Episode 23 Podcast > Full Transcript
Nicole Witt, Intro:
Today, we're talking about openness in adoption, what it is, what it looks like and how it works, even if you've adopted more than one child and have different levels of openness with their separate birth mothers or birth families.
Today, I'm thrilled to have as my guest my friend and longtime adoption colleague, Tim Elder. Tim is the founder of the Infant Adoption Guide podcast, blog and online community. Tim and his wife, Tisha, have dealt with infertility, miscarriage and two bouts with cancer on their way to adopting their three kids as newborns.
Tim's mission is to deliver hope and inspiration through his guides, his courses and his community, so others just like him can finally reach their dream of building a family through infant adoption.
Nicole Witt:
Thank you so much for being my guest today, Tim.
Tim Elder:
Hey, Nicole. My pleasure. It's so great to be here with you. You're right, we've been doing this for a while. We've known each other for a while. And I think you've done a great job with everything you've done, especially with the podcast. So, congrats.
Nicole:
Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Okay, why don't we start by defining openness, especially since many people use the terms a little bit differently? Can you share with us your definitions of open, semi-open and closed adoption?
Tim:
Yep, yep. Let's start with closed, because that's kind of the most scariest, or maybe not the most scariest, but the one that most people kind of gravitate to. At least, that's what we did when we first started. We're like, “Oh, close. Yeah.” Which means no contact with birth family or maybe just a limited knowledge of them even.
Nicole:
Right.
Tim:
And for us, that's what we initially wanted – and we can get into that more in a bit – but that's what we thought, “Oh, that's perfect. We don't want any contact. We don't want to have to deal with anybody,” which is really opposite of what's best for the child. And thankfully, closed is very rare these days.
So, semi-open – or having some kind of contact – is where a lot of adoptions end up at. And it's just having some kind of a contact, either via text or phone calls or maybe some social media contact. But having some kind of a relationship that is limited but still there.
And then open; it can mean a lot of different things. But the openness is a relationship you have with your child's birth family, typically the birth mother, although in our case, it's not always just the birth mother. But having that kind of a contact and the type and the amount can vary. But it's a relationship. It's a lifestyle. It's an attitude. It's cultivating them as your child's birth family and integrating them into your family, which is what we've tried very hard to do. It can be so good for the child and the birth family and really the adoptive family, too. For us, we're so glad we made the right choice in accepting openness, but that's kind of the brief explanation of all three.
Nicole:
Yeah, I know. That's great. Thank you. And just to kind of circle back to a couple things you said, I do think that, at least with a lot of people I speak to as well, in the beginning, they kind of very much lean towards closed adoption because they almost think of more open adoption as sort of co-parenting. And that's not what they want. After their whole journey to become parents, they want to be the parents. So, I think it's so important to understand, as I'm sure we're going to get into, that openness is not in any way co-parenting. And closed adoption, like you mentioned, it's not in the best interest of the child.
And I think one other thing that as people are going through the match process up until the birth and the placement, closed adoptions are highly risky. They're highly likely to fall through because, of course, if the expectant mom has no idea what the family's all about that she might be placing her child with, what environment they're going to grow up in, what their life is going to be like, of course, it's going to be much more likely that she's going to get very scared about that at the last second and maybe not go forward. Whereas if you've had been building some kind of relationship throughout that match, that can help make her more comfortable and can make the placement more likely to even happen in the first place.
Tim:
Absolutely.
Nicole:
Yeah. Yeah. So, let's get more into your personal experience. So, kind of like I was just alluding to, in my work, almost all adoptive parents have very different feelings about open adoption at the beginning of their journey than they do later in their journey. And often, it's something that that continues to evolve. So, in your case, how did you and your wife react to the idea of a more open adoption when you first started your adoption journey?
Tim:
Yeah, it was very difficult because when we were first brought the idea of open adoption, we were right to that co-parenting part. And thankfully, our adoption professional was very gracious with us and patient and said, “Well, just hang on, hang on, that's not what it's about” and they explained it more. And they said, “You know, it's the varying degrees of contact.” And really, they just encouraged us to read more about it, listen to some stories, read some stories about what open adoption really is about. And then just be open to the idea that expectant mom just wants to have some kind of a relationship; whatever that may look like. And she may not even know what that looks like. And they kind of opened our minds to what an expectant mom is thinking because we had no idea when we're first starting our adoption journey.
Nicole:
Right.
Tim:
So, that kind of helped us get a better perspective on – And especially the benefits of the child. They went all through that and all the benefits of open versus closed. And that really opened our minds, too, like, “Wow, that does make a lot of sense. And we don't want that for our child as they're getting older.” And so, all those things, it took us a little bit of time, but it really in the grand scheme of things, we worked through it pretty quick.
