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My 4 year old nephew "French Fry" is going to be adopted by his grandparents in October. He is feeling incredibly insecure, having bad dreams and asking for his bio parents. ( he doesn't know about the adoption ) A little back story.. He always stayed with his grandparents. First two days a week, then three and so on until he was 2 years old. His parents split and they left French Fry with the grandparents "for awhile". A year and a half later they were both with new people.. with new babies. They never came back for him. He has very, very poor relationships with both bio parents. He was needing tubes put in ( that bio parents refused to do.) so the grandparents petitioned the court for emergency custody and received it. Now they are going to adopt him. Back to present.... The grandparents baby sit French Fry's infant sister. French Fry cant understand why Sister goes home to bio dad and he doesn't. French Fry cant understand why bio dad coos over sister and then rarely comes to see him ( or when he does he yells and raises his fists at him.) Bio mom visits once every 6 weeks or so.. for 1 hour. French fry has accidents and is an absolute mess after visitation. So visitation was going to be cancelled.. until bio mom (thankfully) stopped coming around. But all this doesn't stop him from hurting inside and asking for them. And worst of all.. he seems to fear that he will be abandoned again. He gets clingy and in need of "babying". What I'm trying to ask is how can we - show him our love for him is forever ? - that bio parents actions aren't because of him? - that he is safe and secure ? - that no one can take his place? - that he's not the only one to be adopted? - that adoption is wonderful, not a rejection?
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Time, your actions, telling him he is loved, telling him he is good, telling him that his bio parents weren't in a good place to parent him and made the choice to do what was best for him, not them, and that best was to live with his grandparents and be adopted, so he would have love and stability his whole life... Telling his biological father to smarten up and be the adult in the room. Whether or not they continue to babysit the sister, they have an absolute obligation to ensure appropriate response from the father. If that doesn't happen they need to create distraction strategies of some sort so his focus is on something else. He does have the right to feel everything he is feeling. You can't solve those feelings, you can just walk beside him, and be there to reassure him. Those feelings don't go away over night, or ever go away completely, triggers happen throughout life, unfortunately, right now the adults in the room aren't being adults, and the little one is suffering more because of it. Stopping visits does not mean the feelings go away. Being adopted has both positives and negatives because it's adoption, and feeling rejected (he was) is one of the negatives. Kind regards, Dickons (adult adoptee) P.s. at four is not to early to understand adoption at his level.
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