visit to an orphanage
Preparing Your Family for an Orphanage Visit: Is Your Child Ready? C h e c klis t A d vic e f r o m T h e r a pis t s a n d E x p e rie n c e d P a r e n t s
By Jean MacLeod
An orphanage visit can be a beneficial event for an adoptee, providing a link to personal history and a grounded understanding of her life circumstances. It can also be an unpleasant, or even traumatizing experience, filled with anxiety and shock over what abandonment and institutionalization really mean.
As Jane Liedtke stressed in P r e p a rin g f o r a H o m ela n d Visit , an orphanage visit should be planned, based on a child’s individual emotional and cognitive readiness. A child who is ready for enjoying the culture of her birth country may not be ready for the intensity of visiting her Social Welfare Institute. A parent can gauge a child’s ability to take in a trip of this importance, and can help prepare a child who expresses a sincere interest in the visit. An adoptee can be empowered by her understanding of reality or devastated by it, and parents can play a normative role in guiding a child through the preparation that a positive trip requires.
A checklist to help ensure a successful orphanage visit:
• Have you discussed the “tough stuff” about adoption with your child? Have you honestly answered her questions, or opened conversations about her birth mother and father, or the many possible reasons for her abandonment? Have you discussed her feelings about her losses related to her birth culture, extended birth family, primary orphanage caretaker or foster family? [Read the EMK Press parent guide A d o p tio n ’ s Lif e tim e Is s u e s : W h a t P a r e n t s N e e d t o K n o w for an overview of issues that may be triggered by an orphanage visit]
• Did your child suffer deprivation or neglect in her homeland? Does she understand these issues in relation to cultural context?
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• Even a young child should be comfortable working through age- appropriate discussions
By Jean MacLeod
An orphanage visit can be a beneficial event for an adoptee, providing a link to personal history and a grounded understanding of her life circumstances. It can also be an unpleasant, or even traumatizing experience, filled with anxiety and shock over what abandonment and institutionalization really mean.
As Jane Liedtke stressed in P r e p a rin g f o r a H o m ela n d Visit , an orphanage visit should be planned, based on a child’s individual emotional and cognitive readiness. A child who is ready for enjoying the culture of her birth country may not be ready for the intensity of visiting her Social Welfare Institute. A parent can gauge a child’s ability to take in a trip of this importance, and can help prepare a child who expresses a sincere interest in the visit. An adoptee can be empowered by her understanding of reality or devastated by it, and parents can play a normative role in guiding a child through the preparation that a positive trip requires.
A checklist to help ensure a successful orphanage visit:
• Have you discussed the “tough stuff” about adoption with your child? Have you honestly answered her questions, or opened conversations about her birth mother and father, or the many possible reasons for her abandonment? Have you discussed her feelings about her losses related to her birth culture, extended birth family, primary orphanage caretaker or foster family? [Read the EMK Press parent guide A d o p tio n ’ s Lif e tim e Is s u e s : W h a t P a r e n t s N e e d t o K n o w for an overview of issues that may be triggered by an orphanage visit]
• Did your child suffer deprivation or neglect in her homeland? Does she understand these issues in relation to cultural context?
2
• Even a young child should be comfortable working through age- appropriate discussions