Nicole:
Okay. Okay. And so, I think you've already touched on this, but anything else you want to say about sort of how that is different than your perspective on it now?
Tim:
Oh, tremendously different. I mean, we came 180 degrees different. Now, we have so much openness with our kids, our three kids’ birth families. And they're all varying degrees, but now we are wanting to share with them. We are wanting to bring them into our lives. We are wanting to spend time with them and talk with them and share our kids’ lives with them. And they are part of our family. We treat them all that way. We want them to know they're part of our family, not just after the babies were brought to us and placed in our arms, but forever.
Nicole:
Right.
Tim:
So that we've come so far from where we were when we first started learning about what open adoption is.
Nicole:
That's awesome. And that's one thing that I talk to my clients a lot about, too. And understandably, when people are beginning the process, they never believe this. But what all the information shows is that down the road, it's almost always the adoptive families that are looking for more contact than the birth mom is. And again, that's something that's so hard for people to grasp at the very beginning, but I find that it's just so true down the road.
As I mentioned in the introduction, you've been through the process three times over. How have you been able to navigate and build those open adoption relationships with all three of your kids’ birth families?
Tim:
Yeah, all three are different. And one of them had a longer match, like three months, and the other two had very, very short matches. So, one with less than ten days and one was less than a week.
Nicole:
Oh, wow.
Tim:
So, it was harder to build the relationship during the match time for two of the three, yet they all have this aspect of us being open to them and just saying, “Hey, what would you like to do? What would you like to see? How much contact would you like?” And just having those really initially probably awkward conversations, I guess. But when you open the door to them and say, “Let’s just talk about it” and they're thinking about it, too. So, it's not as awkward as we think. But just opening the door to them and having those conversations of, “What do you want the relationship to look like?” and then actually just reaching out to them.
So, all three of ours were different. The one that had the longer match, we actually went to visit them twice before our son was born, because we had such a long period of time and we wanted to develop that relationship and they were several states away from us. They saw our effort of wanting to build that relationship with them and it just, like you said, at the beginning, it just kind of made that connection strong as we went. And so, we got to be there for an ultrasound visit, and they called us the second he was born. So, we flew there and got there several hours after he was born and got to hold him right away in the hospital and spend time with them in there and just have all that really foundational relationship building with them.
Nicole:
Yeah, it makes that time in the hospital so much more special and more important. Right.
Tim:
No question. We could love on them while we were there. We could do things for them. We could show them how much we care for them and love them. And we did that. And especially with the two weeks of time that we had being state to state, we had to go through the ICPC, which is the Interstate compact. So, all the paperwork had to go through. We had to stay there. So, we had that time, even more time to spend with them after he was born to work on our relationship and just hang out together.
Nicole:
Right.
Tim:
So, really cool to do that with them. The other two, not so much, because we didn't have all that match time. However, we did go, obviously we were there when the babies were born and we got to spend that time with them still, because they were in other states. Got to have that almost two weeks with each one of them and just start to build that relationship and talk about, “What is it going to look like after we go home and how do we keep going with our contact with them?”
And so, it was really cool just to see them face to face, take pictures, you know, things you don't think about doing. But I mean, it's really cool that we did that. When you look back on it years later, like, “Oh goodness, glad we got some of those pictures”
Nicole:
Oh yeah.
Tim:
And those visits are so important because it shows our kids, as they grow and we are telling them their story and sharing more of their stories with them, “See, here's how your birth mom held you for the first time in the hospital. And here's where we are with them in the hospital. And here's after we left the hospital.”
So, all those things are important in building the open adoption relationship, not only with our kids’ birth families, but with our kids, you know, show them the importance of open adoption.
Nicole:
Absolutely.
Tim:
So, as {indistinct 11:10} grows and as they grow, they see it and feel it.
Nicole:
Right. And to just have that history that so many adopted children don't have or to even have that opportunity to get their questions answered and that sort of thing.
So, I talked to many people, obviously, who've adopted already. And regardless of the level of openness in their first adoption, they're often very nervous about it being different in their next adoption. And the fact is, it will be different, just like in every other relationship in your life, no two are exactly the same. And I've even seen in some cases where one adoption is significantly more open than another. The birth mom in the more open adoption sometimes takes on the role as birth mom for both the children. So, you just sort of never know where it's going to go. But in your case, how are your relationships with your kids’ birth families different from each other? And how do you manage those differences?
Tim:
Yeah, there are a lot different, only because not anything from our end, but just for what they choose. So, our birth families kind of choose – We let them choose really – how much contact they want with us. We offer so much and they're all, of course, living far away from us. So, it changes the dynamics a little bit as far as boundaries go because there's the natural geographical boundaries. But each one of them are different and that's like one of them just really, really don't have contact with our daughter's birth mother, but her birth grandmother. And that's just the circumstances of the adoption and her life right now.
