share friends with my close-in-age sister?
• Did I willingly babysit my younger brother?
• Did I feel resentful or angry when my sibling “got away with” a behavior for which I was certain that I would have received consequences?
• How are my sibling relationships at the present time?
• What was my role in the family?
• Do I have expectations about what roles my appropriately developing children will assume once I become an adoptive parent?
• Do I have expectations as to what role my child by adoption will assume once she enters my family?
• What experiences have I had in which my expectations were not met? How did I feel in these situations? How did I cope with these situations?
• What are my expectations of my spouse?
• Are we united about adopting?
• About child-rearing?
• About the division of household responsibilities?
• Are my expectations about adopting changing as I am provided with information from my agency’s pre-adoptive training program, readings, surfing the Internet, and networking with families already parenting an adopted child?
• What are my typically developing children’s expectations of a new sibling?
• Have I talked with them?
Birth order
Place in the family—oldest, youngest, middle child—figures prominently in adult perceptions of sibling relationships as well. Birth order contributes to role identification, and as adults we often carry out the roles learned as children—“the helper,” “the baby,” “the older responsible one.” Thus, our role becomes a large part of our identity.
There exists a bias within the child welfare system to avoid placements that move a typically developing brother or sister out of his or her role as oldest child.
When Mike and Nancy added Patty and Dave to their family, their birth son, Ryan, age 11, became the second oldest. Patty was ten months older than Ryan. Ryan’s difficulty adjusting to Patty and Dave had nothing to do with the birth order. In fact, Ryan continued to receive all of the privileges usually ascribed to the oldest child as his development was in accord with his chronological age.
Patty’s development, on the other hand, because of the pre-adoptive trauma she had experienced, resembled that of a child about five or six years old. Therefore, her freedoms and the possessions provided to her were doled out based on what she could handle in light of her developmental delays. Ryan’s adjustment was related to the behavioral problems Patty and Dave brought into the family. Patty, who had an extensive history of trauma, had experienced 11 placements prior to coming to live in Mike and Nancy’s home. Throughout her residences, her place in the family had changed repeatedly. Sometimes she was the oldest. Sometimes she was the youngest. Sometimes she was the middle child.
Parents know their children best. If mothers and fathers feel strongly that one of their sons or daughters needs to retain his or her place as oldest or youngest, then the newcomer should arrive at the according age. And, vice versa, if a mom and dad know that their kids can handle a shift in position, then the newcomer can arrive at any age within the parameters set by the parents-to-be. As the example of Patty and Ryan makes clear, birth order isn’t always the biggest factor when the family expands via adoption. Later, we’ll explore an array of “common challenges” an adoptive family can face after the child with a history of trauma arrives.
Ascribed roles
Roles in the family may also be ascribed due to qualities—for example, “the brain” or “the beauty.” When parents extend and elaborate these differences over the years, these assigned traits may become a person’s lifelong and satisfying identity. However, a negative role such as being a “fool,” “the bad seed,” or the “black sheep” can become a yoke around a son or daughter’s neck; it may begin innocently, but once set in motion it remains fixed and even grows with terrible consequences for a lifetime (Bank and Kahn 1997).
Referring back to Patty, her moves were the result of negative behaviors. Foster family after foster family refused to deal with Patty’s aggression, lying, and bed-wetting. Patty’s ascribed role was that she was “bad” and “difficult.” Her ascribed role caused her to act poorly. She defined herself as “too bad for anyone to keep.” The worse she acted, the more she moved. And the more she said to herself, “See I am ‘bad!’” It was a six-year endeavor to assist Patty to see herself in a more positive light.
The roles learned in a child’s family of origin lend themselves to creating expectations of the roles parents believe the adopted child will assume. As Patty makes clear, adopted children may have little experience with roles or they may have taken on a role that is not beneficial to themselves or the adoptive family.
Time as an expectation
One year seems to be a marker frequently put forth as an adjustment period. It seems that there is a belief that in about a year the newly adopted child will be established in the adoptive family and the adoptive family will be settled and moving forward. Yet, as we’ll learn later in this book, the child’s traumatic past may take years to overcome. Two other factors that may further exacerbate the time it will take to integrate a child into an adoptive family are psychological fit and shared history.
Psychological fit
Psychological fit relates to the interplay between parental experiences, expectations, desires, and wishes and the child’s capabilities and performance (Trout 1986). Psychological fit is also applicable to the brothers and sisters in the family built by adoption. Let’s exemplify this concept:
Peggy and Cameron had four children by birth, ranging in age from seven to 14. Their children were all healthy, excelled academically, and had terrific musical and artistic talents. Evenings were spent singing and playing the piano, flute, trombone, and cello. The family was fortunate financially. They decided to share their blessings by adopting an orphan. Eight-year-old Owen joined the family from Columbia. Owen struggled academically. He preferred baseball, soccer, and swimming to reading and math. He also had no interest in singing or playing an instrument. His lack of “fit” affected everyone in the family.
Peggy stated, “We simply cannot relate to him. He is not like us at all. We certainly expected that he would choose to do well in school. We thought that he would accept our interests as his own. We have attended his sporting events and have disliked every moment spent as spectators.”
Peggy and Cameron ultimately made the decision to dissolve their adoption of Owen. They felt that trying to blend Owen into their family was comparable to putting a round peg into a square hole—Owen would never “fit.” A new family was located for Owen. This family enthusiastically enjoys watching Owen score home runs and goals.
As a second example:
Donna is the youngest of three female adolescent birth children. Several years ago, her family adopted Maggie, currently age nine. Maggie is clumsy. It seems that every time she enters a room she breaks something. She has little knowledge of personal boundaries. She enters Donna’s bedroom without knocking. If she sees something she likes, she takes it. She constantly interrupts conversations.
