the same place as his biological sons and my DS, people would try to guess which one was the adopted one and they rarely got it right

[Tram10]

That is unusual, if she was my friend I would have to ask her why.

I remember reading an interview with Marie Osmond, who has a lot of kids, some adopted and some biological. The interviewer asked her how many kids she had adopted and her answer was along the lines of 'Oh I can never remember who is adopted and who I gave birth to!" I thought it was such a lovely answer.

[SuburbanRhonda]

Have I misread this? She adopted them ten years ago but they're only 8?

[meowli]

Op made a mistake in the title -

Whoops just realised that I got the title wrong. I have known her for ten years!!

[meowli]

Friend adopted the boys 5 years ago.

[joangray38]

I am adopted and would have been mortified if my parents had done this. Hate it when the press do it to the jolie-Pitts etc. Makes it seem as though they don't totally belong to that family