Siblings & Differences

with Ronny Diamond, M.S.W.
Director, Spence-Chapin's Adoption Resource Center

Opening Remarks:
Siblings & Differences

In discussing siblings and differences, there are all kinds of differences:

One child may have been born into the family and the other adopted;
The children may be of different racial or cultural backgrounds;
One child may be in a closed adoption and the other in an open adoption;
There may be a lot of background information on one child and very little, or none, on the other.

Adoptive parents worry that the child who experiences himself to have less will feel less loved. But the major task of childhood is to acknowledge differences and to try to figure out which ones matter and in what ways.

Children focus on differences and try to determine what they mean. Is it better to be one way than another? Tall or short? Straight or curly hair? If you tease someone about something and they get really upset, you know you have hit on something the other child is ashamed of. No reaction means it doesn't matter.

You shouldn't try to be "fair" to your children by treating them all the same. Fair isn't the same as equal. Even if you could, it wouldn't be good to treat your children identically; it only reinforces their need to keep score. It communicates that identical treatment means equal amounts of love, and it encourages them to keep score. It is important to stress their uniqueness, their special skills and talents.

CELEBRATE ALL KINDS OF "STORIES" AND RELATIONSHIPS. Don't minimize the birth story, or one child's contact with her birth parents, in order to compensate for another child's perceived inequality.

It is important to encourage your children to express their feelings. You can acknowledge that sometimes things aren't fair, and when that happens it doesn't feel good.

Let's move on to the questions.

Next page > Questions & Answers > Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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