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I often see it said that only insecure or jealous parents have a problem with reunion or that if you are confident in your relationship with your child then reunion should never be a problem. Essentially, yes, parents should be confident in their place in their child's life and support their child's desire for reunion if that is the case. But having been through the whole process of raising a kid, it's often not that simple.

There are many times during a child's upbringing when the parent's place in a child's life is made tenuous and parents have good reason to be protective, wary and worried about what may happen in their family. During early adolescence, many kids begin to overvalue peer opinion and undervalue family relationships. During this time, many kids express their natural desire to begin to form as independent persons as downright nastiness and cruelty in word and action to their parents. Should parents recognize this for what it is and not succumb to it? Of course. But what parent can hear hateful things coming from the precious child they have raised and loved without being heartbroken and wondering how much is just smoke and how much is real fire?

In mid-adolescence, rebellion can be scary as kids are more physically mature and mobile and their potential to harm themselves and their families by immature or destructive choices is much more real. During this phase, there is more pushing away of parents as part of the process of growing up. Maintaining loving close relationship and at the same time healthy boundaries and standards of behavior during this time is a difficult balancing act for the best of parents and the most solid families.

In late adolesence, early adulthood, the final push to independence is (hopefully) completed. It's a wonderful thing when it's done but along the way usually entails more pushing away of parents. The child/young adult sets their own boundaries and the parents and child struggle and feel their way through to this whole new way of relating to each other.

When reunion comes at any of these times, it can be scary for a parent, no matter how "confident" or "good" of a parent they are. A parent's goodness cannot make their child magically mature, reasonable or wise. At any point, but especially at the times I've cited, a parent is vulnerable to being deeply hurt or feeling rejected by their own child by choices he or she may make. Kids are their own persons and are flawed and in process just as all of us are. And reunion involves allowing your child to have a relationship of the kind that can feel more threatening than any other because it involves the one thing that adoptive parents can never give their child- biological relatedness. It hits at the core of many adoptive parents deepest pain and real insecurities and fears. Ideally, an aparent will be confident and secure and a bparent will not seek to undermine this relationship or feed into the child's natural immaturity or impulsivesness, and the child will not exclude or reject their aparents from their lives during reunion. Ideally. But ideal situations take work and commitment from all sides of the equation- they are not a given.

As I said before, I agree completely that adoptive parents should be confident in their relationships with their children and should support their children's desire for reunion. But an aparent's struggle to come to terms with this new reality and to feel secure in the midst of it should not be minimized or scorned.

Some bparents may take years to deal with the pain of adoption, even if they are confident it is best for their child. From what I've seen here, the knowledge their child is happy and healthy does not magically make the struggle for peace go away or the pain of loss just vanish. In the same vein, an aparent's knowledge that reunion should be a positive thing for their child and they should support it, doesn't magically make the fear and worry of all the possible outcomes or their own pain of loss (never being biologically bound to the children they love) any less. It takes work and it takes time, and should be met with compassion and support- like any experience as part of the triad.

As for the original poster, I think your opennes to the aparents and your expressed support for them was wonderful and right on target. But you are at the mercy of variables you cannot control- how he is relating to his parents and they to him. You can only continue to help point him toward maturity and wisdom not feed any immaturity or cruelty on his part.

I can't speak for all aparents, only for myself. But I hope that we can be a part of reunion if and when my son wants it. I hope that both his bmom and my son will extend to me the same openness that I intend to for them. I hope it can be a part of our lives, and not just his.

It is possible for things to be the way you want them- but your bson and his parents will have to work out their relationship between them before there will be able to be unity all around. I hope this happens, for all of your sakes.