My Bio Kids Now Wish We Hadn't Adopted Our Nephews - Weekend Wisdom

Question: My husband and I adopted our nephews four months ago. The two boys are sons of my niece; she gave her kids to the Family Department five years ago, and last year, we at last knew about the boys. They've been a year with us. I have a daughter, 21, and a son, 17, who were okay with the adoption, but now they say they feel this is not their home; they don’t feel at peace in their house and think It was not a good idea to adopt, because of the hard situations with the kids. How can we affirm to our biological children that we did the correct thing to give the kids a family and that there is a process we must go through as a family to adapt?

Resources:

• Sibling Relationships
  • Handling Negative Impacts of Adoption on Children Already in the Home
  • Preparing Children Already in the Home for Adoption
  • How Does Adoption Affect Siblings Already in the Home

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
- Welcome to Weekend Wisdom by Creating a Family. Weekend Wisdom is our opportunity
to answer your questions. We have a longer form podcast weekly as well.
And that one we interview experts or people with lived experience. And it lasts
about an hour. But Weekend Wisdom is shorter, usually about five to 10 minutes. And
each episode we take a question that you send in and we try to answer it. So
please send us your questions. You can send them at info @creatingafamily .org.
Or if the app you use to listen to podcasts allows you to submit something to us
that way, you can do that and we will get it as well. All right, today's question
is as follows. My husband and I adopted four months ago. The two boys our sons of
my niece. She gave her kids to the family department five years ago and last year
we finally knew about the boys. They've been a year with us. I have a daughter 21
and a son 17 who were okay with the adoption but now they say they feel this is
not their home. They don't feel at peace in their house and they think it was not
a good idea to adopt because of the hard situation with the kids. How can we
affirm to our biological children that we did the correct thing to give the kids a
family and that there is a process we must go through as a family to adapt? So if
I understand the situation, the boys have been with you now for almost a year and
a half and your biological kids who are in late adolescence and early adulthood were
included in the decision to adopt and I would assume that you included them at the
appropriate level that kids or older teens or young adults should be included. Now
they think it's a bad idea because it has disrupted their home and changed what
they consider to be their "normal" existence in their relationships. That's a hard
situation for you to be in for sure. We talk about a honeymoon period when kids
come into a family through either foster care or adoption and usually the focus is
on the children entering the family being on their best behavior. But the truth is
that it's common for everyone in the family to enjoy this honeymoon period. And that
includes kids already in the family and even parents. Everyone's trying harder.
Everyone is more patient of the disruptions and the lack of attention. We all kind
of rally to the occasion and that's wonderful. But all honey moons end and now the
new kids are in the family can let their hair down. I'm not even sure if that's
even an expression anymore, but you know what I mean, they do not have to try as
hard to behave at this point. And the kids already in the family are now getting
tired of understanding. And they often can start longing for their old life back
before all the disruption and all the sharing of parental attention. And let's be
honest, you're probably also sometimes long for the relative peace and quiet of life
before the new additions joined the family. This is so normal that it has a name,
hence the honeymoon period. So I don't know whether this explains your older
children's change in attitude, but it might help you at least to put it into
perspective as something that is just part of the process. Before I go on, I'm
going to say I'm assuming you've already shared with your older kids what you have
learned about how trauma impacts children and how the trauma these boys have
experienced is at the root of their behavior. And that behaviors are a way of
expressing an unmet need. If not, you need to do a crash course educating them
about the impacts of trauma and how you as a family can help these kids heal. And
creating a family has lots of resources to help for this. But now, as to how to
handle the situation you're in. First, listen. Let your older kids share their
feelings, even if it's hard for you to hear. Your kids need to feel heard. It
sounds like you're doing that for sure. Don't focus on solving the problem as much
as letting them share how they feel. And reflect back to them what you hear them
saying, things like, "It sounds like you miss how life used to be," or, "I hear
you saying that you wish your brother's behaviors didn't impact our home life so
much." And for the record, I would do this individually rather than together because
sometimes we all have the tendency to feed on each other's emotions and what you
want is to make sure you let each of them express how they feel without being
influenced by the other. And this is hard because I want to also add a word of
caution. I think you should listen and allow them to express themselves but it's
really a balancing act because you also don't want to give their dissatisfaction too
much attention. So make sure this isn't the only way that they are getting your
attention. All right, the second thing I would do is brainstorm with them if there
are specific things that you could do to try to help to make the disruption less
impactful on them. So let's say maybe the fighting in the car on the way to school
is really getting to your 17 -year -old. Could either your husband or the 21 -year
-old drive him to school separately? Or maybe the younger kids' behavior disrupt
family moving nine? Could you let each of the younger kids watch a different video
on an iPad so that they won't interact with each other And they won't disrupt the
rest of you then the rest of you can watch a family movie I mean, I know it's
not really family movie night since you're not all watching it together, but it's in
the same spirit three Schedule some one -on -one time with each of your older kids
for both you and your husband and do something fun. Try to allow them to have some
of what they had before they had to share your attention. And fourth, I would go
back to the why. I mean, go back to why you took these two kiddos into your
family. They are our family and families step up for family. Also, I believe in
having a family identity. I think that is so helpful for families. So I would
include in this discussion What it says about us as a family, for example, we're a
family that cares for our own, or we're a family who can get through tough times
together, or we're a family that pulls together when the going gets rough. Although
this last one might be a little too on the head for this moment, but in the
future, you can say this when things settle down to bolster your family's identity
of getting through tough times together. So your specific question was, how can we
affirmed to our biological children that we did the correct thing to give these kids
a family. And the answer is you can't. And I don't think that's your job here.
Your older kids are struggling and I know all too well, truly I do, how hard that
can be to watch. But it's enough for you and your husband to know that you did
the right thing. Your older kids now think you shouldn't have adopted, but they
aren't the ones who make this type of decision. That's way too much power to give
a 17 and even a 21 year old. That's not fair to them. You made the decision and
now you own it because it was the right thing to do. You're sorry, all the
disruptions and all of your lives. And you can try to make things easier for your
older kids to adapt to the changes, but you can't make them believe it was the
right thing to do. You have to believe that. And whether they say anything now or
not, they are watching and they are learning from the example you guys are setting
about what it means to be a family. I know this is a tough time. I hope this has
helped somewhat. And let me share a couple of resources that I think would be
helpful for you. These are all creating a family resources, and you can look them
up on our website, creatingathamily .org. One is an article. It's called Handling
Negative Impacts of Adoption on Children Already in the Home. The The second one is
a free course. How does adoption affect the siblings already in a family? The third
one, we have a bunch of suggested books to help children already in the family
adjust to adoption, but honestly, they really are for younger kids, so I don't think
they're appropriate for young adults and older adolescents. And the last is a podcast
called Preparing Children Already in the Home for an Adoption. It's more focused on
preparing ahead of time, but I think you can use some of the information there even
after the fact. I hope this has been helpful, and thanks so much for sending your
question in. And before everyone leaves, let me remind you that we could really use
your ratings and review of this podcast. You can give a star rating, and if you're
generous, you can add a written comment. You can do it on whatever app it is you
are listening to this podcast on and we would really appreciate it. Thanks for
listening to this week's Week in Wisdom. If you liked it, please tell a friend to
subscribe to thecreatingoffamily .org podcast. And I will see you next week.