I think I broke my little boy's heart tonight. He's 5.

[gaelicsheep]

When he was asking about his half sisters. They are both grown up, live hundreds of miles away, their relationship with their dad, my DH, is tolerable but not particularly close or warm with much mucky water under the bridge. We as a family are really not a part of their family.

He wants his big sisters to love him and care about him and to be frank they just don't, not really, not in a meaningful way. There are no birthday cards or Christmas cards or any real acknowledgement of his existence, or my DD. I was trying to explain to him that they are not close any more and that they won't ever be a big part of his life, or him theirs. I think I got it very wrong and he ended up in tears.

It is paining my DH just to hear DS talking about them. I always swore that I would never lie to my children, so I will not tell DS things that aren't true just because it's what he wants to hear. How on earth do I handle this without hurting DS any more?

Please, anyone?

This sounds horrible for your DS, just at the age when they realise that others have feelings and he finds his half sisters are in effect rejecting him.

You have no control over these relationships, you can only support your son and give him an outlet for his feelings.

Would he benefit from creating something, like a picture or photo album that would show him and his life, that you could keep and add to with the aim of giving to his half sisters.

Also, at this age, matter of fact reigns. He would like them to be a part of his life, they can't now, maybe when he's older.

I'm so sorry I can't be of more help.

I have absolutely no experience of this but didn't want your distress to go unnoticed. Children can be very resilient and I am sure that the truth gently put is better in the long run than him hankering after something that is not going to happen. You have done the right thing and with plenty of love he will soon bounce back.

I'm not really sure, tbh.

I have several half siblings that are considerably oler than me, from my dads first marraige. As a young child i often wondered why they didn't want to know me or have anything to do with my dad. I was always told that they were adults and it was their choice to either be involved in our lives or not, and that when i was an adult if i wanted to, i could look them up and have contact. It upset me at the time, but i'm now 33 and they aren't a part of my life, and i'm not missing out on them not being involved.

I think, when you;re a young child you're so self involved and expect the world to revolve around you, ad to find out that it actually doesn;t is a huge shock.

All you can do, i think is reassure him that you and Daddy love him and that maybe in the future, when he's much bigger he might get to know his sisters then.

Would it make any difference to write to his half sisters telling them what you told us here. It may be that they just don't realise that a little boy wants them in his life so much and have not given it enough thought. lI can't imagine how someone could ignore a little boy's plea for love.

There was supposed to be punctuation in there somewhere!

I am sorry for ds but hard as it is I think being honest is best policy (he will have realised some of this for himself if his step sisters aren't ther). My mother never told truth or avoided issue of my dad and she might have spared some scene likes this but I think her dishonesty was worse (I don't trust her , I don't know how to make sense of what went on as couldn't talk about it with her).

I think moderns idea is an excellent one- focussing him on family around him that do love and care about him.

Your post really touched me, and I'm sorry you're having to deal with this. My son also has two much older half-sisters - he's 6 months and they're 14 and 21. At the moment they see him reasonably regularly, but I do worry that in future they could choose to have less contact and that it will hurt him. We've already had the older one say things like 'he won't be like a real brother' and so on, which I find hurtful on his behalf already.

My instinct is that you're doing the right thing in trying to be honest with him though. It would surely be worse to build up his hopes that they're going to get in contact with him and then disappoint him when they don't.

In our case, their Dad does make quite a lot of effort to talk to them about their brother, and to get them seeing him and interacting with him as much as possible. He sends photos and talks about him when they're not here to see him.

Could your husband perhaps communicate to them how your son feels, so that at least they know how much it means to him?

I've had similar conversations with my dd1, about other family members. I would recommend being honest and focussing on the positive, he has many people who love him and it's not a reflection on him. It is hard though. Good luck.

I honestly don't think his heart is broken. He will soon get over it. Just explain to him that not everyone loves everyone else but the very important thing to remember is that his mum and dad love him very very much.

Sorry, don't know how to help with this. Just didn't want you to go unanswered. My ds is an only child and will remain that way due to fertility issues. It breaks my heart every time he asks for a brother or sister and complains how lonely he is. Must be horrible for your ds to know he has siblings who don't really acknowledge him. Could you or your dh maybe contact them saying ds has been asking about them and would love to get to know them?

Thanks for answering though. Yes I think that's a nice idea - I really hope that if it was ever sent/given it would be of interest. Unfortunately I think there might be an element of envy involved - ie their dad is involved in DS's life (and DD's, but she's too young to know yet) in a way that he was not able to be in theirs. That eats away at my DH, I know.

I had suggested to DS that he sends them each a Christmas card with a photo or two of him and DD. We would send it early in December to allow time for one in return. I guess my fear is that the one in return never comes although I would like to think it would.

I know this situation isn't helped at all by the distance involved. We can't afford to go down to them and stay nearby to be able to visit. They, presumably, can't afford to come up here (they've been invited in the past). It's all horrible.

I am not particularly close to my much younger half brothers and sister. I didn't want my ddad to leave my dmum and get married again and have this new family. I simply couldn't see them as people I could or even should be close to.

Oh, so many posts since I've been writing that one. Thank you! Will read.

Erm, don't encourage him to send a photo! Work on your own relationship with them first and encourage your dh to do the same before getting your son involved.

It's not relevant to DS's feelings but I should clarify that their mum left DH and remarried, not the other way around. DH met and married me years later. They were also thrilled when we had a little boy. Things seemed to fall apart a couple of years after that - not really sure why.

There isn't much you can do to change their choice, so I agree you're doing the right thing being honest. Are there any cousins or other relatives closer by he could build relationships with? He is missing their love and needs to be shown love from others, preferably in the family.

Yes, do send an early Xmas card. It would be rude of them not to respond, as most people send oodles of cards, so it is worth the risk.

Good luck ... I can't imagine how sad it is seeing your DS suffer. I hope he will feel it less acutely in time.

If you wish to pursue any kind of relationship with the half-sisters you will have to find out why contact stopped. But firstly decide if you really want to find out why as it is probably rocking the barrel so to speak.

As for your DS, the catch all 'all families are different' is all you need to say. It's not a huge thing.

gaelic - poor little love :( I guess that even though they are a lot older than him it still hurts to see your DH being a hands on Dad with DS & DD, it must be very hard for them if he wasn't (for whatever reason) able to be like that with them.

Now that they are 'grown up' is it not possible for DH to do more to mend the relationship with the girls?

Could you go halves with the train fare for them to visit more often?

If not, maybe you just have to explain that it's Daddy they are cross with not him...

Hard isn't it :(

I guess DH and I have been there so many times before, particularly DH, that we don't want to revisit it again. They're grown up, they have children of their own and they've made it abundantly clear that they don't need DH. When I say the relationship is tolerable I mean that there has been a little bit of contact in the last year when they both had babies and there hasn't been any active abuse towards DH for a couple of years. Not great really.

Perhaps it's better to be really honest and just not encourage any contact at all. But then, given that they've both been so loving with him in the past - a good few years ago - I kind of hope that maybe they would want a relationship with him given the chance?

We think we know why contact stopped but I don't really want to go into it here. There's a lot of history to this, as you would expect, with fault on both sides. DH, however, continued to send cards and presents etc. but with no acknowledgement. DH never got so much as a birthday card from them even when the relationship was supposedly quite good.

The distance is such that we're talking a plane not just a train. We can't even get to see DH's elderly mother more than once a year, which is awful. They have stopped contact with her as well, and we do not know the reason for that.

I think I'm talking myself into not encouraging DS to do anything actually and not risking raising his hopes at all.

KatherineClifton - such an accusatory assumption. Was that really necessary?