What Do I Call My Child's Birth Mother? - Weekend Wisdom
Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care
03/22/25
•6m
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Question: My husband and I are in the process of growing our family through adoption. It would be a domestic infant adoption, and we are hoping to cultivate a long-term relationship with the future baby’s birth family. I noticed that whenever I feel hesitation when thinking about openness, I can bring myself back down to earth by recognizing that any hesitation results from making things about ME, not the baby or birth family.
The one question I can’t seem to navigate on my own is this...what do adopted children call their birth mothers? How do I, as a future adoptive mom, refer to the baby’s birth mom? I want to respect the baby and birth mom; any insight on how families handle this would be so helpful!
Resources:
- What Does Your Child Call Her Birth Mother?
- 5 Tips for Navigating Sticky Situations with Birth Parents
- Positive Adoption Language & Why It Matters
Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
Previous Episode
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Are your child's birth parents struggling with addiction, mental illness, or intellectual disability? If so, join us for this discussion with Teresa Bradley, a psychotherapist with over 17 years of experience in addiction counseling and mental health. She is a Master Addiction Counselor, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, and clinical trainer at Amerigroup.
In this episode, we discuss:
Substance Abuse Disorders
- What are some of the challenges that adoptive or foster parents might expect to see when a birth parent is struggling with a substance abuse disorder (SAD) and not able to raise this child?
- How are those issues different for relative caregivers, like grandparents raising grandchildren?
- At what age should we start talking to the kids in our care about their parents’ challenges with substance abuse? How do we bring it up? How do we decide what to share and when?
- How can parents address that emotional fallout and deal with their own expectations, triggers, or negative feelings about the birth parents’ SAD?
- For relative caregivers, especially grandparents raising grandchildren, adding layers of guilt, shame, and disappointment.
- How might an open adoption relationship change across a birth parents’ journey through SAD? How should adoptive parents approach openness in their adoption when SAD is a known issue?
- What do you suggest parents or relatives do to process their feelings?
Mental Health Challenges or Intellectual Disabilities
- What are some of the specific challenges that adoptive or foster parents might expect when they are trying to support a child of parents with mental illness or intellectual difficulties?
- How can parents explain a birth parent’s challenges to children? When? How?
- What are some of the questions kids might have but cannot voice?
- How do we address a child’s concern that they will “get” this mental illness without scaring the child?
- Is this a good reason to limit contact with birth parents?
- How might an adoptive or foster parent talk to children and youth about the birth parents’ ability to connect or maintain a relationship?
- When a kinship caregiver has a pre-existing relationship with this birth parent, how do they talk about the challenges and how their relationship changes in light of their struggles?
- What other issues do we need to consider to maintain a relationship with the birth parents while keeping the child safe and feeling cherished and supported?
Resources:
- How Do You Manage Relationships with Birth Parents with Substance Use Disorders?
- Open Adoption
- Working with Birth Parents for the Child’s Best Interests
Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
Next Episode
Partnering With Relatives for Kinship Care
March 26, 2025
•52m
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Why is kinship care important, and what are some of the challenges? Our guests are Gregory Jones, a granddad raising five grandkids from birth to now ranging in age from 9 to 12; Ana Beltran, an attorney, and director of the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network: A National Technical Assistance Center; and Erica Burgess, a social worker with over 25 years of experience in child welfare, specializing in kinship care.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How common is kinship care throughout the US—both formal (child welfare involved) and informal?
- Grandparents raising grandkids or aunts and uncles raising nephews and nieces is often complicated and comes with a mix of challenges and blessings.
- What are some of the blessings?
- What are some of the challenges?
- Managing the relationship between the caregiver and the parents.
- What are some common challenges in this relationship?
- What are some common boundaries that need to be set in kinship care?
- Lack of preparation and training for raising kids who have experienced trauma, neglect, prenatal exposure to alcohol or drugs, etc.
- Lack of financial support.
- How can social workers and child welfare professionals make sure that kinship caregivers get the full extent of financial support?
- Access to resources. What are some typical resources that kinship caregivers should ask about and that child welfare agencies should consider providing?
- We see a significant variance between jurisdictions in social workers and child welfare professionals in the embrace of placing children with relatives.
- Why are some social workers hesitant to place kids with relatives?
- From an ethical perspective, why must social workers open their minds to looking for kin first when removing a child from their parents?
- Placing children with kin rather than the state taking custody. (Hidden foster care/kinship diversion)
- Legal considerations
- Ethical considerations with the hidden foster.
Great resources:
- Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network: A National Technical Assistance Center
- Grandfacts: State Fact Sheets for Grandparents and Other Relatives Raising Children
- NCKinshipFamilies.org - Legal Permanency Options for NC Kinship Families website
- Free Kinship Legal Clinic
- Kinship Caregivers and the Child Welfare System
- Online Kinship Support Group - email tracy@creatingafamily.org
Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:
- Weekly podcasts
- Weekly articles/blog posts
- Resource pages on all aspects of family building
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