What's Coming Up: Discussion Topics

At our first meeting of the year in October, we spent some time brainstorming on the issues we'd like to cover. Here's a brief glance at our 2009-10 schedule.

November: Our Well-Being After Adoption
The focus of our discussion will be on our needs in the weeks and months after adoption – in particular, we will be discussing the importance of self-care and the impact of adoption on our well-being (mental, emotional, sexual and physical). (And where are people getting child care for date nights anyway?)

December: Speaking of the Past?
The focus of this discussion will be on how adoptive parents negotiate the past with those around them. How do we support our children in understanding their pasts when gaps exist in the information available before they joined our families? How do we deal with the curiosity of others about our children’s pasts – what do we or don’t we share, and when? How do we honour our own pasts with our children and bring them into our traditions?

January: Managing Other People’s Experience with Your Adoption
The focus of this discussion will be on exploring how other people relate to our adoptions and how we manage relationships before and after adoptions take place. How does adoption change our friendships? How has it impacted your professional life? How have you incorporated your extended family into your child’s life? How do we address the most intrusive inquiries into our private lives?

February: Attachment
The focus of this discussion will be on attachment in the adoptive family. What has helped build strong attachments with our children? We will allow discuss how each parent in an adoptive couple might experience attachment with their adoptive child(ren) to varying degrees, and vice versa in terms of the pace that children attach to their adoptive parents. In addition, we will consider difficult attachments and their impacts on adoptive parents.

March: Not-So-Closed Adoptions
The focus of this discussion will explore adoptions in which birth families are involved with our children – whether as part of a negotiated open or partially open adoption, because they have found our adoptive families or because we have reached out to them. How are these relationships negotiated? How do we decide whether our children are ready for this contact? What do we do if we aren’t ready?

April: Queering our Kids, Gender Binaries, and Parenting Parameters
The focus of this discussion will explore how adoptive couples negotiate different parenting styles within their relationships. We will also consider how gender roles come to be assigned, reinforced and challenged within our relationships. Lastly, our discussion will consider the impact of our family structure on adoptive children with no past experience of the LGBTQ community.

May: Open Forum
The topic of this meeting is being left open to allow for the inclusion of interests that emerge over the course of the year and demand a more committed timeframe for discussion.

June: Adoption Process and Post-Adoption Support
The focus of this discussion will be a discussion of the adoption options and process within the Ottawa community, as well as a discussion of the post-adoption support available to families. The discussion will be grounded in the experiences of participants and is intended as a forum in which parents-to-be can receive helpful hints, and ask questions in a safe, candid environment.

A special thank you to Jules for taking notes and writing up these descriptions.