Help! Advice, please! Birth daughter is a teacher to my son!

Hi Lgnanny,No, I'm afraid my children are far too young to have a relationship with their half-sister for the time being (elementary school age). They don't even know that they have a half-sister, yet. I like to bring up the school program that my son took last year with him from time to time, and figure out ways to get him to recall his memories of the class and his teacher. While I never learn anything new about her, I think it's important to try and keep the memories of her alive in his mind for the day that we will have that conversation about who she really is. Both of my children are very emotional. My youngest son in particular gets very upset if anyone puts a smiley face on his food (like pancakes, etc.), to the point where he won't eat it. I just know that after the initial excitement of learning about his half-sister wears off, it will upset him when he finds out that he can't just meet her. No telling what the older one will feel once he learns that he is no longer my "oldest" child. He might feel nothing. It's hard to tell. Attentive parents know their kids, and I know mine enough to know that until such time that my daughter is interested in communicating again, I want to spare my little guys as much as possible from any hurt feelings.I hope that the relationship with your son moves in a more positive direction. It must be somewhat encouraging to know that he and your nephew have had something of a bonding experience, and that you are present in his thoughts. That indicates that there is some room for emotional growth in the relationship, and that he has not rejected his birth family entirely, which can happen. I can remember many times during the email exchanges with my daughter that the phrase "a lot to process" would come up. I tried to help her sort through her feelings by typing up and sending her the 5 phases of reunion as written by Jean Strauss in Birthright. I wrote to her that perhaps there might be too much going on in her life right now, and that she might need to put me on the shelf if she was getting overwhelmed. The response I got back from her was always, "No way! This is great. I love reading your emails!". I guess that's what made it so difficult for me. It just turned off completely, like a light switch.