How do we help our daughter love an adopted child as if it were a blood sibling?
My husband and I have 1 beautiful little girl who has just started school. We have tried for years to have another but have just found out that isn’t going to happen, so we are now considering adopting. Will our daughter still love this other child as if it were a blood sibling? Have you experienced this as a parent or as a child? Suggestions on how to navigate this?
I find your children will pick up your own attitudes when it comes to any adopted children. We have two kids that are biologically ours and one girl that we adopted. All our children we think of as entirely our own and we love them as much as any parent could, and they love each other entirely. Sadly I have a friend who has also adopted one child and has two other children that are biologically hers. I know she loves her children but I also know she resented the fact that she could not have a third child, but her husband desperately wanted another and hence adopted. Consequently I think this attitude seeps through and the third child is constantly treated as “the other child”. It is really sad to see but I have even heard the other two kids tease the third child saying that he is not their brother. If you truly want another child and are not resentful at the thought that you are being “forced” to adopt then I say go for it
The biggest shock to the system we had in our family when we adopted our little girl is we had about 3 days warning before we got her! Granted I am talking over 15 years ago now, but I assume it hasn’t changed that much. We were on the waiting list for years. One day it was my husband, my son and I and by the end of the weekend we had a daughter. There was kind of no warming up time like you have when you find out you’re pregnant. We had to go shopping for everything and prepare a bedroom all in one weekend. But other then that she is our little girl and her big brother loves her completely
We adopted a 3 year old girl, she is now 7. As you can imagine when a child is adopted out at age 3 it is not under the nicest of circumstances. We love our daughter to death, but she did some with a lot of issues (psychological and emotional) that she would obviously not have if she was ours from day one.