Good and Perfect: Sibling relationships: Adri

Josh and I knew when we signed up to be foster parents that we would be stretched in ways we had not been and that there would be lessons for us to learn through this. It has been hard, but we have embraced the way discomfort brings growth and have already seen the blessing in that. I guess that kind of insight can be considered wisdom that comes with age and experience. Our kids, however, are not wise. They do not have the experience of discomfort leading to growth and they didn’t ask to be a part of something that would be difficult. People ask me often how the kids have handled this, and for the most part, this whole thing has been a lot easier for them than it has been for us. But each of them has had different experiences and different difficulties as a result of J being with us. I wanted to highlight each one separately just to give insight into the sibling dynamics.

The relationship with him and Adri is the most different from the others, mostly because of gender. They also met each other in a more awkward setting since the boys were with me the morning I went to pick him up from DSS and she was not, so the whole thing got off to a weird start. That afternoon when we picked her up from school, she loaded the van, and it was like “Adri, meet J, J meet Adri.”

It was definitely a strange way to meet a new family member.

We heard a lot when we were going through our pre-certification classes about birth order and how people adopt or foster within birth order. I didn’t fully understand the reasoning so I did a lot of reading about it this summer. With some research I got more insight, but after praying about it and talking about it, we still felt like we were best prepared to foster a school-aged child because of Josh’s work in the school system. More than being prepared, we really specifically felt called to foster school-aged kids because of our understanding that school is the only safe place for some kids and those are the ages where there is a huge drop-off in the number of people willing to foster them. So call it naivety or whatever, but I was not prepared for the tension it would create when we disrupted the birth order in our home.

Adri is the first-born and she is a typical first-born in a lot of ways. But she has a very significant “rescue” story herself. Pretty much everyone who knows us is aware that we are approaching the five year anniversary of when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. It was the scariest, most whirlwind experience of our marriage. I did a bunch of posts on Facebook for Brain Tumor Awareness Month in May and you can read those on this post. We are so grateful that she is healthy and have given a lot of time, money, and energy towards supporting the GHS Children’s Hospital and various organizations that do a lot for sick children and families. Our lives were changed because of that experience and ultimately it was probably the very beginning of the tug on our hearts to foster since that was when we realized what it feels like when people serve you sacrificially. But we have always struggled to find the right balance where we put ourselves and her in front of crowds as we raise funds for various things and yet also help her to know that the whole world does not revolve around her. We have been invited to so many events over the years and she has stood by my side close to a dozen times while I have told our story to strangers, and that has been more positive than negative. But when you are a cute little blonde and you like the microphone and you say in a sweet little voice in front of a bunch of college girls “thank you for helping to raise money for the children’s hospital,” it results in lots of ooohs and aaaahs and specialized attention. And when you have those experiences for five years and you are the only girl and a first-born, and your dad is the principal of your school, well, it becomes really easy for a 7 year-old to get confused about who is most important.

So when J came, she got to experience - probably for the first time in her short life - what it feels like when someone doesn’t really like you, and that was not easy for her. J is a helper. He told me that within three minutes of driving out of the parking lot of DSS. He likes to feel needed and he really loves to help. We have recognized that he gains confidence from that, so we have been intentional in giving him different jobs around the house and Adri has noticed that. In the beginning it looked something like this when I was in the kitchen:

J: Can I help you with that?
Me: Sure, I would love your help. Can you take these plates to the table?
Adri (feeling jealous): I want to help! Can I help? What can I do mommy? Will you let me help? How can I help?
Me: Okay, sure. You get cups for everybody.
J (now feeling jealous himself): If she gets the cups, can I get the water? I want to get the water, I know how to get the water.

Adri: No, I'm getting the cups so I'll also get the water because the water goes in the cups.
Me (silently and maybe once or twice out loud): Ahhhhhh give me some space! I’ll just set the table myself!

Now let me be clear, Adri is not a natural helper. She has a sweet spirit and is very emotionally mature, but she gets no confidence from helping with something. The thing about J helping that makes her uncomfortable is not that he is helping and she is not, but that he is being chosen to help when she is not. Even still, we have learned that we have to be careful to make sure that there is equal helping.

