Helping Siblings Bond

In the fall I sat on an adoption panel with the birth-mother of a 21 year old.  Having the opportunity to talk with her and hear what she shared with the panel reminded me that I cannot give up in my efforts with the birth families of our children.  She reminded us that whether we are hearing from those birth parents or not, they have never, ever forgotten about their children and that is what we need to communicate to our kids. Birth family relationships in foster-adopt are complicated.  I know there are many former foster kids who  cannot have contact with any part of their birth families. In our case, their birth-mother was not the person who harmed them although it… [more]

Recently I had the opportunity to sit on a panel for an Adoption Knowledge Affiliates conference.  AKA is a little different than many adoption support groups because it supports all three parts of the adoption triad, birth parent, adoptive parent and adopted person.  The audience for our panel was about half adoption professionals, and the rest of the group pretty evenly split among the triad parts.  It was a truly interesting experience. One member of our panel was a birth mother.  I truly enjoyed meeting her as she reminded me to remind my kids that their birth mothers have not forgotten about them.  Just because they are not hearing from their birth mother, they should not read into that.  I think I do… [more]

In this column, I typically write about our sibling group of three youngsters.  Today, however, I'm going to speak a little about Pepper, our oldest. When Pepper was born,  her birthmother made an adoption plan for her as she could not parent her due to medical issues.  At that time, her mother was raising 5 kids; the 4 oldest were boys and the youngest, a girl, was 6.  The kids all knew about Pepper's birth and knew and understood the reasons she was adopted by our family.  Nonetheless, the children never met as their mother was really struggling with her grief. Through the years we sent letters, cards and pictures which were posted in the family home and shared with the maternal grandparents.  In… [more]

When our older girls were pre-schoolers, people often asked us, "Are they sisters?"  Even though I knew they meant no harm, the question irked me.  "In every way that counts," I'd reply. 13 years later, they are unquestionably sisters although they are not biologically related.  People who phone the house cannot tell the two girls from me on answering!  Yet they are also teenagers, seeking to individuate and looking at their identity as members of their birth families as well as members of our family. When we adopted our three little ones, the whole nature of "sibling" changed in our house.  We brought in a sibling group of three, two of whom were strongly bonded although they were only toddlers.  We did not… [more]

Someone send me a roadmap, please.  I keep finding myself in uncharted territory. When our kids are little, we can fix their boo-boos. Once they get into adolescence, they have to start fixing them for themselves.  That part is hard for me. With 5 adopted kids, you'd think I'd be an expert.  You'd be so very wrong.  The issue of adoption is a big one in adolescence.  When you get mad at them, they think it has something to do with being adopted.  One of my "bigs" is really struggling right now.  Today is her birth-half-sister's birthday.  That child is the youngest of six my daughter's birth-mother raised.  She is a late in life, post divorce, post traumatic head injury… [more]

We have a family visit coming up this weekend.    I am not sure what this visit will look like;  I don't know if the kids' baby brother will be along this time. The oldest of the triple threat ('the Captain, age 4) does not come on the visits.  He has attachment difficulties and the therapist thinks we need to wait until he is much older, if ever.  Our 3-year-old, Tinker, does not seem to connect with her birth-mother.  Tinker is a spunky little kid, so it's hard to always know what she's thinking.  I think she recognizes her on a deep level but does not see her as a caregiver.  She was only 8 months old when removed.    The Blitz, our… [more]

When I was a child, if I complained about my siblings, my mother told me, "You can choose your friends, but you don't get to choose your family.  So you'd better learn to get along.  One could argue that the whole thing gets flipped on its head with adoption because you are, of course, choosing your family! There is a whole component of adoption you don't necessarily get to choose though, especially when you adopt through foster care, and that is the children's birth family.  Whether or not your children have visitation with their family of origin, regardless of whether they want visits, even if your children don't remember their original family, they are now part of your past, your present and your… [more]

When we met "the littles," they were having weekly supervised visits with their birthmother.  However, when she voluntarily relinquished, those visits were mediated to quarterly visits, with me or my family present.  That was back in November.   Our first visit was moved from December to January and it upset our oldest, then 3, so badly that the therapist recommended he not attend visits.  Bio-mom missed the next visit, so we did not see her again until this weekend. For the January visit, we met at McDonalds and I basically sat out of sight while she took the kids to the play area.  I felt like this set up the visit to be an "us or her" thing in my son's mind.  So I… [more]

A couple of weeks ago we had an unplanned and unexpected sibling visit with two of my daughter’s older sisters. I mentioned in a previous blog how surprised and impressed I was with one older sister’s improved behavior. I asked her many questions as my 14-year-old daughter watched with mouth agape. However, that is not the only action we took. My daughter has always enjoyed riding our horses. However, she has not been allowed alone with the horses since the bad haircut incident. After the talk with her sister I thought it might help to discuss some of her sister’s changes. I mentioned in another blog how teenagers usually talk to parents better while driving or doing something physical. Therefore, I invited her to… [more]

We had a pleasant surprise this afternoon while attending open houses for graduation seniors. One of my daughters has a birth sibling graduating from high school this year. Of course, we were invited to the open house. We have maintained contact with him by having periodic visits and phone calls throughout the 11 years since their adoptions. We have done the same with the other four birth siblings as well, although we had more visits when the children were younger. There were six siblings, who were adopted by four separate families. When we arrived at the open house, two older birth sisters greeted us before her brother did. Lyn was very excited by this unexpected sibling reunion. Rarely do four or more of the children get… [more]