This understanding sensitizes them to the reality of adoption-related loss, which is considered by most adoption professionals to be a fundamental issue in the emotional adjustment of adopted individuals (Brodzinsky , 1990; Brodzinsky & Pinderhughes, 2002). During middle childhood, children tend to understand the perspectives of others and understand empathy for someone else. These social reasoning skills help adopted children recognize the problem their birth parents may have faced. School-age children often begin to wonder whether their birth parents think about them and whether their birth parents regret their feelings..