For parents who use donors to conceive, an unexpected challenge of the process can be explaining the situation to the child.
The focus should be on the fact that the family needed a helper or helpers in order to have the child/children. The helpers are very important people in the life of the family. Even if you don’t know them personally. Much of the story will be fleshed out as you continue your dialogue and answer your children’s questions as they grow. It is also very important to determine what your child is exactly asking. Sometimes the question “Can I meet her?” is really the question “Does she live nearby?” or “Maybe she could come to dinner some night and then go home again?” These questions don’t necessarily put her in the special category to which we place a donor. But rather a person about whom we speak. But is invisible to our children. It would be normal to want to meet someone in the same vein that our kids might want to meet old family friends or distant cousins. Until such time that they fully understand what it means to have been conceived with a donor’s help, which comes much later.