Group experiences for adoptive parents, from dream to reality

This paper aims to recount some reflections on the use of the group in the support of adoptive parenting, the result of years of work with these families. This experience, in particular, turns out to be very important to foster the encounter with the real child and recognition. The process of integration between the long-awaited and dreamed adoptive child and the real child, which in turn has its own history and different expectations, is, in fact, complex and not immediate. The group becomes, therefore, the privileged place to accompany this process, as well as all those critical phases in which adoption is redefined in relation to the stages of life of both children and parents. In this sense it becomes absolutely fundamental when children enter pre-adolescence and adolescence. In this period, in fact, the adoptive parents live the dilemma between still giving themselves the possibility to recover moments of the relationship with their children never lived and accompany them in the processes of identification. Between keeping close and letting go. An experiential group in which the dimension of mirroring, of seeing each other, allows to understand each other beyond the word, to build a container, even corporeal and sensory, where the couple feels protected against emotions not easy to recognize and accept. The group becomes, therefore, a sort of theatre, in which to experiment in a creative dimension.