to want my son to know he has a sister

[AuntiePickleBottom]

df does not have any contact with his daughter, but i want my son almost 5 to know about her.

we have a few pictures from when df had access, and 2 of ds and sd together.

ds today asked who the girl in the picture was, i gave the look to df to tell him the truth..but he said someone you used to play with.

i wanted him to say...it is your sister and i bu about this

I don't think it is just the bloke's decision at all. the little boy is the OP's son, and she has the right to tell him the truth. A mother doesn't have to lie to your children just because the child's father wants you to, and he doesn't 'own' the truth.

Loopyloops, my oldest son is a surviving twin - it's never occurred to me not to tell him about his brother. He's now 8, and while he does sometimes get sad about things, he does understand and we're able to talk. He has a lovely framed photo of them together when they were born. I'm sorry for your loss.

When my dad's sister died young leaving three small children, their dad remarried quickly and their stepmum became "mum". In those days I guess it was considered that what you don't know can't hurt.

They were never told of the existence of their real mum, to the point where one of them found a photo of her and said "who's that lady with dad?" The truth came out years later when my dad was finally able to make contact with his oldest nephew and tell them about their mum and take them to the cemetery. I'll never forget the sight of a grown man sobbing at his mum's grave, having had no idea she even existed - but always knowing that something was not quite right in his life. Utterly heartbreaking.

My son has a half sister that he doesn't know about. We don't have contact with my son's father, whom I left due to abuse. But I heard that he'd had a relationship with another woman later and had a daughter (and it appears that the new relationship broke down and the woman now lives as a single parent with her daughter).

I don't wish to have any contact with my son's father and I think it would be damaging for both me and my son to try to maintain a relationship with him, as he's a violent and manipulative person.

I don't see how DS would gain anything from knowing his half sister. She's genetically linked to him but lives far away so it would be disruptive to force him to maintain any links. I think the argument for trying to create a relationship between two people purely on the grounds that they're genetically linked is quite poor and I don't see any need for it. Family, to me, is about people who care about each other, not about whether they have blood links.

I am so mad at those on here who see no benefit of their child seeing their half sibling eg: no need for it/don't see how they would gain anything. So utterly selfish and self centred.

Of course my anger is based on bitter personal experience, found out my brother was in fact my half brother when I was 19, both thought we had the same Dad the one we lived with since birth. My half brother also has a half brother who knows nothing about him, my "brother" as I still think of him this way is now 42 and his half brother (aged 25) knows nothing of him.

The upshot is, if you don't tell your kids you are basically lying to them and not giving them the chance to decide for themselves if they want to meet etc.

Your lies are going to basically make your kids hate you in later life because you lied to them and nothing is worse than a parent lying to you. Until you have been there you will never get it.

Oh, I have yet another anecdote.

A friend has a little sister. When her sister started seinng this boy her parents got really funny about it and tried to split them up. She refused, so they had to tell her that in fact her sister was her half sister, and her boyfriend was her half sister's half brother.
My friend had a half brother living in the same small town as her but didn't know.
Not nice.

It is never black and white so hard for us to comment on what is right here, or at least for me. I cannot tbh make sense of it.

How old is the dd who does not see her father. You say your ds is 5. Is she a lot older?

loopyloops and scarylooker - slight sidetrack from the op - but my aunt is also a twin whose other twin died soon after birth. Not sure when she found out about it but she's always felt a bit different from her brother and sister (not twins) - and she is of an age that it wasn't talked about much as she was growning up or afterwards, so it sounds like it is already different for your dc.

anyhow, she found an organisation very helpful, called the Lone Twin network - for support and others to talk to that had been in the situation.

Apologies if you have already heard of it, but it took her a long time to find it!

My exh has a son whom he's never met. He didn't want our boys to know about him for the reason that he never bothered with him, tried to avoid paying the csa money etc.
However, I felt the same as you op and told both boys they have a brother. I can't tell them much more than that.

My reasoning here is that whilst my exh might have managed to keep this a secret from most of his family a person isn't something you can keep secret is it. My boys have a right to know and indeed can go and find out for themselves if they so choose.
It wouldn't be a shock if he came looking for them either.

I have two half brothers somewhere in the States. My father had a family after my parents split up, which happened when I was very young so I don't see him or them as part of my life.

I don't know much about them and I'm not interested in meeting them. I didn't find out about them until I was an adult but I just thought it was a bit curious rather than some big secret. My relationship with my mum and stepfather is fantastic and I don't hate them for not mentioning it, it's never been relevant to my life so I don't see why they should have.

They're just strangers on the other side of the world who I happen to share a link with. I've got siblings, my mum and my stepfather here and they're my real family, people who matter to me and have had an influence on my life and thoughts. I'm fortunate that my life is fulfilled enough with the family I know and love without having to make an effort to seek it out with strangers across the world.

My uncle mentioned recently that he probably has some genetic children that he doesn't know about because he was paid for sperm donations when he was a student. My half brothers don't mean anything more to me than those sperm donor children do to my cousins.

SGB - another anecdote about adoption in the bad old days when children were lied to (which does have some relevance for the OP in terms of the impact of not telling the truth in age-appropriate ways).

My mother only found out she was adopted by accident, when she was in her 40s. She'd lost her short birth certificate and had to apply for a new one. Got an answer back saying 'we have no record of you, try the register of adoptions'. As you can imagine this was devastating. She was indeed on the register of adoptions. Her parents had both died when she was in her early 20s and there was no other family so there was no-one to explain what had happened.

Eventually my mother rationalised it as usual practice in those days. Adoptive parents were told it was best to keep it a secret, probably to avoid the stigma of being what was commonly called 'a bastard'.

But it hurt. It destroyed her identity and her memories of her family.

Think practice these days is far better when adoptive parents are honest about your origins. Although still painful, of course.

Btw, when we tried to trace her mother, we discovered that it was a private adoption and there had been a fire at the court in the 70s ? all records had been destroyed. So no way of tracing her birth family and we will never be able to find the truth. Very sad.

Thanks Zipzap, I have heard of it and will suggest membership to my DD when she's older. :)

OK I am not in contact with any of my bio-family (have never looked for them) and I think Missindependent is probably doing the right thing in her circumstances (as no contact with the father and no likelihood of the DC running into each other - and this is, after all, only the half-sib she knows about. If you lose touch with a horrible XP and he is/was a shagger, then there may be half-sibs all over the place) but in the OP's case there are photographs of the little girl, her DC know the little girl exists and therefore they need a proper explanation of who she is.

SGB are you going to explain your cryptic message?

How old is this girl? Does she actually want to see her dad? If she doesn't want to see him then no court, social worker etc will force her to do so.