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telling siblings?

paulf91's picture

Submitted by paulf91 on Thu, 09/30/2010 - 3:31am

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Stepparent Rights

Hi, I'm in the process of a step parent adoption and social services are telling myself and wife that all siblings should be told regarding the adoption. Our case is not the normal step parent adoption as our son who is now 16 was physically abused by his biological father for the first 3 weeks of his life and he is not allowed any contact until our son is 18. We told our son about 6 months ago about his sad past and he has taken it very well as I have been his dad since he was 10 weeks old and he has not known anyone else in his life apart from me. The issue is that he does not want his younger sisters to know about the injuries that happened to him and his mum and we are a very happy and balanced family. Social services are saying that we will have to drop our adoption case if we are not honest with other siblings. Can anyone advise me if they have been through the same circumstances as we are very confused and under no circumstances are we going to go against our sons wishes. Any help would be appreciated . Thankyou

wriggsy's picture

Submitted by wriggsy on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 11:35am

Geez, I can't imagine why social services would want you to tell young children that their brother was abused. That seems kinda sick to me. Why do that to them?

Since it's something that HAS to happen, talk to DS16 first and let him choose how to tell them-make sure he understands that you (the adults) have no choice in this matter This is his story, he has to have a say in how it's told. Give him all the support in the world (which I'm sure you already do), just make this as easy on the kids as you can...

Honesty is always the best policy...it may hurt, but it's always the best.

paulf91's picture

Submitted by paulf91 on Fri, 11/12/2010 - 9:57am

Hi just to update, we went for directions from the court. Social Services were still trying to push for us to tell 2 young daughters. The court found in our favour as we said we couldnt just tell them that i wasnt the biological father wothout explaining what happend to my wife and son when they were younger. The biological father was never allowed any contact as he broke my sons legs , chipped his collar bone and disfigured his face when he was 1 week old as well as many other injuries, he also beat my wife constantly when she was only 16. These are very hard things to explain to young girls and i do agree that they all have a right to know but as a responsable parent we should choose the correct time and not be forced by social services. The other reason we took so long to tell our son is that we needed to tell him the whole story so it would make sense and until he was 15 we felt the time was never right. We go back to court next month for the final adoption hearing and I will be legally his dad Smile . Thanks for all the advise