I don’t know if there is anything more important that you can do with your kids than talk. All kids need to have open lines of communication, with their parents, but adopted children, and especially transracially-adopted children, need it even more than most.

If you have done any research at all…if you have read any books or read any articles from adult transracial adoptees, it seems that the number one “complaint” is that their families didn’t talk. They didn’t talk about adoption. They didn’t talk about race and they didn’t talk about all the other issues and feelings wrapped up in those things.

Here is an article from Adoption.com http://transracial.adoption.com/interracial/race-and-my-family.html written by a transracially-adopted individual who is sharing her experience with race, communication and family.

In “Race and my Family”, the author reflects on how she felt when she realized a family member did not understand her feelings on race, and she concludes, “I've learned that if I expect my family to be able to include my racial experiences as part of who I am, I need to help them understand how important this is to me. When they don't recognize the place race holds, it feels like they are excluding the most basic part of me. I need them to be conscious of the ways race affects my life and to understand that if it affects my life, then it affects their lives also, because we are family.”

Kids need to talk about things, and they need to know that it is ok to talk to their parents about things. Anything! Establishing open communication as soon as possible is so important. Issues, concerns, thoughts, worries, wonders, etc. come up at all different times in a child’s life, and when they can talk to their parents about them, it is healthy and good. When they are afraid to bring things up and aren’t able to talk about their concerns, they internalize and bottle things up, which often leads to trouble.

When we first brought home our two AA daughters, who were 9 and 6 years old at the time, I initiated “girl chit chat”. They were going through an outrageous amount of change, sadness, anger and overall adjustment, and I wanted to be sure that they knew we could talk about anything. So every night at bedtime I went in and lay on the floor in their room and we had “girl chit chat”. We could talk about anything that they wanted to…any topic, any question, anything they needed to talk about was ok. In the beginning it was always about adoption and forever families and birth families and their own personal circumstances and histories. Eventually over time, the tone and topics of our chitchats changed to have more to do with boys and clothes than adoption.

My girls are now happy and well adjusted, and yet I know that they, and my other children, will need to talk about adoption, race, birth families and many other things that just have to do with growing up and life in general, time and time again as they grow. We have personal chitchats and family chit chats and I really strive to keep the lines of communication open.

I have found that sometimes kids won’t start a conversation when something is bothering them. I often ask questions like, “what was the best thing that happened today?” or “what was the worst thing that happened today?” or “how are you feeling about life today?” just to get things started.

So talk to your kids. Even about the more difficult of topics. If they can’t talk to their parents about adoption or race or their birth families, who can they talk to? Start when they are small, and when they are those dreaded teenagers, J, they will already know that they can talk to you when they need to.

How do you keep the lines of communication open with your kids? Do you have a favorite time or place to talk? Share it with us. I love learning from all of you.