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telling siblings?

paulf91's picture

Submitted by paulf91 on Thu, 09/30/2010 - 3:37am

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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

skylarksms's picture

Submitted by skylarksms on Thu, 09/30/2010 - 7:53am

Couldn't you tell them about the adoption without going into detail about why the son's father is not in his life?

JustAnotherSM's picture

Submitted by JustAnotherSM on Thu, 09/30/2010 - 10:39am

How old are the siblings?

I think you can be honest about the reason for the adoption without having to tell all the details about the abuse. The siblings can know that the boy had an unfortunately bad incident with his biodad when he was just a baby. And since that time you have been the boy's "dad" and now you are going to make it official via adoption. This is honest, yet discreet.

Orange County Ca's picture

Submitted by Orange County Ca on Thu, 09/30/2010 - 11:39am

The reason his bio-father doesn't see him is "Because he could not take care of him(the boy)" and no further details are necessary.

paulf91's picture

Submitted by paulf91 on Fri, 11/12/2010 - 9:58am

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