Explaining ART to Children
The impetus for this post was this article – “The Stork Didn’t Bring You, But We Had Help” from the New York Times. It’s a very nice article discussing the realities of helping children to understand where they’ve come from when any sort of assisted reproductive techniques are utilized. The article is specifically about surrogacy, but is relevant to all forms of assisted reproduction.
I was adopted and my parents did an excellent job of explaining how I came to be their daughter. Here are some important guiding principles:
- Answer questions honestly. Children have questions about where they came from and parents need to answer their questions honestly (as honestly as possible considering the age and understanding of the child). Children will eventually recognize if they have been misled and the hurt feelings can be profound.
- Start when the child is young. Start discussing it when the child is very young – perhaps the age of two or three. This allows the child to always be aware of their story even if they don’t completely understand it. Details can be filled in later. The difficulty in waiting until a child is old enough to understand is that it will come as a surprise and there may be hurt feelings as a result.
- Use a storybook. Using a storybook is a wonderful approach because it is something tangible that a child can treasure. My parents had a sweet storybook that they read to me frequently – it was one of my favorites – about a family who wanted children and couldn’t have one of their own. Well, you know the rest of the story. It made me feel very special because my parents chose me out of all the other babies.
- Emphasize the positive. Any child coming to a family via either adoption or some sort of ART will at times feel a bit strange or different. By emphasizing the positive, parents ensure that their children will always feel special and loved. In my case, my parents emphasized that they chose me out of all the other babies. Any child born via any form of ART is special because of all the difficulties that their parents went through in order to have them.
I will be compiling a list of storybooks and adding it to my site very soon.
