By Cassandra
Adoption is often spoken about in milestones. Matching day. First introductions. Placement. Adoption Order. The “happy ending” people hope for. What is spoken about less openly is the emotional complexity that continues long after the paperwork is complete — particularly when navigating staying in touch arrangements with birth family members.
As adoptive parents, we entered adoption with openness and compassion. We understood that our child had a history before us and that identity, relationships, and life story matter deeply. Professionally, I also came into the process with experience supporting vulnerable children and families. I believed this would help us navigate the system more confidently. In some ways it did. In many ways, it made me even more aware of how difficult the process can be for everyone involved.
The adoption process itself was emotional, exhausting, and filled with uncertainty, but it was the conversations around contact and Staying in Touch arrangements that felt some of the most challenging. On paper, the plans often sounded straightforward and child focused. In reality, they felt far more complicated.
We had letterbox contact arrangements alongside plans for direct contact with birth parents. From the outset, there seemed to be an overwhelming pressure to ensure Staying in Touch was facilitated, almost as though the completion of contact itself became the measure of success rather than the emotional impact on the child.
What struck me most was how easily the child could become lost within the process.
As adults, we were discussing identity, attachment, trauma, rights, and future outcomes, but underneath all of that was a child simply trying to feel safe, settled, and secure. Even as someone with professional knowledge and experience, I found it incredibly difficult to communicate concerns and emotions around contact. There can sometimes be an unspoken fear that if adoptive parents’ express uncertainty or worry, it may be interpreted as resistance to birth family relationships rather than concern for the child’s emotional wellbeing.
We tried direct contact once. We went into it prepared, hopeful, and wanting to do the right thing. What followed afterwards was incredibly difficult.
For our child, the aftermath of contact was confusing and deeply distressing. One moment remains painfully clear to me. We were out in public when our child noticed someone in the street who looked similar to a birth family member. Instinctively, they moved quickly towards them, before suddenly stopping, staring, shaking their head, and bursting into tears. As a non-verbal child, there were no words to explain what was happening internally, but the emotional overwhelm was impossible to miss.
The rest of the day felt as though our child’s nervous system was in complete distress. They repeatedly hit themselves in the head, refused food, cried inconsolably, and seemed unable to settle despite every attempt to comfort, co-regulate, and reassure them. It was not “bad behaviour”. It was grief, confusion, trauma, longing, fear, and loss colliding in a child who did not yet have the developmental ability or language to process those emotions safely.
In those moments, we saw the reality of loyalty conflicts and fractured attachment far more clearly than any professional report could describe. We saw a child caught between histories, relationships, and emotions that were simply too big for them to hold alone.
What became clear to us was that contact itself is not automatically therapeutic simply because it exists.
Children who have experienced trauma, loss, neglect, or disrupted attachment often need far more preparation, support, and emotional containment than systems are always able to provide. Contact should not just be about maintaining connections; it should be about understanding the child’s emotional capacity to hold those connections safely.
That is not an argument against contact. Birth family relationships matter enormously. Identity matters enormously. Life story matters enormously. But contact plans must remain flexible, responsive, and genuinely child-led rather than driven by adult expectation, professional pressure, or policy language.
I also believe adoptive parents need greater emotional support in speaking honestly about contact experiences. There is often a narrative that openness automatically equals better outcomes, but many families are quietly navigating highly complex emotional realities that do not fit neatly into training manuals or assessment frameworks.
Some contact arrangements may grow positively over time. Others may need to pause, change, or be reconsidered altogether. That should not be viewed as failure. It should be viewed as responding to the child in front of us.
I came into adoption with an awareness of trauma, attachment, and behavioural communication, but experiencing it within our own family brought a completely different depth of understanding. I was struck by how easily adults can underestimate what children are carrying internally. A child does not need words to tell us something is too much; their nervous system often tells the story long before they can explain it themselves, but in a child’s body, reactions, and attempts to find safety again.
Adoption is built upon profound loss as well as profound love. Staying in touch arrangements sit within that delicate space. When handled with sensitivity, preparation, and flexibility, they can support identity and connection. But when the process becomes task-focused rather than emotionally attuned, the child risks carrying a burden they are simply not developmentally ready to hold.
Our journey has taught us that truly child-focused practice sometimes means being brave enough to ask difficult questions, tolerate uncertainty, and acknowledge when something intended to help may actually need rethinking.
Above all else, children need safety — emotionally as much as physically. Every decision around contact should begin there.