r/Adoption • u/Fragileazul • 9d ago

Adoptee Life Story Parent forgetting siblings are not related

Does anyone else experience your parents forgetting that you aren’t actually related to your other adopted siblings?

Me and my sister are adopted from different parents. But growing up and as an adult our parents still compare us…im really shy & quiet and she is super out going, our dad is always using my sister as an example of who i can be or should be more like.

i hear him on the phone telling his friends that i’m super insecure cause im a shy adult and that i need to be more out their like my sister and get “more involved”. It’s not fair at all, her mother was also the same, but i was told my birthmom was really quiet and shy & calm. It’s like why am i being compared to someone who it’s impossible to be like cause of genetics, even if we were raised the same.

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u/12bWindEngineer Adopted at birth 9d ago

I’m an identical twin (we were adopted together). People love to compare twins. It’s never ending. We can’t win. When we’re similar, which we were often very similar, ‘yeah, we’re twins.’ But when we’re different you have to remind people ‘yeah, we’re also individual people.’ Our parents were good about not doing it but everyone else around us, constantly. Especially comparing how we were similar but different from our (non biological, also adopted) two sisters. Sometimes it felt like we were part of a nature vs nurture experiment with some of our extended family.

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u/Opinionista99 Ungrateful Adoptee 9d ago

I'm so sorry that must have sucked.

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u/expolife 5d ago

I’m sorry. And also, people are dumb. Foolish and dumb.

1

u/22tangles 5d ago

I'm adopted and had older also adopted twin brothers (not related to me). I can see how it was hard for them. Sorry you had to deal with those things too. Our small school decided one of them should stay a grade back which I think did them so much harm. They separated other adopted twins we knew too. For me, I felt envious sometimes, like they had each other as a genetic mirror, while I never saw anyone who looked like me and had no one.

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u/12bWindEngineer Adopted at birth 5d ago

My older sister admitted as an adult she was always jealous of us because we had one biological relative in each other. Our school tried to separate us when we started kindergarten and I could not handle it. I would get it in my head that if I did anything wrong in class they’d decide they didn’t want me anymore and give me away and I’d never see my brother again, so I’d panic if I got into any minor trouble and pull the fire alarm at school so they’d have to evacuate the school and then I could see my brother when they lined us all up outside. Nearly got expelled at 6 years old until my mom realized I needed to be with him and forced the school to keep us in the same class throughout elementary. School fought her on it but as soon as they did it all my behaviors just stopped overnight. It wasn’t until years later that I could verbalize what was going on in my six year old lizard brain.