Supporting your birth children from transition and beyond

While the first two elements of waiting for an adoptive brother or sister can bring about changes to family life, actually introducing their new sibling is an entirely different situation.

Unlike bringing a birth sibling home from hospital as a newborn where your children might meet their new brother or sister supported by yourselves with family or close friends. Their first meeting with their adoptive sibling is likely to be within the home and family of the foster carer. Here you are encouraging your children to make their initial connection with their new sibling in the home and family of complete strangers. This can be daunting.

Transition periods are completely different for every adopted child due to their age, distance from adoptive family or local authority procedures. Some children come from foster households with other children, others don't. Then within each adoptive family with birth children, some have one others have multiple and the ages of all children might span quite a range.

In our situation we were very lucky that our adopted son's foster family were very kind, approachable and welcoming. They had children of a similar age with similar interests to our children and they could not have been more encouraging of our children. Yet it was still a strange experience for us, let alone our children.

Our transition period was two weeks with the first being at their home, the second at ours. We were really keen to ensure our family decision to adopt didn't have a negative impact on our birth children, and the transition period was no different. Two weeks is a long time for children who are used to a regular routine of their parents being available to them, no matter how much preparation you have done.

In the planning of the transition we were able to work with social workers to ensure we could try to begin that careful balance of giving our new little one the time he needed to begin to get to know us, whilst also ensuring our birth children didn’t get lost in the process. We made sure our birth children had all the information they needed about what was going to be happening each day and when we would be seeing them too.

We have amazing friends and family who were able to support us by collecting the children from school, having them for dinner or a sleepover to ensure they still felt loved and had a great time while we were travelling or away from home.

To ensure our children still had special time with us, we actively built in time as a four - such as taking a special trip to the cinema during the first weekend of transition following our visit. Here we could be relaxed together, have fun and continue the all important ethos of our family - valuing time spent together.

On the day our little one came home, we again made the day about the now three boys, collecting the big ones early from school and enjoying games and food based activities together for the day. Things that each person could get involved in.

We found that as kids do, they very quickly got stuck in playing together, whether playing football, joining in creative tasks, or playing in the garden - it helped that our new little one is very outgoing. Sometimes all three and sometimes any combination of two children would be playing together. We purchased a couple of toys such as a swing attachment and new water pistols that we had seen our little one enjoy at his foster home, but enabled and encouraged the others to create new games and play too.

We also gave the big two permission to do something other than spend time as a family of five, or jsut the three children. We wanted them to know they could do something together if they wanted; with my husband or myself or to spend time in their rooms or doing something alone. We knew that this new relationship couldn't be forced and we didn't want the expectation of our children to be that they had to make our new child the sole focus of all of our lives. We wanted them to live their lives too.

When our little one joined our family it was nearly the summer holidays, we were very blessed with this timing as it meant that lots of time could be spent together. Initially our newest family member still had a nap for a couple of hours each day, so when the bigger two were not at school we made sure to play board games together, watch films or make something together.

Most importantly, we made sure to continue one of my favourite family traditions started in lockdown named 'after dinner activity'. Here all those at home after dinner actively prioritise time together at the end of the day. We mostly play board or card games in the winter, and cricket, football or on the trampoline in the garden in the summer months. Due to the age gap being just over 6 years between our littlest one and our next oldest, we have kept this as designated time for just the older two boys. This still is something really important for us to do, and was especially in the early days when we needed them to know that despite us now splitting our time between three children, they were still just as important as they had always been.

We are very blessed that while there have been some bumps in the road - our birth children have adjusted well to the significant changes in our family. In being open and honest with them, keeping them updated and informed (as much as is appropriate for their ages) and making time for them, I hope we have made adopting a positve experience for them. We will continue to be there for them, and will continue to check in with how they are doing, but I am so very proud of how beautifully they have built their relationships with their new brother.

I would love to hear your experiences with your own birth children and how you prepared them, so please do get in touch.