How do kids deal with loss? There are as many ways as there are children who’ve had loss! The most common method for the kids in my house is ANGER. I’m often asked if having so many children in one home makes things difficult for the children. Don’t they feed off of each other, increasing anger and poor behavior? In my family, this is not the case.

Kids who come to our house have not made a straight-line journey to get here. Rather, most have come from other adoptions that have been dissolved. For some of my kids, many, many placements have dissolved before they found their way here. None of my children have had dissolved placements for “no reason”. They are angry, mean, belligerent, oppositional and destructive. Many are diagnosed mentally ill (some accurately; some inaccurately). It is the strong level of the disturbance they show that have led even seasoned psychiatrists to diagnose a mental illness.

Parental acknowledgement is the first key to helping them deal with loss. I took one child aside and told her that it is okay with me that she is angry. In fact, I’m glad to see it. She’s lost two parents, siblings, grandparents, culture, language, country, her supposed “forever family”/first US parents, the next several homes/states/cultures, and now comes to our family – of course, without trust this time. If she WASN”T angry, I’d be worried. I am glad, then, to see that she’s angry.

How does it work for a child like this to come into a large family then? In our experiences, it’s worked phenomenally well. A new child is not alone. A new child is here with others who can understand. Children in our home know what it’s like to lose parents, to lose a supposed “forever family”, to lose languages and cultures and countries, to wonder if their life might have been better in a birth country without having been adopted at all. They know what it’s like to struggle academically now because they didn’t receive adequate education early on. New kids watch and watch – and then seem to feel included by nature of them all having gone through such similar traumas. They trust in these siblings. They watch the siblings who have been here longer and who have developed trust within the family and the parents. They then follow their lead and take risks to explore safety and permanence in this new family. They do it together.

By nature of so many children having gone through so many similar, yet horrible things in their collective backgrounds, they find a link and form a bond. They take their link and bond and risk letting in the parents. Their link and bond ends up forming a family. Do large families work? Sometimes they are the key in helping siblings by adoption form the most strong of family bonds.

Read these other blogs, written by other moms of large families:
Older Child Adoption
Africa Adoption
Adopting a Sibling
LDS Adoption
Ethiopia Adoption