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My daughters look so much alike but they have distinctly different temperaments and dispositions. My “baby” is a teeny tiny thing no bigger than a minute. She looks like a newborn pony on stilts. She is always the smallest one in her group of peers. She is feisty as all get out, takes no gruff, and is very demanding in her assessment of who qualifies as a friend in her life.
My oldest daughter is of average size for her age. Although she fits right in with her friends, she often marches to the beat of her own drummer. Her life is like an open book. Everything she feels shows on her face from moment to moment. She wants to be everyone’s friend and she is always the one who includes the outsider.
It should come as no surprise then that the girls have completely different opinions on how they want to handle their adoption story. My oldest daugher comfortably shares the information with anyone she wants whenever she feels like it. So far, she doesn’t show a hint of self-consciousness about being adopted. When she’s been met with teasing or taunting about it she has been completely confused and hurt, but she remains open about it continuing to share the information.
The baby on the other hand guards her privacy fiercely and has stated to me any number of times that, “it ain’t nobody’s business!” At least once so far there has been a collision of these two disparate approaches. Earlier this year a schoolmate confronted the baby about being adopted because my oldest daughter had blabbed about it in class. The baby was irate and came home and confronted her sister by telling her that it wasn’t anybody’s “damn business!” Umm. She’s eight years old, but that’s what she said. That’s when I knew she was serious about the matter. My oldest daughter is not as assertive as the baby but she pretty much held her ground in their confrontation shouting, “It’s not a big deal! It’s not a secret!”
I tried to lay low and stay out of it. Yes, I know I am a child psychologist. Yes, I am also a frequent guest speaker on adoption. I didn’t have a clue as to how to help them resolve this. So, I took the coward’s way out and hoped that they would just fight it out. No such luck. They dragged me into it. I tried to explain that they each had the right to tell people or not tell people and that they each needed to think about how the other one felt about it. They looked at me like I was worthless. I tried to explain it to them six different ways to Sunday in “developmentally appropriate” language, but I failed.
Finally, feeling flustered I said something lame like, “I don’t know, but you’re gonna have to figure out something because this is going to happen to you, a lot.” They both stormed off, completely disgusted with the ineptness of their mother, the psychologist. The child psychologist.
For the record, my son only mentions the girls are adopted when they are doing something really stupid and embarrassing, and he wants to distance himself from them as far as possible. For example, this week the baby went outside dressed in a purple tutu over her jeans with a tiara on her head and a fairy wand in her hand. She began roller skating around the neighborhood casting spells. 
As my son stared at her in amazement I heard him mumbling something under his breath about her being adopted. I have fussed at him for doing that, but not too much. I know that biological siblings say the same thing about one another for the same reason.
This business of who owns the story and how to respect one another’s right to tell it (or not) has not come up since the beginning of the school year. I think I am going to raise it with them this weekend and see if they came up with a solution. I’ll get back to you and let you know. Meanwhile, any suggestions?
