When Do I Tell My Child They Have Birth Siblings? - Weekend Wisdom

I have been listening to your podcast and supporting your mission for several years. We adopted our daughter at birth through an open adoption. We began caring for her on day two; she is now 9 years old. She knows she is adopted and has seen photos of her biological parents. Her parents had problems with addiction and the law. We only tell her, “They were not able to care for you.” She has not yet asked questions about her biological parents, but she does opine about being an only child. We have not yet told her about her full biological brother, the full brother who died from neglect as an infant, her five half-sisters, her biological grandmother, or that her biological father died a few years ago, having “fallen” off a bridge. She will obviously know everything eventually, but we are concerned about when and how to tell her. 

Resources:

• How to Find an Adoption Competent Therapist - resource page
• Talking About the Difficult Parts of Your Child's History - online course
• Building the Framework for Adopted & Foster Children to Process the Hard Parts of Their Stories - article
• Talking about the Difficult Parts of Your Adopted Child’s History - older podcast interview

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

- Welcome to Weekend Wisdom by Creating a Family. Creating a Family is a national
support and training nonprofit for foster, adoptive, and kinship families. Weekend
Wisdom is our opportunity to answer your questions, so we need you to send us your
questions and we will answer them on an upcoming Weekend Wisdom. You can send your
questions to info @creatingathamily .org. This week question is about when to tell your
child they have birth siblings. Here's the question I have been listening to your
podcast and supporting your mission for several years We adopted our daughter at
birth through an open adoption. We began caring for her on day two She is now nine
years old. She knows she is adopted and has seen photos of her birth parents Her
parents have problems with addiction and the law. We only tell her they were not
able to care for you. She has not yet asked questions about her biological parents,
but she does opine about being an only child. We have not yet told her about her
full biological brother, the full brother who died from neglect as an infant, her
five half sisters, her biological grandmother, or that her biological father died a
few years ago having fallen off of a bridge. She will obviously know everything
eventually, but we are concerned about when and how to tell her. Well, first of
all, thank you so much for your support. It's truly appreciated. You ask a great
question, and honestly, it's one that a lot of adoptive parents face. I'll list some
resources that may be helpful at the end. Most parents, understandably, don't want to
burden their kids with hard information when their children. We want our children to
be children and innocent for as long as possible. Still, adolescence is not the
ideal time to start sharing because there is already so much going on developmentally
during that time. Youth are forming their identity and honestly that's the worst time
to introduce complex information such as this. So the general rule is to start
sharing the framework for their full story when they are young and then gradually
add more details with every telling. Ideally you want them to know what you know by
around the age of 11 or 12. That is earlier than most parents think to do it,
so I'm glad you're asking now when she's nine. That gives you a couple of years.
You could start now by adding more details to what you've already told her. You
said they weren't able to care for her, her birth parents weren't able to care for
her, but you could add more information now. For example, you could say your birth
parents use drugs, which made it really hard for them to care for a baby or for a
child. They didn't do a good job taking care of another baby that they had. Also,
let her know that you are open to all questions and then answer her questions
honestly with the knowledge that within a couple of years, you're going to want to
share everything that you know. So let her know that you're open to the questions
and then make sure that you're answering them. In my experience, it's very common
for kids to be more curious and interested in siblings rather than their birth
parents. I'm not sure why. I wonder if it feels safer to them to be curious about
siblings rather than parents. It may be the whole divided loyalty thing where if
they're curious about parents, they're afraid they're going to hurt your feelings, but
siblings perhaps not. Anyway, You can expect that when she knows that she has
siblings, she will want more information about them. So here are some questions to
think about. How open is your adoption? And can you get more information about her
siblings? Is it possible for her to meet any of her siblings if she asks? And be
prepared that in my experience, she will likely seek out her siblings when she is
older and has access to social media. Is there someone in the birth family available
who can answer some of her questions. And if so, now might be a good time to
start developing that relationship. And just as an aside, I think this is a great
idea to have her see an adoption competent therapist during this time to give her a
safe and educated space to explore this new information. Now we have some great
resources on how to find a therapist on our website. You can go hover over the
word option, then click on Topics, and then click on Post Adoption,
and then click on Adoption Therapy. Now I promised you a couple of extra resources.
One is an online course talking about the difficult parts of your child's history.
So that's available. Another article is Building the Framework for Adopted and
Fostered Children to Process the Hard Parts of Their Stories. And another one is an
older podcast title talking about the difficult parts of your adopted child's history.
So hopefully some of that information will help you and thank you for sending in
your questions. Before everyone leaves, I want to remind you that Creating a Family
has a newsletter. We would love for you to subscribe. It's monthly. It's free. You
can subscribe at creatingafamily .org /newsletter. Thanks for listening.
For this week's Weekend Wisdom, if you liked it, please tell a friend to subscribe
to the CreatingAFamily .org podcast. And I will see you next week.