So, that's okay with us. We're so much in contact with her birth grandma, and that's fine. And we do a lot of texting and we do some FaceTiming. We haven't yet visited, but we put that out there. She's not ready for that yet, but the door is open.
Our other daughter also doesn't have much contact other than through social media. That's where she like to keep it through her circumstances and we're honoring that. But we've had some phone calls with them and our daughter's been able to talk with her. So, she knows she's real. It's not just some pictures and some stories that we tell her. She actually got to talk to her and her birth mom said, “Hey, you call me anytime. You ask me anything you want.” So, that's a huge thing for her.
Nicole:
Right.
Tim:
And then our son is completely different with his birth family. I mean, we have so many visits we've had. We went on vacation with them.
One story I got to tell you; it's just amazing because it was this past fall. Our son's birth parents were not married when he was born. Ten years later, they decided to get married. This was this past fall. So, they invited us not only to come, but have him be their ring bearer.
Nicole:
Oh, wow.
Tim:
So, this was many hours away. We traveled, but we took the time. We made the trip. We spent lots of time with them. He was the ring bearer and a very small wedding. We didn't know how small it was actually, till we got there. And it was very, very small. But it was beautiful and we got to share all that with them. And they said at the reception, “We wanted to share our wedding with – our special day – with the people that are closest to them.” And that just made us feel so blessed, so touched.
Nicole:
Oh, my gosh. That's beautiful. You're bringing a tear to my eye. That is a beautiful story.
Tim:
They chose us to be there because we're some of the people that are closest to them. So, that's really, I mean, the most open that we have in our three kids.
Nicole:
Wow. That's great. Do you have any other great stories like that to share with us, Tim. That was really wonderful.
Tim:
Yeah. There was another one. So, on our vacation, one of the vacations we went to with our son's birth family and this was a extended family. It was a lot of people and we had a lot of fun. But on the way back they brought some questions. So, we're long drive, right? We had a lot of windshield time and our oldest was asking us, “How come I don't have this wonderful relationship that we can just go visit and go on vacation and have all this time to spend with my birth family?” So, we talked through that a little bit, and we're like, “We want that. We would love that. It's not really in her world. It's not what works for her and her circumstances.”
So, we talked through that a little bit and she said – this is before she ever talked to her. And we were like, “We would love it if you could talk with her.” And she said, “Yeah, I want to do that.” So, at that point, we had lost a little bit of social media contact with her, not for anything we've done, but she had kind of changed her social media online presence, I guess, is the way to put it. So, we had to search for her.
Nicole:
Okay.
Tim:
So, we got back home and we did some searching. And I did one of those things and you're not supposed to do is lay in bed at night and be on your phone.
Nicole:
Right.
Tim:
But I was so curious and I just couldn't let it go. So, my wife and I were searching through social media and we found her and we saw the picture and we were like, “That's her.” She had changed her profile a couple times, but there she was. We're like, “Oh, okay, we're going to contact her. What do we say? How do we open this up?” Because we weren't sure she wanted contact. But we chose our words carefully and said, “Hey, we're just reaching out. If you want contact, we'd love to hear from you.” And she almost immediately responded, said, “Yes, I would love to contact you.”
Nicole:
Oh, it's great.
Tim:
So, we did. And we set up a phone call like two days later and had that first phone call with our daughter and her. And it just bridged that gap and really connected her and allowed her to feel like, “Okay, my birth family is real. My birth family is there for me and I can ask them whatever questions I want.” So, that was pretty cool.
Nicole:
Yeah, that's awesome. And that definitely kind of goes to what I was talking about, how relationships are different, but you just manage each one for what it is and provide the child with the best that you can in terms of what they need out of that relationship. So, that's really great that you're able to do that even in such wildly varying circumstances.
So, we talked in the beginning a little bit generally about closed versus open adoption. Is there anything else you want to circle back and add to that now that we know a little bit more about your personal experience with it, or do you feel like we've kind of covered that off?
Tim:
Well, I do think that especially with your audience being new to adoption and maybe hearing open adoption stuff for the first time, it really is – it's not as complicated as it may seem. And we certainly didn't get from, “We want a closed adoption” to “We're going on vacation with the birth family.” We didn't get to that overnight. It takes time. It's about a relationship. It takes work. It takes commitment just like any other relationship.
