While this won't come up for another 2 years at least, I am thinking about it now in the hopes that I'll get comments on this for awhile, or that people will share resources with me.
My question is: how do you prepare your 3-year-old adopted child for the placement of a legal-risk child (0-2 years old) in our home?
I have some ideas, but I want some feedback from people who have either been there, done that or who have some training on the issue.
My idea is that we could tell Andrew that we're babysitting the child until his/her mommy and daddy get better. That seems like language that a preschooler would understand, and it's not a lie, just age-appropriate words for a complicated situation. I would tell the children to call each other "friend" and not "brother" or "sister". Jim and I would not be called mom and dad yet to the foster child. However, that might be confusing and alienating, especially if we do get to adopt the child. Andrew would watch us treat the child the same as we treat Andrew, with the same bedtime routine, meal routine, etc. However, at the adoption, we could make a big fuss over it (we would anyway!) and make the new titles part of it. On that special day, we'd become mom and dad to both kids, and they'd call each other siblings, etc.
On the other hand, I could have the legal-risk placement considered as our child from the beginning, with the kids calling each other siblings and both kids calling us mom and dad. That is the most welcoming thing to do. Or is it? If they are a foster child, involuntarily removed from their parents, would they even want to call us mom and dad? After all, they would still legally have other parents. My main concern there is that, if we lost that child, Andrew would think that someone could take him away, too. How traumatic would that be; I can't even imagine. That is why I feel like we need to differentiate between our child who has already been adopted and a child who isn't technically ours yet and whom we could technically lose.
So, for those who have been in this situation, what did you do? Any regrets that you don't mind sharing so that I can learn from them? Any successes you can generously share? I feel like I could handle a legal-risk placement, but I won't do anything to hurt my son. I'd rather him be an only child than traumatize him. However, if we can add to our family in a loving way, I would prefer that.
O Holy Night
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Please take a moment to watch Jennifer Hudson singing my all time favorite
Christmas song. Tissues needed.
1 hour ago
9 comments:
I have not personally had to deal with having one adopted child and then trying to adopt another child. Your concens are very real. I think that what you described at first would work good. Babysitting child and not calling each other brother or sister is proberly a good idea. After all since it would be a legal risk placement...you really do not know for sure if it will end in adoption.
As far as the child calling you mom and dad. My experiences...I had a 15 month old placed with us and we tried to get him to call us by our first names. He would not do it...for him it was natural for him to call us mommy and daddy. So from that moment on we let him call us mommy and daddy.
Our experience with the kids we just adopted...They were placed with another foster family at first. After removed from their home and placed with foster parents they started calling foster parents mommy and daddy and called their bio mom Mommy ______.
Then when they moved to our house we became mommy and daddy and the old foster parents were Mommy ___ and Daddy____.(their first foster parents were friends of ours that we met at our foster support club) So we would run into them occasionally and the kids still knew who was who.
They did this all on their own and never had to be told who was who. So that made it easy on us.
One time I had a 4 year old and she did not call us mommy and daddy. She choose to call us by our first name. Then when we took the four siblings she started to call us mommy and daddy. I think she did this to fit it with the other kids. Hope this helps.
It's like you are in my head. Seriously! This is something I've been thinking about recently as well. Dave and I were just talking about it the other day. Obviously I can't offer any advice that you've asked for but I can tell you what we decided about the last part. About Andrew being hurt from losing this foster sibling.
Tough to explain but I'm going to try.
We feel that God is leading us towards this path. And we feel that if we are going to have a foster to adopt placement leave our home to be reunited with his or her birthparents that this is a good thing for the child since that is the goal. But we have our sweet Isabel who is going to be a great big sister and we don't want to see her hurt. But we also believe that since this is the path God is taking us down that our child(ren) will be just as ready to accept the situation. In other words it's our families calling and God knew this before Isabel was placed in our home. Knew that she might have to handle losing a sibling at a young age.
I'm not saying it will be easy I'm just saying that sharing the grief together as a family is how we see it happening. Hope that made sense and didn't sound too preachy. Just how we feel.
Thank you both! MJ, it totally makes sense what you say. Debbie, I, too, agree that God will provide and protect our child if we're following His will. As long as we do what we can to prepare and get support, He'll do the rest, or at least He will transform the pain into something good.
I just wanted to second what MJ said. If you have a little one in your home then they will likely start calling you mama. I have three little girls that I babysit often and they all call me Mama when they are here. They don't seem to have any confusion in calling me mama and then turning to their moms and calling them Mama too. I think that kids understand a lot better that more than one person can be mom and that's okay.
As for how having a child come and then go will affect Andrew, that's so hard to tell and something we have wondered about too. My husband isn't sure we should ever do foster care or at-risk placements because it would be too hard on our kids. I think that what it comes down to, though, is that if God tells you to foster then He's going to work out the details and give Andrew (and you) what you need.
Looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks!
I have no qualifications in this area, nor have I lived through the situations which you describe, but I have to be honest in saying that I think your second scenario is better than the first.
I think complete honesty and openness is the best and only way to go, even if you risk Andrew having to go through some pain if the child should ultimately be reunited with his birth family. Besides, if that were to happen, you would be very sad and have some grief to go through, and Andrew would pick up on that more than you might realize.
Even then down the line, when you referred to the foster child, and looked at him/her in pictures...eventually you would have to explain the whole story and clarify any misconceptions with Andrew.
Very interesting post with a lot to think about. I have no idea what our future path to more children will look like, but it's entirely possible that we will follow a similar path. Maybe we'll be dealing with these issues together in future years?
Melba
Thanks, Melba!
Just to clarify: I am not worried about Andrew's grief at losing a sibling. We can handle grief!
What I'm concerned about is Andrew being terrified that someone will take him away. That would traumatize him and probably even hurt our currently strong attachment.
I want to make sure Andrew understands that, even though we could lose a child in a foster-placement, we can't lose Andrew. I just don't know how to explain a foster-placement to a 3-year-old. what can they understand? It's hard enough for me to understand:-(
I was thinking about this post after reading all the other comments. And we actually had kind of a reverse deal with our placements. Had a 4 yr foster placement and from the start it looked like family reunification. So she knew she was going home. And then when we took the four siblings in as a legal risk placement. Kids talk when they are older and the 4yo told the 4 kids that she was going home. Then, I had 4 kids (well 3 old enough to question) wondering why the 4yo was going to get to go home and why they could not go home. I always explained to them that God's plan for the other girl was for her to go live with aunt and uncle and God's plan for them was to have a forever family that would keep them safe and love them forever. This worked well. I do believe that honesty is best...maybe you could even use as a teaching lesson to your son...God wants us to help others and now we are helping this new child who needs a loving home kind of like babysitting, and we do not know how long he or she will need our help and a home. One thing to consider if you tell Andrew that you are babysitting the child until his/her mommy and daddy get better....If at time of placement Andrew can talk and repeat this to the child...it might concern the child and he or she might think there is a chance for them to go back home with parents.(this would only happen if l r placement child was old enough to understand).Just one way to look at it. This is a hard one..hope this helps. Did I make any sense?
Very good point! I don't know when a three year old can understand such complicated things. I agree that they are hard even for us sometimes! I think you just tell him what you said in your reply to me above...
"We don't ever want you to be afraid that something could happen to you, because your story is different..." Then explain exactly how. Maybe you could even show him the birth certificate with his name on it, and explain that each child has a unique story and this is his...and it means he is always and forever your son, even though brother/sister has a different story or something along those lines. My concern with softening it, or possibly even framing it in a way that the second child isn't part of the family until he/she is legally so is that that could cause confusion and misunderstandings that you don't intend. I think simplistic, yet complete truthfulness is ultimately the way to go.
Of course, there is always the happy possibility that it would all work out the first time, and you wouldn't have to cross these painful bridges in the long run. Maybe, at the beginning, you could say to Andrew that you don't know what's going to happen, but you hope very much that brother/sister is going to be here to stay, and you love him/her very much and want what's best for him/her, even IF that means ultimately having to say goodbye.
I think either way you play it, pain and loss are a central, and inherently complicated part of every adoption story. To me, part of what makes these stories (our stories) so beautiful is that there was and is suffering, but despite it all, amazing and beautiful (if imperfect) families have been formed.
I think too, that sometimes you don't really know what you're going to say or exactly how to play it, but you just speak from your heart. It's OK for our children to know we may not have all the answers all the time, and that we might be sad or scared too. When I was younger, I thought all the adults had it all figured out, but now I know they were just doing the best they could with what they had, exactly as we do now. Sometimes I think sharing the pain with kids, and then helping them by teaching them how to cope can be a very powerful and profound learning tool.
Anyway, I am a running fountain today...sorry for such a long reply!
Great food for thought...
Melba
All of these comments are definitely helping! I was afraid, when I wrote this post, that people would try to talk us out of this path, but I'm relieved to see that wasn't the case.
MJ, I totally see your point about Andrew telling the younger sibling about the babysitting. I would have to tell them both the same thing so neither could confuse the other!
Melba, yeah, I was thinking that, too, after reading the comments, that I think we'll prepare to say something but we'll speak from our heart. I'll continue to get advice when the time comes, but, most important, I'm going to pray that the Holy Spirit gives us the honest words that Andrew and our foster placement(s) need to hear that they'll understand. I like your idea about showing Andrew his birth certificate, too, and telling him that every adoption story is different. It's so true.
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