Advertisements
Our daughter was 18 months old when we adopted her; she is now 36 months old. She showed some subtle signs of attachment issues for the first year or so, but I believe she is well on her way to becoming securely attached now. The problem: We have two bio teenagers at home, and I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with the young one's escalating sibling rivalry. The older kids have never been anything but sweet with her, but it's gotten to the point where she is so jealous of my attention she won't even let them talk to me without interrupting---rudely, so she'll be sure of getting my attention. Just the sight of them entering the room elicits "NO! I don't like her!" If she's helping me make dinner, she'll say something like, "This is for me and you and Dad, not for A and B, right Mom?" This is getting worse, not better, as she becomes increasingly attached to me. It's affecting the way the older kids feel about her, of course, and it has become impossible for me to ignore. All suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Like
Share
Hey. I am a mom, an aunt several times over, an adoptee, and a twin! I don't like to give advice about things I know nothing about. However, I wanted to say a couple things I've observed. First of all, your other kids are teens, so maybe it wasn't this way with them, but with three girls in our family there was no "terrible twos." The twos were fine, it was the "threes" that were a major battle. They were most rebellious at the threes and it started to get better at 4 and beyond. Secondly, I have very good friends who had two biological children and then adopted special children after them. I saw this affect the biological children's lives in a profound way when so much effort and attention was needed to help the adopted children. It affected one biological child in a very bad way. She wound up getting pregnant at 14 or 15. Granted, she was a very strong willed person, but she was resentful too. I'd just like to encourage you, since you already have enough foresight and concern that this could become a problem, to get more advice and more help from outside sources, even counseling for the adoptee if necessary. I wish my parents had gotten me a lot more therapy before I had to get it on my own. Sometimes adopted children just need extra help, and I would hate to see your biological children suffer when they could be a part of helping your adopted child rather than being resentful that she's there. For adoptees, sometimes normal events of jealousy and rejection are magnified to an abnormal degree.
Advertisements
I have to agree with the previous post. I have parented six children through the "terrible two's" and beyond. My experience has been that the two's are wonderful, but I absolutely dread the three's. Somehow overnight, the sweet toddler with a wonderful disposition becomes a preschooler intent on living independantly. "I do it," "that's mine," "stop touching me" seem to reverberate through the house.
My youngest son in 3 1/2 so I completely sympathize. When he tries to interrupt his brother's conversation with me, I firmly remind him that he is interrupting and it is not his turn. When he began to realize that he would eventually have his turn, his frequency of interrupting decreased. If fact he has begun to correct his classmates behavior at school. With the other children, they seemed to mature through this stage by 42-46 months.
LambeauSam