But we also didn't over promise how much communication we can do. And that was pretty important when we were looking at our profile and we were setting it up in our profile about talking about how much communication. And our adoption professionals always like, “Well, just be open to it. Be open to visits, open to phone calls or FaceTime or whatever.” So, that's all we did in our profile. And that was enough to make the connection with our kids’ birth families. And they're happy to talk about that. They're happy that we mentioned it in our profile.
So, it's something to think about as you are starting your journey is just to think about how openness – and it changes over time – but try not to over promise like, “Oh yeah, we'll do whatever you want, ten visits a year” because you don't even know when {crosstalk 18:23 – 24}.
Nicole:
Right.
Tim:
But for us, it's been tremendous just with the medical history, knowing where they come from, our kids being able to ask questions and they know that's what's best for them. So, I feel strongly that open adoption is the way to go just by living it. So, I hope this opens up some people's ideas about what open adoption is and openness.
Nicole:
Yeah. Yeah, that's great. And you kind of mentioned that it's changed over time. Can you elaborate on that a little bit, in terms of how it's changed in your family as the kids have gotten older?
Tim:
Mm hm. Yeah, because we share more of their story as they get older. So, we start almost as early as we can, sharing a little bit of their story: how we got them and what we were doing and where we were at. And so, as we share more of their story with them, they start asking more questions. And we're not pushing open adoption on them. We're not pushing their birth families on them, but we are, if things kind of go for a while and we're like, “Hey, they haven't said anything about that in a while,” and we just might broach the subject a little bit, see if they're – because they're probably thinking about it, especially as they get older. And we found, maybe about that five-, six-, seven-year-old range is when they really start asking some more questions.
So, we've learned that just to kind of keep the communication lines open but not push it down their throat is really how it's worked well for us. As we tell them their stories and as we share more and more about their birth families, it just evolves, I guess, just as like a relationship does.
Nicole:
Right. Right. And like we talked about, pretty much everyone is nervous about openness when they first start the process. I mean, it would be wildly unusual for people not to be, probably even when you've done it a couple of times already. But especially like before the match, when you can't even imagine who their child's birth family will be and what they'll be like. So, do you have any top tips for hopeful adoptive families about open adoption?
Tim:
Yeah, you hit on one right there was just, it's going to be awkward. And I remember when we met our son's birth parents for the first time. We talked to them, of course, they sent us a picture and we thought, “Wow, these are most beautiful people we've ever met.” But when we had to actually meet them, we met them at a coffee shop and we walked in the door and we knew it was them and they saw us and it was a bit awkward. And this was our second adoption. So, you know, we're not walking in there with the perfect comfort level. We're walking in, they're going, “Hmm, what do we tell them? What do we talk to them about?”
But it's like anything, we're just keeping it simple. “How are you doing?” Especially the birth mom. “How are you feeling?” And just have to keep those things very little, very simple, and just start working on a relationship, like you would with any new friend.
So, that's kind of our thing is almost embrace the awkwardness. It's hard to say that because it's weird to say that because how do you embrace awkwardness?
Nicole:
Right.
Tim:
But you know what's going to happen and it will get better, I guess, is really my tip there.
And you definitely have to roll with the changes as they come up. You don't know what's going to happen, maybe they'll only want social media and then they'll drop off, like one of ours did. You have to roll with the punches and not get too – don't get too aggressive. Don’t find them and reaching out for them. Kind of let them open the door; keep the door open for them, I guess, is the right way to say it. So, they always know the door is open for them to come in. Their circumstances may change. They're probably in crisis mode when the baby's born. And so, hopefully their life gets better, but you’ll never know. So, you kind of got to roll with the punches on that.
But certainly, set some boundaries. Talk about boundaries as far as phone calls and social media. There's a lot of ways to contact now. So, you want to talk about those boundaries as you go.
And certainly, be careful of your child's birth story. And we always protect our kids as birth story as they are getting older and we want them to know their own birth story. We don't want anybody else to hear the birth story. So, there always seems like there's always some kind of circumstance in their adoption story that you may not want to share. Be really sensitive. So, keep in mind of that as you're going and building your relationship with your birth families.
Nicole:
Yeah, that's really important. Really important one. Thank you. And thank you just so much for sharing your insight and your personal story and experience.
Again, listeners, my guest has been Tim Elder, founder of the Infant Adoption Guide podcast, blog and online community. The best way to reach Tim, if you want to connect with him, is via email, and that email is tim(T-I-M)@infantadoptionguide.com or on his website, which is infantadoptionguide.com.
And Tim has very generously offered our listeners a free month to his online adoption community and that is at www.infantadoptionguide.com/community.
But of course, listeners most of all, I'd like to thank you for tuning in. I hope you've heard something today that has increased your understanding of open adoption and perhaps positively impacted the way you look at adoptive parenting. Take care and I'll catch you next time.