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For those who don't know, I'll give some background. Sweetpea has 4 older siblings who are being raised by her first mom. She's turning 3 next week and I've talked with her about how I adopted her (some version of "You grew in D's tummy but she couldn't take care of a new baby so she picked me to be your mommy.")
Until tonight I hadn't talked about the siblings. Earlier today, I saw that D had posted a video on her facebook page of 3 of her kids singing. I've learned enough here on a.com to know what an opportunity this was. Tonight I showed the video to Sweetpea and said "That's (kids names). Remember how I told you that you grew in D's tummy? They did, too!
Later, she remembered their names and that they grew in D's tummy. She's not yet 3 and I know it was abstract and that she didn't fully get it. It was a start, though! I've struggled with how to start this conversation and an opening as wide as the Grand Canyon appeared. :)
I just wanted to share this. I'd love to hear from people (from all sides of the triad) how this conversation went for you!
Yay LEEAH - three years old means it will ALWAYS be her norm...
Cheers,
Dickons
PS you even get funky little emoticons:
:cheer: :clap: :happydance:
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Our son's birth mother had another child a little over a year after placement. We have simply always talked about her as his biological sister. He doesn't identify her that way, but he knows she is with his birth mom. When we have our annual visits, the sister is there and our son plays with her, but just sees her as another playmate. Our son is almost 4 yrs old. Like Dickons said it is just part of his norm.
LOL Thanks for the funky little emoticons, Dickons! Yes, I want it to always be her normal.
Cooperphd, it sounds like it will always be your DS's normal, too. We don't have visits (D's choice) so I always worry that it's a little abstract talking about people she's never met.
She asked me about them by name today (out of the blue) and said that they were singing. I don't think it's quite as abstract for her as I think. :)
(((((Leeah))))) I think you're handling it wonderfully, my friend! As Dickons pointed out, it will always be SweetPea's "norm," since you're explaining things about her family of origin at such a young age. :banana:
I have open adoptions with both my boys. Probably very open by most standards. They are not related and both adopted through foster care. During our last round of bi-annual visits, Nugget was able to meet his paternal grandmother. He hadn't seen her in 4 years. He was 2 years old the last time she saw him. Chuckles was able to meet his half-sis on his mother's side and half-brother on his father's side. The sister hadn't seen him since he was born. The brother had never seen him.
As crazy as it is trying to fit all those separate visits in our already hectic holiday schedules, knowing how much joy it brought to those family members made it worthwhile. To my boys it was just another playdate. But to the grandmother and sister it meant so much. Seeing her face light up made my day.
I have no illusions that today's norm won't still turn into tomorrow's thousand questions sadly asked. Honesty will have to come in baby steps due to the circumstances. But just like you, I want my boys to know I cared enough to make this as easy as I could from the very beginning.
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Leah this is so wonderful for y'all! Peanut has an older sister, now a younger sister, and mom
Is pregnant with twins. Since he's an only child in our house, I'm not sure he realizes siblings live with each other! We see his mom and sisters about 5 times a year (we've got to figure out how to do that more often) and he'll tell you all about his sisters. He's 4 1/2 now. His mom actually mentioned at our last visit that his older sister is asking about coming to spend the night with him, and I so hope that can happen. They just love on each other when they're together. It's great Sweetpea
Has the opportunity to "see"
her siblings. It absolutely been a good thing for him.
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and  like this.
I met my son's brother once (lives with bparents), and I do have a couple of pictures, so we use those. I kind of like the family tree idea. I put a family tree in my son's baby book that was from an idea I found online about family trees for adoption. The child goes on the trunk, the bfamily are the roots and the afamily are the branches. I didn't have a lot of information about extended bfamily, but I put in what I knew.
I know it's an older thread, but it just came up for us... My twins are 7 now, and know that they're adopted, but we never really mentioned that they have birth siblings out there (2 with their birthparents, and 3 that were placed before them, 2 with another agency). Well on Saturday we got a letter saying that one of their sibling's adoptive mother would be interested in having contact with us, so we talked to them about it... They seemed a bit surprised, but seemed interested to meet him (it was a bit off for me because I knew they had placed girls before, but not a boy).
I just talked to the agency and learned that they actually placed two kids after ours, and that there's potential to meet them too if they are all interested. I'm not sure how I'm going to talk about that part (or about the other 5 that are out there), so I guess we'll play it by ear, but it's definitely a pretty weird/interesting situation. I had no idea that they had so many birth siblings out there, and it just took the last adoptive family to ask for contact for the agency to send us all a letter. We had tried to contact the first family that adopted through our agency but never heard back, so we pretty much dropped the subject, but still a bit shocked to learn that they have 2 younger siblings too!
I'm not trying to get my hopes up, but feeling a bit weirded out that my kids have 7 other siblings out there.