All children have a secret place where they can fantasize about having better parents when they are disillusioned with their own. Freud called this the family romance. However, when the non-adopted child later learns and accepts the fact that his parents have both positive and negative characteristics, the fantasy dissipates.
It is not that simple for the adopted child. The adoptee really does have another set of parents out there somewhere. The adoptee’s fantasies begin when he is told that he is adopted and are both positive and negative.
You may not be aware that your child fantasizes like this, and perhaps not all adopted children do, but listen to the words of adoption specialists Drs. Brodzinsky and Schechter in Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self: “In our experience, all adoptees engage in a search process. It may not be a literal search, but it is a meaningful search nonetheless. It begins when the child first asks, ‘Why did it happen? Who are they? Where are they now?’”
I learned this concept quite surprisingly one day while caring for my two-year-old twin grandsons. Whenever I have the privilege of spending a day with them, they often bring up the names of all the people in their extended family. Their minds turn often to those who love them. “Papau? Sheia? Koa? Mimi? Gompa?” they ask, as if to say “Where are they now? What are they doing?” My grandsons have no trouble blending the two sides of their extended family. To them, there are no walls of preference, only people who love them and whom they love.
So it is with the adopted child. Somewhere, deep within her heart, are the questions “Where is my birth mother right now? Where is my birth father? I wonder what they are doing.”
It is vital to keep in mind that there is no “we and they” mentality in the adopted child’s world. Birth parents have always been and will always be a part of her world, whether acknowledged or not. It is we, the adults, who sometimes erect walls of competitiveness and possessiveness in relating to our child.
I realize this is difficult information for some parents of closed and semiclosed adoptions. You may find it threatening to open conversations about the birth family. However, it is essential if you are to be in tune with your child’s secret world.
What is adoption fantasy anyway? Some synonyms for fantasy are:
imagination
originality
creativity
image
conception
illusion
shadow
haunting fear
nightmare
Adoption fantasies are not bad. They are simply dreams adopted children and adults build within their hearts to ease the painful losses of adoption. Adoptees need not belittle themselves for having them, for without them the pain might have been too great, the burden of grief too heavy. In many ways, fantasies are a gift to the adoptee because they help her survive.
Carl Jung said that fantasies are the natural expression of the life of the unconscious. I believe that adoptee fantasy is a way of coping with the pain of relinquishment and a broken life narrative. If the adoptee can fill in the missing pieces with fantasy, then it doesn’t hurt quite so bad.
My grandsons have a special blanket that represents comfort to them. They carry it wherever they go, and if something upsets them, they ask for it. They hold it close and feel comforted because it is a “mother replacement.” Adoptee fantasy is like that blanket of comfort.
Distinguished author Betty Jean Lifton says in Journey of the Adopted Self, “They [fantasies] are the mother replacement: the comfort zone that the mother did not provide. They serve the function of the surrogate rag doll that experimental monkeys are given after the real mother has been taken away.”
Therapist Nancy Arick Harp says that certain needs will trigger fantasy, and the specific fantasy is likely to be reflective of popular culture. As I observe my grandsons fantasizing that they are a daddy going off to work, the need beneath their fantasy would be to stay connected to Daddy while he’s out in the world. If a child needs to be noticed, he may fantasize being Spider-Man. If a child needs to feel empowered, he or she may fantasize being Superman or Wonder Woman. (By the way, Superman was adopted.)
Children’s fantasies can be observed in their play and in many of the assumptions and comments they make that may startle adoptive parents. Watkins and Fisher’s observations in Talking With Young Children About Adoption give: us insight.
A three-year-old anticipated that she would have both her birth mother and her adoptive mother at her birthday party.
A five-year-old had the fantasy that she and her adoptive family would spend each summer with her birth family.
A four-year-old drew a picture of her Salvadoran grandfather, whom she had never met in real life, but whom she included in her fantasy.
A five-year-old said, “Maybe a tent could be put in the backyard for my birth mother?”
A child announces at preschool that when she was a baby, she drank milk from her mother. She proceeds to describe nursing to the group—an experience she did not have.
A child replays her adoption-day story, asking her mother to pretend that when she is picking up the baby she is choosing the wrong child. Then the child corrects her mom cheerily, proclaiming that she is the right baby.
