How to Lessen the Trauma for a 4-Year-Old Moving Into My Home - Weekend Wisdom

Question: My niece has been living with her paternal grandparents for two years. She is now four and they have decided that it is getting too hard for them. We’ve agreed to take her in. She knows us, but we haven’t spent much time with her. What’s the best way to move her to our home that will cause the least psychological damage to her. She is very attached to her grandparents.

Resources:

• Kinship Parenting Resources
• Transitioning a Child to Your Home
• Creating and Cultivating Attachment

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Welcome to Weekend Wisdom by Creating a Family. Creating a Family is a national
nonprofit. We do support and training for foster, adoptive, and kinship families.
You can submit your own question to this Weekend Wisdom by sending it to info
@creatingathamily .org. So Weekend Wisdom is where we take a short time to answer one
question. So today's question is, "My niece has been living with her paternal
grandparents for two years. She is now four, and they have decided that it is
getting too hard for them. We've agreed to take her in. She knows us, but we
haven't spent much time with her. What's the best way to move her to our home that
will cause the least psychological damage to her? She is very attached to her
grandparents. Well, first, thank you for stepping up to be a family for this child.
As far as transitioning, generally speaking, slow and steady wins the race,
and it could look something like this. At first, you go to her grandparents' house
or her house and visit with her there. While you're there, let her see you
interacting with the grandparents. The grandparents interacting with you. You can hang
out with her, she gets to know you better in her environment. Then after a while,
and she's gotten to know you and is comfortable with you, you might take her to a
park for an hour or two, play with her there, then bring her home. If she's
particularly hesitant, you might have the grandparents come with you to the park and
then gradually move to you taking her to the park or to the McDonald's play area
or wherever you want to go. If you're taking her but bringing her back after a
couple of hours. You might talk to her about coming to your house and start laying
the groundwork that she might want to come to your house. So at some point her
grandparents would bring her to your house. They'd stay and you'd visit with them
and with her. You'd have some toys set out and you play or do whatever. Then the
grandparents would bring her and they would leave but come back and pick her up.
Then after a while, maybe she spends the night at your house for one night and
then goes back and then gradually maybe for two nights and then three nights, you
get the picture here. It's going to be slow and steady and that is the best way
to reduce any trauma that might happen with this child and there will be trauma.
It's going to be hard and don't confuse frustration and sadness with anything more
than just the fact that her life is being turned upside down. That's totally fair
for her to be reacting with the whole range of emotions. And hopefully the
grandparents are willing to still play a role in her life, but this time as
grandparents. So maybe after a week or maybe even less, meet them again at a park
or invite them to your home so that she can show them around, show them her room,
show them the dog, whatever. And you don't mention if you have children already in
the family, but if so, spend some time preparing them as well. The slow process
will help because they're also going to be involved in this and we'll be getting to
know her as well. But also depending on their ages, start reading them some books
about new kids joining the family. You may not find one that is specific to a
niece moving in, but you will find some about adopting or fostering and those will
be applicable as well. Creating a Family has a list of books to help prepare
siblings. It's a terrific list. So go to our website, creatingafamily .org,
hover over adoption and click on Suggested Books. And I believe that's where it
says, "List of Books to Prepare Siblings." I wish you the absolute best of luck and
for the rest of everybody, Don't forget to send us your questions to info
@creatingathamily .org and let me remind you that we have a new training that we've
just finished two randomized controlled trials on. We are super excited about it. It
is a prenatal substance exposure workshop and it's for parents who are considering
adopting or fostering or parents who have already fostering or have adopted,
kinship care as well, and then you suspect that the child may have been exposed to
alcohol or drugs in pregnancy. It's interactive, it's facilitated, it's four and a
half hours in total over three different sessions. Check it out at bit .ly /prenatal
-exposure -training. That is bit .ly /bit
dash exposure, dash training. And thanks for listening to this week's Week in Wisdom.
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see you next week.