[cupcake17]

My husband and I are interest in adopting a sibling group (of 2). We have a 3 year old daughter who we adopted at 3 days old. Our biggest concern is that she will get left out or be the third wheel ? Any one had any experience with this ?

Thanks so much !

[Tudu]

This was a concern for us, as well when we decided to add a sib group of 6 to our 1 little girl. Turned out fantastic, she loves all the playmates. I think alot of talking about how most of the toys were the family's not just hers and allowing her to pick out a few "only her's" toys helped with that issue. We discussed how things would work in great detail for months. WHen they actually came everyone wanted to play with her b/c she was new, that wore off and then they targeted her b/c she was attached to us. I am careful to not show ANY favoritism and found I was actually doing the opposite in the begining. It has evened out and no one feels one is loved more than another. They do not separate and conquer the lonely non bio child, ever. I am sure every family is different but is has worked for us.

[lakin11]

We don't have bios at this time, but we do have a sib group of 4 and one singlet. They are young enough they don't really understand the biology connections. In fact, the oldest 3 are not aware of the baby being bio-related...due to the fact he may go home and they are likely not. He has visits, they do not. So in our case, they are all as close as any bio sibs I know. They don't separate yet. Not to say it won't happen, but for now, they don't.

[marythemom]

My bio son gets left out occasionally, but not because he is bio, just because he is younger than the rest and not interested in doing the same things.

We had a lot of "That's not fair." "You let ______ do that and not me." and even occasionally "You love __________ more than me." but I think that's actually a good sign! It means the children are starting to attach to us and care if we care. We just keep telling each child that we do love them, and point out that life is not fair (We also invoked the "FAIR Club"), and we tell them we treat each child differently because they are different people.

I grew up in a family where we were allowed to get away with treating our siblings badly (my step-sister and I ganged up on my bio sister often). I will not allow that to happen in this family and have had EXTENSIVE talks with my both my daughters about how she will treat her sister and why her sister sometimes gets treated differently (our adopted daughter has many issues). The girls have finally worked out their feelings of jealousy and competition to the point where they play together well - but it was a long road of therapeutic parenting.

Mary
mom to bio son T (8) and bio daughter K (11)
adoptive placement in 11/06 of sibling pair
daughter C (12) and son D (14).
"We may not have it all together, but together we have it all!"