If you were to ask the average adult adoptee if she has experienced an active fantasy life over the years about her lost birth family, she might say no. However, if she were given examples of how this fantasy life typically manifests, she would likely identify. Listed below are some of the common manifestations.
An adoptee often searches for a face that resembles her own, in a crowd. She subconsciously believes that if only she could see the face of the lost loved one, the hurt would magically disappear, the lifelong repercussions would evaporate, the grief would be resolved.
A teenage adoptee visiting someone’s home might notice a photograph of a relative who resembles her and then wonder if that could be her birth mother.
One adult adoptee said, “I just hope to be able to put a face with the picture in my mind.” Another said, “I get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing someone who looks like me.”
Recently, when flying on an airplane, a distinguished elderly gentleman sat next to me. My first conscious thought was “I wonder if he could be my birth father.”
Adoptee Amy van der Vliet wrote this poem about the missing face:
The Non-identifying Information Fact Sheet tells me,
as I scan it for the millionth time for the answers to my questions,
that reading, golf, and water-skiing were their hobbies.
The irony of it, for they are mine as well.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to share just one
sun-soaked afternoon on the lake
with my knight in shining armor,
and the woman whose face I search for in every crowd?
When the adult adoptees in our support group put words to their deepest fantasy, it was to be held in their birth mother’s arms. This was especially true for the male adoptees. One said, “I can’t imagine how wonderful that would feel.”
Andrew Chilstrom, a freshman in college, wrote this poem about the perfect family just before his untimely death:
“Home”
I want a small house with a white picket fence
and a gate that needs oiling.
I want a great big yard and a hammock in the shade,
and a dog that chases butterflies.
I want a loving wife with a sweet smile
and an apron that says “Mom.”
But most of all, I want you, God,
to be there in my house
watching over my wife, my children,
my hammock in the shade,
and my dog that chases butterflies.
(ANDREW, YOU DIED TOO SOON
BY CORINNE CHILSTROM)
Adult adoptees, reflecting on their childhood fantasies, said:
I always liked TV shows oriented toward the ideal family. In fact, I got obsessed with them.
I was looking for loving, caring parents that I made up in my mind.
I fantasized about my birth mother. She lived in a brick home, but had no face.
Healthy fantasy can serve a useful function by enabling an adoptee to cope with her primal pain temporarily. In this sense, fantasy can be a helpful defense mechanism for a fragile psyche. But fantasy can become pathological and destructive if it causes the adoptee to isolate herself and avoid working out her deepest issues of loss and grief. When adoptees fantasize about what can never be, they are likely to demonstrate some of the attitudes and behaviors below.
In retrospect, I can see my own adoptee fantasies clearly. Many of mine centered on my adoptive mother—regretfully, I was always looking for someone to take her place. It wasn’t that she wasn’t doing her very best to be a good mother. It was that I viewed her in a way I wasn’t conscious of. Only as I have studied adoption dynamics have I come to understand what the problem was.
Nancy Verrier in The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child explains, “As it has been shown in the often tumultuous relationship between the adoptee and the adoptive mother, women are often seen as abandoners.”
Verrier goes on to tell of a conversation she had with Betty Jean Lifton, who said, “The difficulty in bonding with the adoptive mother is not so much a matter of trust as it is a matter of loyalty to that first mother.”
I believe knowledge of the above adoption dynamics is essential for every adoptive parent, for when you see them happening you won’t be shocked, you will know what the child is struggling with, and you will be able to reach out to her in an effective way without personalizing her behavior as rejection.
When I was a teenager, I was drawn to other people’s mothers for understanding and direction. And then, as I grew into adulthood, I chose female mentors, not realizing at the time that I was searching for the mother I had lost at birth. Little did I know that any replacement for permanent loss is fantasy.
I also fantasized about my birth father. I imagined him as a knight in shining armor. This transferred to the significant males in my life. When I met my husband, I idealized him by believing he could do no wrong and that he would provide for my every need.
Needless to say, both fantasies, about my birth mother and dad, interfered greatly with my emotional and relational health.
Not only did I seek out mentors, but I idealized them. I put them on high pedestals and had expectations of them that no human being could ever fulfill.
Robert Andersen, M.D., in his autobiography, Second Choice: Growing Up Adopted, writes: “I have had difficulty bringing my birth mother down to earth. I have loved and hated her, but she has always lived above the clouds.”
