Letterbox with birth sibling

[kierenthecommunity]

So this morning we had a call from adoption archives informing us our 7 year old son has a two year old half sibling from his birth mum. We’ve known unofficially for ages as it happens, as I saw the birth mum posting on a local Facebook page (I had blocked her account but she’d set up a new one) asking for various baby advice. The fact we’ve only been told now is a whole other thread, but it is what it is.

Unsurprisingly BM has had the baby taken into care but now it appears the child is with ‘extended family’ and they’ve asked for letterbox.

The agreement refers to their carer, let’s call her Jess. If it’s the same Jessica that will be the maternal birth grandma although I appreciate it’s not an unusual name. Apparently birth dad was involved this time around so it could obviously be a different woman

My concern (that aside of telling my son he has a sibling and they have for two years) is Jessica is part of our current letter box arrangement and has not responded to any of the five letters we’ve sent her.

What if we agree to this, get his expectations up, and she’s easily as flakey?

He’s going to be super excited knowing he has a sibling, how on earth do you explain they won’t be living here - and how do you explain birth mum/grandma were allowed to keep this baby and not him?

Have you asked them outright if it's the same Jess? That would be the first thing to do. Secondly, I would chase up to confirm that (1) no replies have ever been sent and (2) she knows she's allowed to reply. I say this because we are with a regional adoption agency for several local authorities and we recently discovered that the placing LA had failed to pass on sibling letters to the agency which meant we never received them. There's also a thread on here written by a birth parent who didn't know for several years that she was allowed to respond to the letters.

With regards to letterbox contact with his half sibling, I would agree to it because that way you can prove to your so you have done everything you can to allow him to develop a relationship with his sibling I would also explain that not getting a reply is not the fault of his sibling either.

Some parents would not tell their child about a new sibling because of the impact it would have on their child and you know your child best. The thing to consider however is if you don't tell him now, when will you tell him? I was discussing this with a letterbox coordinator recently who told me that for most of the families she supports with teenagers their issues are around the fact that the adoptive parents have chosen to withhold information from them. Children who have had information withheld from them often grow up to feel betrayed by and distrustful of their parents.

I can't help with the letterbox side of things but I do have experience of half siblings being able to stay with birth mum.

I drip fed the information about half siblings to my DD as part of general conversations about life story. I framed it as X has had another baby and SWs are working with BM to help her look after the baby (in all honesty I have no idea as to the extent of SW involvement, if any) but this linked in to DDs pre adoption experiences which were that BM had had support and lots of 'chances' for want of a better word to keep DD safe but wasn't able to. She didn't deliberately harm DD, just couldn't make the right choices to keep her safe for lots of very complicated reasons. If your child's history is different you'd obviously need to make the narrative more appropriate to their circumstances.

I did (do?) worry whether DD would feel why could BM look after these babies but not me? but we talk about this openly when it comes up and DD so far is coping okay with it. She actually is very excited about having half siblings. It is a minefield knowing how to deal with things but I've always worked on the principle that honesty (in as age appropriate way as possible) is the best policy. If I don't know how to answer a question I tell DD I'm not sure and will have to find out and that buys me some thinking time to work out how best to frame the response. I always make sure I get back to her with an answer to any question no matter how hard it is and I think that has helped her to develop trust in me that what I tell her is the truth and she is confident and secure that I wouldn't keep information from her.

Oh there’s no question of not telling him, it’s just how. He’s struggling a lot with his emotions as it is, lockdown has made him so anxious