Adri is a year and a half older, but although she is tall for her age, J is super-duper tall for his age and is the same size as her. Physically they appear to be the same age. That definitely felt weird for me in the beginning because he does not look or talk like a 6 year-old. I think that has felt threatening to Adri in some ways, like she is the “big kid” in this house and doesn’t like someone sharing that role with her. Similarly, J was the oldest living in the home he was in and he didn’t take to the bossy big sister thing that Adri’s younger brothers have just accepted. They also are together the most since they ride to and from school together and spend many afternoons in the after-school program.

I have had many conversations with Adri where I have explained that it is not her responsibility to care for him, but that I expect her to be kind and to notice if they are in the after-school program and he feels alone. We’ve talked about how much change he has experienced and how he has had to make new friends a lot of different times and I have encouraged her to just be aware of times when he may feel left out. She has been praised for her emotional maturity by her teachers, but feeling “obligated” to look out for him has cramped her style a little bit. There are friends that she hasn’t spent as much time with because they weren’t as interested in inviting him in as she was. He has taken notice of the friends who are less accepting of him and has voiced his thoughts on that, and she has become defensive of the girls who have been sweet friends to her over the past few years. It has created an uncomfortable struggle for sure.

A couple of weekends ago we had an instance where we let him help and it particularly irked her that day. She and I went away to talk about it and she broke down in tears and said that she feels like he always gets to help more than her. So I pointed out the one thing she helped with and the one thing he helped with and asked her which person helped more. Through the sniffles she was able to agree that they had been given equal opportunities to help. The conversation then became very 7 year-old-girl-dramatic when she said (in her 7 year-old-girl-dramatic way), “I just have to say this because I’ve been thinking it the whole time, but I just feel like he likes Cooper and Emory more than he likes me.” To which I said, “yep, he probably does, and I don’t really blame him.” It was tough for her to hear but we went on to have a great conversation where I was able to point out how unlikeable she had been. She had a list of reasons why she didn’t think he liked her as much and it all had to do with things that he had not done for her. I countered each of those with, “well have you done that for him?” It was tearful but she needed to be aware that people don’t automatically like her because of her presence. When she is not being kind, she probably isn’t going to be the person someone wants to spend time with. I told her that it was okay if he didn’t feel like a brother to her from day one. This thing is weird and different and has meant a lot of sacrifices for her and we didn’t have any expectations of how easy this would be for her. But if her brothers express more love than jealousy towards him, it is unreasonable for her to think that he would not favor them over her.

The last six weeks have stretched her in a lot of ways and have done more to teach her that the world does not revolve around her than pretty much anything else we have ever done. But I think that a light switch really turned on in that hard conversation and it has been a lot of fun for me and Josh to see the fruits of that. We have watched her deliberately pick the same piece of Halloween candy out of the bucket so that the two of them can “match.” She has invited him to play in her room when no one was paying attention or praising her for including him. She reads to him every morning on the car ride to school, and she has started working with him on his own reading. We have learned that she has significantly more patience with kindergarten books than either of us do and, surprisingly, he has taken well to her “helping” him in that area. Last week we were talking about some holiday plans we have where we will be staying away from home and she asked about sleeping arrangements. I told her I wasn’t sure how we would split everyone up in a room with bunk beds and she said “well me and J can sleep up top since we are the oldest and Cooper and Emory can sleep on the bottom.” That’s not how the sleeping arrangements will go, but that suggestion from her was so good for my mommy heart because it made me realize how comfortable she has become with him.

Our kids didn’t ask to be stretched, but we are thankful for the opportunity to lovingly show them their hearts are selfish. It is not easy to disrupt their worlds, but I want them to be sensitive to the world that is outside the walls of our home. I want to protect my kids – I pray so much for that – but I also want them to learn to love like Jesus and that doesn’t happen from a place of comfort or selfishness. I have loved watching Adri learn to adjust and become more sensitive and less selfish. I am so proud of her and I am excited to see how God continues to work in her life.