Achievement is highly valued in these families. I think this way of creating children sends the following message: must be achieved. you are not accepted. ”
It is especially distressing when children are struggling. Some children are born prematurely and have disabilities, which was a big risk with IVF. Or they may have learning differences or autism.
In some cases, after parents chose an egg donor, it was discovered that she had a mental illness. And that child ends up being seen through that lens, and that can be quite shocking and traumatic. “Your donor is crazy, so you must be too.”
Even though children know they were experiments, they grow up feeling very different from themselves, without the proper support and acceptance they need to thrive. Because there are no caregivers who say, “I understand.” That’s not true.
In my job, I help parents accept that this is your child. And I help children accept the reality of their parents and build a less vulnerable relationship or a life without them.
Many of my families have neurodiverse members who need help making abstract concepts more concrete. Sometimes just explaining that you and your child are not the same person can help. Or maybe a teenager feels unloved. You may need to make it clear to them that “love” is not a concrete emotion that can be pinched or kicked. It means someone has a crush on you the same way you have a crush on Lego or a drone.
In high school, many teens connect with half-siblings through 23andMe, sometimes living all over the world. It is common for such families to have different egg donors for each child, for example because they wanted to have an athletic son and an artistic daughter. What do you do if one of your children finds and bonds with a half-sibling, while the other child doesn’t have a good experience with their new relative? Who should you invite to Thanksgiving? Do you have it?
I can really feel the feelings of the mothers. They are trying to balance everyone’s expectations and keep everything together. But it’s also unfair to the father. Because we don’t know if fathers can accurately predict human behavior. You can probably predict stock prices, but there are too many variables in human behavior. I don’t know if anyone makes parents understand that they can’t let their kids test drive it and then return it.
Trying to control children is a recipe for disaster. The child will rebel. If you have a preconceived idea of what the other person is going to be like, you’re either going to be very disappointed, or you’re going to fit into a mold and it’s not going to work out.
It might work out, but those people don’t come to me.
—As told by Emi Nietfeld
