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I have two children adopted from foster care. They are not biologically related. My daughter's birth mother never identified a father. My son briefly had visitation with both of his parents until parental rights were terminated. I have photos of my daughter's birth mother and my son's birth parents in their respective scrap books.
Yesterday for some reason out of the blue my daughter, age 6, started crying and saying it wasn't fair that my son, age 3, had a picture of his daddy but she didn't have a picture of hers. She was really, really upset about it. She even drew a picture of a man holding a little girl's hand with a caption underneath: "I love you, Daddy. Please come home."
For context, I have never been married so the kids don't have an adoptive father or even a father figure, really. My father is deceased and I'm not close to any surviving male relatives. The adoptions are closed so there will be no further contact with birth families, who the kids haven't seen since they were infants.
There is no kid-friendly way to tell my first-grade daughter we don't have a picture of her birth father because her birth mother was a promiscuous drug addict and probably doesn't know who he was.
I have been buying time by telling my daughter she has a father but he's lost (which is true, after all) and we weren't able to get a picture of him before he got lost. But at some point that's not going to be enough.
Advice?
Twin (or should I call you Zeb?),
While I'm afraid I do not have an answer to your specific question, I thought I should suggest signing up for a volunteer Big Brother for your children, or one for each, or just one for your daughter.
I am a volunteer Big Brother. I would be happy to work with a cool Little Sister in addition to my cool Little Brothers, but I am far, far away from you.
I am not specifically thinking about the male role model aspect right now, it's just about a possible alternative to what your daughter is wanting.
I know girls are usually being matched with Big Sisters, not Brothers, but I hope an exception may be made in view of your daughter's specific issue.
Sending good thoughts to your family,
Gabi
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Something you might do is ask your daughter to imagine the father that she might have had (or might have). For example, "We don't know, but your father might have had your color eyes. He might have been good at (something) the way you are." and so on.
Last update on November 23, 10:09 am by Sachin Gupta.