How early should one tell their child they are a donor child? And do you have any suggestions on how to approach the matter?

Dear Rachel

We know from research that openness with the donor child is very important and best at an early age. The donor children who experience problems later in life, are those who have grown up with a mum and a dad, and have later in their childhood or youth, discovered that their dad is not their biological dad. My experience with 3 donor children is to; tell them about it as early as possible. Preferably when they are so young that they still don’t have the speech to understand it – about 2 years old. They may understand a bit of it and then the next time they will understand it a bit more and so on. It is a good idea to use a book to talk about it. I got my hands on an English book with drawings that I told the story from.

We have made a book similar to this where you can insert your own pictures and text. It is really good to use this to talk about it and the children understand on different levels depending on their age. And all children love to hear about how wanted and loved they are.

All the best
Liza