Adopting with a birth child

[lilypink1977]

Hello! I've adopted a gorgeous DD and have a delightful BS and my Adoption Agency has asked me to talk to current prospective adopters going through the process who have birth children too. Obviously I have my own views but I thought I'd ask for your advice on here too; what would your advice be for someone going through the process with birth child (ren)?
Big thanks, I'm nearly a year into our placement and continually dip into this forum every week to see what's going on! I know I can rely on you all for fab advice & help!

lily who is the advice for if you are a year into placement?

Sorry Italian I was rushing when I wrote the post!! I'm going to be talking to prospective adopters currently going through the process so I was wondering what you'd say to people going through the same thing but with birth children too; they want to know things like how much to tell the birth child, what to say when, how to manage intros etc. I'm talking to them as someone who's been through the process (hmm.... And supposedly knows what I'm talking about?!!!) sorry for the confusion!!

Lily in my humble opinion....

how much to tell the birth child - age appropriate honesty but only about the plans of the parents but about specific children until a decision has been made. We knew dd had a preference for a girl so we said it could be a boy, we knew she wanted a baby so we said it could be a small child. We did in the end adopted a young boy so we were right.

what to say when as the process goes along, I would drop in, we are thinking, we have had information on, we are going to an open evening, etc etc but only age appropriate

how to manage intros etc We planned it all out in advance, dd made a DVD for ds to watch before intros, we told dd (then 9) what to expect. We made sure she met him on a Friday afternoon so did not expect her to go back to school straight after meeting him. We talked a lot to her about her space - her room, her things, so she would not feel too threatened. We got a gift for dd to give to ds and chose a very fun place to go for the day they met, we did fun things like taking dd round to foster family in her PJs so she had her breakfast there about day 4 (a Sunday).

OUR biggest issue has been dd's jealousy and managing that. We do as much as we can to promote harmony, we try and control their time together so angry incidents do not escalate, we try and have a mummy and dd or daddy and dd night once a week (e.g. dessert at local pub, bike ride, shopping trip or Chinese take away).

Good luck.

but not about specific child/children until a decision has been made.

Thank you, that's really helpful x

Hi,
we considered concurrency/fostering to adopt right from the start, and I feel that if you have BC (we do) and are considering concurrency/FtA, you have to be very careful regarding what you say to your BC. Obviously it depends on their age, but generally speaking the stresses resulting from all the uncertainties are huge, and you would want to protect your BC from that.

We told our DS (BC, was 3yo when we started out) that some people can't look after their children due to grown-up-problems, and then somebody else has to look after them; and that we were thinking of doing that. That's how we then explained the prep course and the assessing SW visit - that it was about learning about looking after a child or baby. Further down the line we introduced the thought that sometimes the baby's parent(s) managed to sort out their grown-up-problems and could then look after the baby again; but sometimes not, so that baby would have to stay and grow up somewhere else.

This hasn't been without it's problems but I still feel much better than the other way round. Basically we have been talking 'fostering' rather than 'adoption'. Talking 'adoption', we would have done talking how families are made in various different ways and stressing how the new child would be our 'real' son or daughter, and his 'real' (or forever) brother or sister. But these are conversations that we have left for until matching panel is done and dusted and signed. We have been avoiding speaking about 'new sibling' but rather have been saying 'new baby'. If we get to adopt baby, who we have had placement of for a while now, I'm confident that DS will be able to deal with the 'upgrade' and change in status. But if we had been talking about 'forever sibling' and then baby ended up going elsewhere, I don't know how we could explain that to DS.

So short point of long post is, if you're a prospective adopter and in any way open to/considering concurrency or FtA, and have BC, you need to think very carefully (and early on) about what you say to your BC.

Also, you will have to accept (I mean the prospective adopters that you will be talking to) that your BC will get at least a glimpse into a whole reality that you might have wanted to shield them from. A reality in which some children can't live with their (birth) parents. This can be quite frightening to your BC, who have probably until then never even begun to doubt that you as their parent will always be there for them.

Further, I'd say that as a prospective adopter with BC, you have to be absolutely clear that you are doing it for your own sake. Not for your BC. Your BC and AC MAY get along perfectly well and adore each other; but they may just as well not. And at least in the beginning, it WILL be very hard on the BC. Maybe not just in the beginning.You don't want to end up regretting adopting/resenting either of your children, if they end up not having the kind of sibling relationship you were hoping for.

Good luck - I wish we had had someone like you speaking at our prep group!

Thank you so much that's so helpful! I'm so glad I asked as our BS has never asked the whys; why birth mum couldn't look after his sister, where is she etc we've told him the bare bones but it's r helpful to know what to say; I'm still waiting on AD's life story book- mainly to give more insight to our BS about his sisters birth family and try to fill in any gaps he has. Like I said we're nearly a year into placement and we sometimes have to remind him we adopted his sister!!! I did tell him I would be talking to some people and they'd love to know what he thought about his sister and he said "she's just fun and I love her!!" Can't ask for more than that xx I too would've loved to talk to someone else too so I'm really happy and excited to go and talk to them!! Thanks xx

I agree with all of 64's thoughts, especially about the fact that "sometimes mummies and daddies can't look after their children and they have to live with someone else " is a truly terrifying thought for small children who have never considered that this could happen in their world.

And agree too about age appropriate telling. We didn't tell DS about DD until after matching panel, just in case it didn't happen - we didn't think it fair to him to do otherwise

Thanks again for your thoughts, its always that difficult position of trying to explain things to our BC that ordinarily they wouldn't know anything about without scaring them. Absolutely agree we too didn't say anything, only vague "possibilities" until after matching panel as you just can't be sure what way it will go. Obviously the positives of this is that the time is quite swift from then on so its less waiting time for them. Thanks everyone for your help!