Helping Your Donor-Conceived Child Feel Heard and Supported: Insight from a Donor-Conceived Person

As a recipient parent, have you ever said, my child doesn’t care that they are donor conceived? If you have, you might have a future problem on your hands. So stick around. What is up? My name is Laura and I am your donor. Can see person of TikTok.

What I’m about to say is probably going to upset some recipient parents. That is not my intention right now, is to give you more tools to be the most awesome recipient parent I know you wanna be. And understand this is coming from a donor conceived person who talks to donor conceive people every single day, not once a week, not once a month, every single day. And I listen to donor conceive people with all kinds of various facts, backgrounds and families. And the one thing that I have seen consistently is if you are saying that your child does not care that they are donor conceived, you actually might be missing the signs that they do care and they’re just scared to come talk to you. So let’s talk about how to fix that. A lot of recipient parents are so great and wonderful with telling their children at an early age that they are donor conceived. And kudos to that. That’s awesome. But then they kind of think, okay, it’s it. That’s done. Great. We’ve done it. We can pack that away, put it on a shelf, call it a day. And unfortunately, that’s not the end of the road. It’s a fantastic start. Don’t get me wrong, we love that.

But there’s more donor conceive people innately are aware of how much their questions and curiosity about being donor conceived could potentially hurt their parent’s feeling. Even if you have a great relationship with your kid, this is a whole different level. This is completely different ball game. We have spoken to donor conceived people have said I have felt so scared to talk to my parents about my curiosities about being donor conceived because it feels like even me asking is betraying my parents. And they feel so guilty for asking questions because they’re like, my parents are so great. They told me at a young age. I know they support me, but I’m still so scared to talk to them. So what you need to do as a recipient parent is consistently go to your kids and tell them, hey, you know, if you have any questions, we’re totally open. Come talk to me. I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions and inquiries.

We’ve had recipient parents say, hey, do you have any question about being donor conceived? And the kid says, no, I absolutely don’t. They ask again, and the kid says, no, I absolutely don’t. Then they mention a third time, you know, that like we have the paperwork. If you wanna see like your donor’s picture, we have, and they go, you have my donor’s picture? Yeah, I wanna see it. It’s really tricky. You really can’t go off of your kids on this one. You have to be really proactive at as the parent to ensure they are so hyper aware that this is a safe space. You can talk to us. And it’s all from love. Your kids love you. They just don’t wanna hurt your feelings. And you have to tell them all the freaking time that this isn’t gonna hurt our feelings. We promise we’re safe, we are secure. Please talk to us. And you will find that there’s a lot of those kids that you’re saying, oh, they don’t care about their donor conception will change to, oh, wow, I guess they did care a little bit. Now are their donor can see people who have no interest in learning about their donor, have no interest in going on like, you know, going down their donor conception path and learning more about it. Absolutely. But there’s a lot more of them that are curious than are telling you. And I know this because they end up in our groups, in our forum. They also message me directly. I know donor can see people who have taken DNA tests without telling their parents because they’re too scared to tell their parents that they did. And again, they love their parents. They just are so scared to hurt their feelings. If you have ever said, my kid doesn’t care that they are donor conceived, I beg and I ask you to sit down with your kids today and go, hey, you know, you can talk to us. Really make it clear that it is safe and tell them multiple times, not just once, but often.

Dollar grade. I know you want to be the best parents you can be. That’s why I’m just trying to give you more tools to succeed at the thing that you wanna succeed at. You’re gonna do great.