I don’t know if the Baby’s parents read here. They might. (Hi J!) She reads my blog so she probably already knows I’m a confused mess so here goes.
We’ve been invited to “The Baby’s” first birthday party. FDad may or may not come depending on his work schedule. I am probaby going…even though it’s going to be a huge scary intimidating gathering (probably over 50 people), wild horses couldn’t keep me away. I am not at all good in big groups of strangers but I survived their Thanksgiving so I’ll survive this too.
My older daughter (Munchkin) is 7 and still wants nothing to do with “the Baby.” She acknowledges that the Baby is biologically her sister and is just not interested right now in her or any babies at all. Baby C’s parents I think are a little put out that Munchkin isn’t interested. At previous visits, I’ve told Munchkin that I was going and invited her along. She refused and stayed with her grandparents instead. She doesn’t protest that I’m going but just doesn’t want to go along.
This past year, I haven’t really pushed her…but at what point should I push her? Should I insist that she come to this first birthday party? Or ask her to come to a quieter more low-key visit this spring? I start thinking – enough already! …that she should be at visits. But why? One minute I’m saying that she’s a person and defending her right to make any choices she wants unless they directly harm her and the next I’m thinking abotu forcing contact with her bio-sibling whether she wants to or not. I usually try to pull adoption out of the equation (if it was an extended family member, would I do this?) and using that guide, I would nto force munchkin to be in contact if she didn’t want to…but this IS adoption….
Is it right to force contact when the only sibling who can tell us how she feels doesn’t want to visit?
Since you said that you wouldn’t make her go if this were a different family member, I probably wouldn’t force her to attend the party. Especially since you’ve mentioned that you might be feeling a little overwhelmed yourself by the size of the gathering.
Figuring out when to follow our kid’s lead and when to push a little as the parent is so hard, isn’t it? I wonder if she might be more open to the adoptive family visiting you at your house, instead of going into their world. Or maybe she just needs more time. Adoption can be such a complex thing to work through for us adults, I imagine that’s true for her, too.
I’m sure other commenters with older kids can give you more insight. Happy birthday to your Baby!
Can you tell a little bit more about your story.
I don’t feel comfortable giving advice unless I know the whole story.
How did ‘your Baby’s adoption come about.
What were your reasons for choosing these parents?
I think Heather has an excellent idea in having ‘your Baby’ over to you home to visit with your parented child.
I am not parenting anyone, so I can’t really give you any real advise.
Does she say why she doesn’t want to visit? Is it only lack of interest in babies, or maybe some kind of sibling rivalry? How was she during your pregnancy and the adoption?
Don’t force her to go. This is a HUGE gathering, and if she wanted to, she could ruin it. She could also be afraid or overwhelmed, so this isn’t the time to force interaction.
If Baby & Baby’s Parents can come to your place, or to a neutral location – like a park, or a mall with a play area, etc. – then do that.
There is only one book, afaik, about being a sibling of a child who has been placed. It’s called “Sam’s Sister”. If you don’t already have it, I highly recommend it.
If your DD remains adamant about not seeing her sibling, then I suggest finding counseling for her, and perhaps yourself as well, to make sure you all understand what the problems really are. I’m a big fan of counseling.
Good luck!
My son’s FMom has three older boys and the youngest is 10. He often opts out of visits and she doesn’t pressure him at all. I respect that very much, although I do hope that at some point he chooses to get to know my son better. My son is only 2 at the moment, so I have no explaining to do as to why two of the boys come around and the other doesn’t, but I know I may have to deal with that soon. It will be a challenge to help him understand the situation, but it’s all part of his story, so I know we can handle it. We do have visits at their house, and that does seem to make everyone more comfortable and open and all of my son’s brothers choose to be home when we come over. It is THEIR choice, however. Being totally honest, I see your daughter’s and my son’s brother’s indifference (best term?) as a possbile sign that they need some help processing what happened and their own loss. I would suggest counseling as an option for helping them heal and for guidance for the parents involved. (In my situation, I feel I would be crossing a boundary to make that suggestion, though.)Best of luck!
I think having a sibling given away at that tender age would be terrifying. I suspect it is a lot more than disinterest in babies.
I would be concerned about her sense of security. I wouldn’t make her go to the party, but I would def. check out what the source of aversion is.
Maybe she’s feeling the pain of not having her sibling live with her. I can imagine it must be hard to hear ” this is your sister, BUT she has a different mommy & daddy”. How confusing it must be to a child. Speaking as an adoptee, I don’t think it would be wise for you to force the child to go; she didn’t ask to be put in this situation. Give her time to “adjust” to the notion of having a sibling in the world that doesn’t live with her and has “other” parents.
