I’m not sure if this is the right site for me. My husband and I adopted my niece 5 months ago, when she was born. She was 7 weeks early and born addicted to heroin. She spent the first month of her life on methadone. She is doing great but we don’t know how to approach the future. We have a four year old son and his cousin ( her biological brother) is three. I am close to my family and I love my sister…. though I don’t want her in my daughter’s life. How do I explain the relationship between them? Her biological grandmother is very active in my nephew’s life and wants to be involved in with her as well. I want this to all be out in the open. or at least I thought I did… I feel a a little territorial about our family unit now. My nephew has never had a stable familty life. He splits his time between grandparents. I don’t want him to feel as though something else has been taken away from him. I don’t want her to feel a misplaced sympathy for her birth parents. There are so many explanations, things I could tell them… Which is right? Which is best?
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I am raising my nephew (my
I am raising my nephew (my sister’s son). He is five, and we have had him for 4 years. My sister and her ex-husband both have/had problems with addiction. My oldest child was adopted in a traditional very succesful open adoption, so working out a relationship between a birth/first family wasn’t new to me. My sister does see my/her son. She sees him at family gatherings, etc. She does not see him alone. He enjoys seeing her and has no problems thus far. We have explained that she is his first mom, and she gave birth to him. He knows she was not able to take care of him, so we are his parents.
His paternal grandparents see him often, and they have a great relationship. He has an older birth sister and he sees her fairly often. We are honest about who everyone is, and since he has grown up with it, it seems completely normal to him.
Feel free to email me, if you would like to talk more. Kinship adoption is more complicated, but it really can work.