Welcoming a New Brother or Sister Through Adoption. Arleta James
In essence, the child with a history of complex trauma arrives with all major foundational skills ruptured or cracked. Like a house with faulty foundations, the structure falters. This is true also for human development. New growth cannot occur at a “normal” pace when the foundation isn’t solid and stable.
Readers can also glean that trauma contributes to how a child thinks. Remember Pam? She didn’t want to form relationships with her adoptive family’s typical children. She wanted to return to her “old” family and her birth siblings. Thus, she rarely engaged with her brothers and sisters. She felt no need to form positive relationships with these “new” kids. Thus, her thought process drove her behavior.
The negative behaviors of the child joining a family through adoption often become a major source of frustration, anger, and despair for parents and typically developing children. In fact, the child-by-adoption becomes the identified problem in the family. His temper tantrums, lying, inability to enjoy outings, poor table manners, poor hygiene, destruction, and so on are blamed for the entire state of the family. Life begins to revolve around “fixing” the problem—the adoptee—so the family can resume life in the same manner as prior to the adoption. Time, energy, and financial resources are devoted to the child with complex trauma issues.
The fallout from this scenario has many facets. Valuable time with the birth and/or previously adopted children is lost. The resident children perceive that the way to get attention is to act out or overachieve. Or, observing the stress their parents are already under, they harbor their thoughts and feelings. Anger and resentment build. The children in the family, prior to the adoption, begin to dislike the adoptee. Then they feel guilty for having these feelings about their sibling.
In essence, the arrival of the child with complex trauma may create a complex family system. As this book unfolds, readers will be offered an in-depth look at these “common challenges” that arrive when a child with a traumatic past joins the family. Then I’ll offer an array of solutions to offset the long-term impact of importing a traumatized child into a healthy family system. Each member of the family—adoptee, parents, and the children already in the family—can flourish and thrive. There is a path to navigate to connected relationships in your family!
This is pictorially presented in Figure 2.2.
Figure 2.2 Complex trauma and the creation of a negative emotional climate
Chapter summary
• The son- or daughter-to-be may arrive with a social and emotional age much “younger” than his or her chronological age. Or the adoptee may mature at a pace slower than what is considered to be within “normal parameters.” The new sibling’s social, emotional, physical, and cognitive delays can present challenges for brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers.
• The adopted child may struggle to form a secure attachment to her parents and siblings. Her past relational model is skewed. She may present with an insecure attachment that is avoidant, ambivalent, or disorganized. She fears re-experiencing the pain that comes with the loss of past caregivers, birth parents, previous brothers and sisters, orphanage mates, classmates and so on. The family built by adoption won’t forge strong connections upon first sight. Navigating satisfying relationships with parents and between brothers and sisters will take time.
• A special focus must be placed on those children arriving post-institutional living, as well as after the atrocities of sexual and physical abuse. Each of these traumas presents its own unique concerns. The child arriving from the orphanage understands group living, not family life. The sexualized child may present safety issues and may hasten the need for parents to provide sexual education to their birth and/or previously adopted children. The aggressive child believes that hitting, kicking, pushing, and shoving are the way to get wants and needs met. He seeks to elicit anger from moms, dads, brothers, and sisters. Such behavior is shocking to the family that previously enjoyed peaceful, fun, loving interactions.
• Fallout—post-adoption—is normal. Although offering a home to a child in need extends untold positive benefits, it may also bring frustration, exasperation, aggravation, sorrow, jealousy, woe, despondency, despair, unhappiness, and more. Negative feelings afflict adults and kids alike. Knowing this in advance helps moms and dads circumnavigate such conditions. Prepared for the rough patches, the family quickly finds the alternate route to a contented state.
3
“Yes, We Brothers and Sisters Need Information”
Pre-Adoption Preparation
“Experienced” sisters and brothers tell us that parents must be proactive in offering information (Meyer and Vadasy 1994). Advice from adolescent age veteran siblings includes:
“Get all the information on the new kid that you can! Keep communication open. Tell your kids what’s going on and what you’re doing about it. To other kids, ‘Don’t assume anything about your new brother or sister.’”
“If people are thinking of adopting, they need to get as much background information on the child before they make a final decision just so that they know exactly what they’re going to be dealing with. And I know sometimes they won’t get that information. Go to classes to be prepared, so that you would know the child could be disruptive and you know how you would handle it, and the child could not be disruptive and then you will have a nice family. I would also tell them that they should adopt if they really want to because every kid deserves a home.”
So, based on these children’s expert advice, in this chapter we’ll explore the nuts and bolts of preparing the children already in the family at the time of the adoption for the newcomer’s arrival. “Family Talk” boxes are also included. These are examples of talking with your resident children about the new child. As you come across these Family Talk blurbs, think about actually having such conversations with the children you parent now.
“Family Talk” about a sibling-to-be arriving with complex trauma
“We received some information about a girl named Renee. She is seven. It seems that her birth parents hurt her in several ways, like we read about in Zachary’s New Home. Do you remember that book? She was often hungry and left alone. Her birth parents fought so bad the police were called to her birth home. She must have been so scared.
“She enjoys some of the same things we do like singing and reading. She also has some problems. She has temper tantrums and she throws things.
“We do have some ideas about how to help Renee with these tantrums. We will also be getting some help from a therapist, a person who helps kids like Renee, and from the social worker whom you already met.
“Do you have any thoughts about having a sister who yells and throws things?
“When we go to the matching meeting, we would be happy to ask any questions you may have. Write them down and give them to us.”
This introductory conversation would work well with school-age and pre-adolescents. If the resident child is young, emphasize the potential safety issues involved with Renee and let the child know that you will be teaching him or her to go to a “safe spot” during Renee’s tantrums in the event that Renee turns out to be the child the family adopts.
If the prospective brother or sister is a teen, it might make sense to include him or her in the information-sharing meeting at the adoption agency. He or she needs to know as much about the new sibling as possible in order to prepare for the changes in the family. He or she especially needs information about the new sibling if he or she will be providing any child care.
Sharing information: Influence on adjustment
Research is clear that how a family handles the dissemination of information about the adoptee’s history, behavior, academic skills, and so on will greatly influence the adjustment of the children already in the family. Some parents seek to shield their children from the reasons for their adopted siblings’ actions and