Best of luck!
Your child may be grieving that she has a sibling in the world that’s not living with her. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be told ” this is your sister BUT she has a different mommy & daddy” To say it’s confusing is being nice. Speaking as an adoptee I wouldn’t force her to go, give her time to process the whole thing.
I wish you the best!
I agree with probing a bit to find out WHY she doesn’t want to go. If it’s truly flat-out disinterest… well, if she were my kid, she’d be going. Period. If you were parenting them both, would you let one kid skip out on the other child’s birthday–just because they were disinterested? I sure as heck wouldn’t allow that, not at these ages.
Now all that being said… if her resistance to going is due to more than just disinterest, I’d not necessarily make her go. Specifically, if she has insecurity around the fact that you relinquished and she was worried, confused, upset, or fearful about that–I wouldn’t push her to go. But I wouldn’t just leave it at that, I’d try to keep an ongoing dialogue with her about her feelings.
Good luck.
This got really long and I’m not sure it will all post…
It was a private adoption. I met the a-parents online. In the end, it’s the same story I read over and over again. We felt that we were unable to parent a second child at that time and felt strongly enough that we will never be able to parent a second child that I had my tubes tied after the birth. As for why I won’t go into the details online in a public forum.
If I were parenting both children would I let Munchkin skip a sibling’s birthday party? Yes. Without question. I’d have her stay for 1 picture with sibling and cake and then let her go to a friend’s house just like my parents used to do for me. If the a-parents were close enough to do that, I would…but they’re a 2 hour drive away.
The first visit, munchkin wouldn’t even consider going and didn’t want me to go. Back then (around 12 weeks post-birth) she didn’t even want to hear about the baby and was afraid I’d bring her home if I went there (jealousy?). Now, we talk freely about the baby. She has pictures of her in her room and asks if baby’s mom has updated the website. When I last mentioned a visit (at Thanksgiving) Munchkin asked what there would be for her to do and if there would be anyone her age to play with. She didn’t like the answers and opted to not go saying it sounded boring. She just wasn’t interested in going somewhere that didn’t have anything to do except listen to adults she didn’t know and play with a baby. To her, babies are boring.
She’s been around babies and younger kids like younger siblings of friends, cousins. She stays interested for 5 minutes trying to engage them and then moves on to listen to the adults talk or play with children her age or older. She’s done this since before I got pregnant with baby and hasn’t changed her opinion of babies as essentially boring creatures that can’t talk or play anything fun.
If she’s bored she can seriously cause chaos, any child her age can. If we were to visit in public, like a restaurant, I’d expect her to behave politely but I’d have to spend a lot of time engaging her (tic tac toe, coloring) because her attention span is only so long. If it were at the a-parents house, again, I (or someone) would have to ride herd on her to keep her out of trouble. I think the a-parents would come to our home if I asked…but we are not baby proofed at all so I’d have a lot of work ahead of me to even make the living room safe for a 1-year-old child to roam. Do you think a meeting somewhere fun for munchkin (Chuck-E-Cheese?) would be reasonable?
She doesn’t seem to have trouble with the concept of a baby being placed for adoption and a sibling not living with her. Maybe the feelings of grief/loss/sadness will hit her later? I’ve been waiting for them and haven’t seen them except some confusion in the beginning on the “why” and some fear at first that she’d be sent away and later, that I’d bring baby back. In part, I think that’s because she already understands the biology of breeding on a basic level. (“part of mom called and egg and part of dad called a sperm combine to make an embryo. Embryo sticks in the mother’s uterus where it grows until it’s big enough and then a baby is born”) She could parrot that description at around 4 years old because her great-grandfather breeds dogs and we had a conversation about desirable traits and she had questions about how the traits get transferred. So she understands that Baby is biologically her sibling. But she also understands that sometimes siblings don’t grow up together because families are all different. To use my family growing up as an example, I have a half-brother who never lived with me, a half-sister and a full-bio-brother who lived with me part of the time, and step siblings that joined the family when I was getting ready to move out. Some of her friends have siblings who don’t live with them (because of divorce, or half-sibs living with the other parent).
So anyway, to everyone that posted, thanks for the opinions. We will not be forcing her to go but will offer the option as her decision again. I’d love suggestions on whether it would be easier for them to meet in public or at our home for the first visit.