Divided Loyalties

I have had a couple of heartbreaking conversations with Sprout in the past week.

The first was triggered by a picture we put next to Sprout’s bed of her first family. It’s a cute candid shot of her Mama holding her and all her siblings gathered around them. I printed and framed it and set it next to her bed.

At bedtime, Sprout pointed to the picture and said it makes her sad.

I replied, “Because you miss your family?”

She said, “No, because I love Mama [name] but I love you too.”

Me: “Oh Baby, that has to be hard. But did you know you are allowed to love both of us?”

Sprout: “But she’s my Mommy.”

Me: “Yes she is. And she ALWAYS will be. She’s your first Mama forever and she loves you very much. But some people can love two Mamas and that’s ok too. Lots of people have more than one Mama.”

Sprout: “You can?”

Me: “Yes!”

Sprout: “Ok. (Pause) Can I be Spider-Man for Halloween?”

The poor kid is facing the stress of feeling like loving Seth and me is disloyal to her first family. I had hoped that our quick little conversation had helped, but alas, yesterday we had this exchange:

Sprout: “Seth is [Kiddo’s] Daddy.”

Me: “Yeah, she does consider Seth her Daddy, but she also has another Daddy.”

Sprout: “Seth is her Daddy and my Daddy.”

Me: “Yep!”

Sprout: “And she has [name] is her Mommy. And I have Mommy [name]. And you’re Miss Holly.”

She usually calls me “Mommy” – always has – so the fact that she called me “Miss Holly” in that conversation tells me she’s still struggling with feeling like thinking of me as a Mommy is disloyal to her first Mama.

I cannot even imagine how stressful feeling disloyal has to be for the poor kid, and to any kid in foster care. This isn’t our first time holding space for a child to feel that tension – we went through it Big Time with Kiddo, and it took YEARS to resolve. And while it seems resolved at the moment (she thinks of Seth as her Daddy but thinks of me as “Miss Holly”) it could rear its ugly head again at any time.

When Kiddo first came to us she had just turned 4, but was severely delayed and had very little vocabulary. Her first month with us we barely focused on her at all because her brother was with us and was so very, very sick. He was a danger to himself and others at that time and keeping him safe, and keeping our pets safe, and keeping her safe from him took all our energy.

I remember the evening after he was removed from our care, I looked at little Kiddo and was astonished to realize I had barely truly noticed her in the last month, and felt a massive wave of guilt and a deep feeling of inadequacy wash over me. I vowed to do better by her.

She was deeply wary of us for another month or so, but then began to warm up and start to trust us. During those first few months neither of her parents was really engaging in services or making it to visits. She started to develop trust of us and warmed up to us a bunch.

It took a long time for her parents to figure out their stuff and start engaging. Kiddo had never had much of a relationship with her Dad. He and her Mom had split right after she was born and couldn’t get along, so her Dad hadn’t seen much of her. So when he started doing regular visits with Kiddo not much changed. Kiddo started to dote on Seth and want to spend every waking minute with him, and he was happy to oblige. And her visits with her Dad didn’t seem to change that.

But once Kiddo’s Mom started to engage and do regular visits there was a massive shift in the dynamic of our household. Kiddo started to be outright mean to me all the time. She was standoffish and often hostile. It took us a little bit to figure it out because we were new to foster parenting, but Kiddo had always lived with her Mommy and even though her Mommy had made some bad mistakes, she was deeply loyal to her. And caring for me in any way felt disloyal to her Mom.

It went on that way for many months, but eventually Kiddo learned she was going to go live with her Daddy, and the visits with him started to increase. They started to be at his house, and she had her own bedroom there and started spending overnights and then weekends with him. And accordingly things started to shift in our household.

Kiddo started to get really mad at her Mommy for not being the one to get her back. And she started to warm to the idea of her life with her Daddy. And she started to warm up to me and get hostile toward Seth as the shift with her parents started.

It stayed that way for quite a while. Kiddo went to live with her Daddy and continued to spend frequent weekends at our house. For a long time she was close with me and not so much with Seth, until the relationship with her Daddy started to break down. Around that same time her Mom got her ish together and got Kiddo back with her full time which is how it has stayed.

Kiddo’s relationship with her father remains Rocky. She has voluntarily chosen to spend her weekends with us and not with her father, about 95% of the time. She still chooses to see him on occasion but it’s rare. And she has remained super close with Seth, who she often calls “Daddy” or else her own special name for him, “Miss Seth.” Seth is honored to have the place he holds for her.

She remains super loyal to her Mom, with whom she lives, but has finally found a separate column for me, and we are now close without it feeing disloyal to her Mom. I’m her “Miss Holly” and we’re both great with that.

Everything isn’t perfect for Kiddo, though. She’s now focused on insisting that Sprout “is not my sister.” Heh, jealousy is strong, and Kiddo’s loyalty to her half sister is also strong. Divided loyalties are still a struggle for her.

As for Sprout, since it looks like she’s probably going to stay with us (it’s foster care so who knows, but that’s the direction it looks like it’s heading), all we can really do is support her relationship with her Mama as much as we possibly can, and at the same time reinforce that she’s doing nothing wrong by loving Seth and me too. What an awful burden for a little kid to be carrying – the fear of being disloyal to a loved one.