If adoptees continue to idealize people, they won’t learn that Mom, Dad, and all people are far from perfect. Realizing that neither birth parents nor adoptive parents are perfect and accepting them as human beings is part of maturing into adulthood. Adoptees would be stuck in childhood if they didn’t pass this milestone.
Sooner or later, the people I put on pedestals fell off, and I was deeply disappointed. Whenever someone fell off, I became very critical. No one, including myself, could live up to the standards I set. Eventually, this pattern translated to most of the relationships in my life.
One male adoptee with a failed marriage confessed that this was one of the contributing factors to his divorce.
Many adoptees place very high standards upon themselves because they subconsciously believe that they are or have to be “special.”
Fox-TV sports host and bestselling author Tim Green, in A Man and His Mother: An ADOPTED Son’s Search, tells about himself when he was in kindergarten: “It only took one report card to realize the magnitude of those wonderful grids of letters and words. Tie your shoes, get an A. Display good manners, another A. Show consideration for your classmates, bingo. If you filled that thing with A’s, teachers said you were a good kid. Parents’ eyes twinkled. Grandparents cooed. Aunts and uncles pursed their lips and nodded approval.”
Green goes on to say that he paid a price for driving himself in such a way. He says, “At only eight years of age, I was plagued by agonizing nightmares and insomnia, the kinds of disorders more closely associated with disturbed adults.”
Fear of people in roles of authority can be the adoptee’s subconscious reaction to her adoptive parents’ expectations—perhaps the adoptive parents want her to be someone other than who she is. The adoptee may fear that she will not be able to meet their expectations.
One adult adoptee in our support group said, “Because I was adopted, I don’t think I could have ever lived up to what my adoptive parents wanted.”
Oftentimes, without realizing it, adoptive parents have a subconscious agenda for how they would like their child’s life to unfold. “She’ll probably be a teacher like me,” or “What college would you like to attend?” (when the child hasn’t expressed an interest in college).
At the opposite end of idealization are the negative, sometimes nightmarish, fantasies. Instead of the birth mother being a beautiful princess, the adoptee might envision her as a bag lady or a wicked witch.
It is important for adoptive parents to discern what kind of fantasy the adoptee has of the birth parents so that honest, loving, and healing thoughts can fill up the void where fantasy reigns.
Now that we’ve learned the ins and outs of fantasy, let’s talk about what you can do to help your child move beyond fantasy to wholeness and maturity.
Be aware of the times that your child seems emotionally distant, as if in another world. Learn to read her body language. When she’s withdrawn or seems to have “gone away,” gently ask her what she is thinking about. Perhaps you can go for a special “date” together so that she can tell you all about it. Keep engaging her in conversation.
Whenever you have one-on-one time with your child, take advantage of the opportunity to ask probing questions, such as “If you could ask me anything, what would it be?”
This is a great question for clinicians also. Lee tells of a time when, after eight years of therapy, her counselor asked her this question. She knew right away what her answer would be, but hesitated. Finally she got the courage to say to her “For you to hold me.”
When the therapist replied that this was a reasonable request, Lee began sobbing uncontrollably. She had transferred her deepest mother-fantasy to the therapist and received comfort and nurturing. The end result was a total relaxation of her body. Lee could hear her heart beat. She could receive “safe” touch. Needless to say, it brought much healing.
The implication here for parents is that you are indeed able to go to that place of fantasy with your child and fill the legitimate need behind the fantasy. Get down on the floor and enter into play. Use Legos and build a town with your child, complete with play people. Observe her play and how she verbalizes the characters of her fantasy. “Here is Grandpa Grundy,” the child may say. “He is going to visit Baby Boons.” Then you might ask, “What are Grandpa and Boons going to do together? What do you think Baby Boons wants to do?” And so it goes, as your child leads you into her fantasy life.
I have learned so much about effective parenting by watching my daughter parent her twin sons. She always gets down on the floor with them—down to their level—and then uses her imagination to enter into their world. As she moves the dump truck, she blows her lips like an engine on the move. When they announce “I’ll be back” as they pretend to leave the house, she asks them where they’re going. By engaging her boys on their level and asking them questions, she gathers important information about what is going on in their minds and hearts.
Now that you are more aware of the fantasy life within your adopted child and her secret thoughts about her birth family, it’s important to learn how to take the initiative in opening specific conversation with her about her birth family. That’s what we’ll talk about next.