of information about the adoptee’s history, behavior, academic skills, and so on will greatly influence the adjustment of the children already in the family. Some parents seek to shield their children from the reasons for their adopted siblings’ actions and issues. Certainly, the desire to protect the innocence of childhood and to allow children to be carefree is understandable. Yet the child arriving has experienced some of the worst atrocities that exist. This book’s previous examples make clear that age-appropriate sons and daughters do need to be ready for the potential safety issues, questions, stares and comments of neighbors, peers, and strangers, the unusual behaviors, and so on that come along with the new brother or sister who has a history of complex trauma.
Traditional information—books, articles, community trainings, videos—is usually geared toward parents. Siblings are usually excluded from other avenues of information too—the teacher, guidance counselor, pediatrician, psychiatrist, therapist, social worker, and others providing services to their traumatized brother or sister.
The isolation, loneliness, and loss some siblings experience will be complicated by a lack of information about their sibling’s residual trauma issues. In some families, appropriately developing brothers and sisters receive a clear signal that the problems are not to be discussed, leaving them to feel alone with their concerns and questions. However, even when parents are happy to answer questions, some typical sons and daughters will keep their questions and concerns to themselves. These resident children feel their parent is too stressed or saddened by the adopted child’s needs. So they keep quiet in order to try to be helpful to their parents. Some parents are unaware that their children actually desire information. Parents may assume everything is fine if their birth and/or previously adopted children do not present with their issues.
Sharing information: “When do we tell our kids that we’re planning to adopt?”
A reasonable time to inform your existing siblings that you have decided to proceed with the adoption is at the time you have made the commitment to actually move forward with a home study. This most often occurs when parents have completed the required pre-adoption coursework conducted by their selected agency. In my experience, prospective parents often determine to forego an adoption or put adoption plans on hold once they complete the educational classes. The information gleaned at the preparation program is such that mothers and fathers decide to wait until the kids already in the family are older. The interval between the home study and the arrival of a son or daughter offers plenty of time to quell existing children’s concerns and to prepare these siblings-to-be for the newcomer.
Sharing information: Recommendations
In their book Sibshops: Workshops for Children of Siblings with Special Needs, Meyer and Vadasy (1994) make the following (paraphrased) recommendations for sharing of information. Overall, a good “rule of thumb” for mothers and fathers to keep in mind is that the birth and/or previously adopted children’s need for information will parallel that of the parents.
• Keep the sibling’s needs an open topic.
• Answer resident children’s questions about the condition in a forthright manner.
• Provide brothers and sisters with written materials.
• Include siblings in visits with social workers, therapists, physicians, etc.
• Determine the sibling’s knowledge of the adoptees’ difficulties (i.e. What do you know about why your brother-to-be needs a “new” family? Why do you think your sister is living in an orphanage? Why do you think we will be taking your brother to therapy? Do you know any kids at school who go to therapy?) Provide the information necessary to fill in gaps or misperceptions.
“Family Talk” about a sibling-to-be arriving from an orphanage setting
“Your new brother is coming home from Peru. He has been living in the orphanage. What do you remember from the pictures of children in orphanages we looked at online?
“That’s right. There are a lot of babies and only a few ladies to take care of all of the babies. So your new brother may not know much about a mom, a dad, or a brother or sister. We will have a lot to teach him. He may not know how to play or how to eat correctly. He may cry a lot or have trouble sleeping. We will have to be patient. He will be scared. He will be moving to a new country and a house with a family. This will all be new. We will have to understand that while we are all happy to be getting him, he will have feelings of sad, mad, and scared. We will have to be patient.
“Let’s look at some of the books about adoption and the ones about having a new brother or sister that we have read. Would you like to start with A Pocket Full of Kisses?”
Sharing information: Age-appropriate considerations
Pre-schoolers
• Very young children often do not even refer to their brother’s or sister’s special needs when they describe them to others. Rather, at a young age, siblings focus on the actions, appearance, and their own gut emotional reactions. These youngsters usually recognize that the child has problems and acknowledge that there are more disruptions in their family plans and routines (Lobato 1990).
• Young children who have been exposed to pre-school, play dates, organized activities, Sunday school, and so on have most likely had positive peer interactions as well as negative peer interactions. As such, they have more experiences than we think. So they can comprehend some of the difficulties a traumatized sibling may have.
• Pre-schoolers have egocentric thinking. They believe they are the cause of their newly arrived brother’s or sister’s difficulties. They need reassurance and facts so as not to take responsibility for any problems occurring in their adoption-built family.
• It is quite a common practice for parents to compare their children to one another. It is also common for siblings to do the same. The young child looks for similarities and differences between herself and her adopted brother or sister in order to determine whether they are well and able themselves (Lobato 1990).
• Young children ages two to six are very concrete thinkers. Explanations of complex trauma should therefore be as clear as possible. Children as young as age three can recognize some of their brothers’ and sisters’ problems, especially when they have had contact with other children and when their siblings are older than they are. Three years old is not too early to share comments about an adoptee’s difficulties.
Cora is two years old. She was adopted after her brother, Steven. Steven exhibits very difficult behavioral issues. The most serious negative behavior is his frequent aggressive temper outbursts. Cora’s parents have taught Cora to go to a “safe spot” when Steven escalates. One day, while reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss, Cora associated her brother with the “very, very BAD fish” which is depicted as hitting and slapping another meek fish. Cora’s mom reported being speechless that Cora was so intuitive at such a young age.
School-age children
• During their grade school years, siblings need information to answer their own questions about their sibling’s problems as well as questions posed by classmates, friends, or even strangers. More so than pre-schoolers, school-aged children may have more specific questions (Meyer and Vadasy 1994). They may ask, “Why does he take medication?” “Why did he live in an orphanage?” “What happened to her birth parents?” “Why does a country only let people have one child?” “Where would I live if something happened to you?” “Why can’t he act right?” “When will he act right?” “When will he be able to play
