Siblings and Mental Illness

I was asked to speak a bit about how my boys handle Oksana.  I'll start this by saying that there are so many factors that determine how a child (or adult) will respond to a sibling's mental illness.  Things have gone well here in that regard, but many families struggle terribly with this.  I suppose it is the same in the adoption community.  Some siblings embrace their new siblings and some struggle.  This is just our story.

I'll start at the beginning.  Our boys were very much on board when it came to our adoption.  We had been discussing adoption for awhile.  When we found Oksana it wasn't a new concept to them, and they were happy to just have a face to put with their new sibling.  When we met her we were very concerned that she was not at all what they were going to expect.  Of course we knew that she had special needs, but even on those first visits we had the sense that there was way more going on than we had realized.  We did our best to prepare the boys for what they might see.  We also made the decision to put a lock on their bedroom door.  We wanted to be sure that the boys had a place to go to escape, keep their stuff safe, have some peace, etc.  I really believe that was a huge thing for them in accepting Oksana.  Quite honestly they accepted her far faster than we did.  It's quite different when you can go lock yourself in a room when she starts up.  We didn't have that option. 

So now we will fast forward.  When Oksana was first diagnosed we sat them down and talked to them about mental illness and specifically what they were seeing in her and why.  The boys are doing fine with her.  I think it helps to understand it better and know that she is ill and not just mean.  They still have a safe place.  In this house their rooms are in the basement and she can't get down there.  When she starts up their attitude is more like "There she goes again", or my personal favorite, "Mom, did you remember her meds today?"  I can see her definitely start to wear on them sometimes.  Evan, being the younger of the two, is often a target for her if she wants to start a fight.  We've had to work hard on teaching him to completely ignore her and not engage.  Because of that he can only tolerate her for so long, especially when she is unstable.  She has not yet focused her aggression at them, but I think it's because they make themselves scarce when she starts up. 

More recently things have been ramped up a bit in her behavior.  Evan got to witness her being physically aggressive to her for the first time about a month ago.  During the incident I actually smiled at him to show him that I was in complete control and not scared.  I talked to him later about it and he seemed OK.  A couple of weeks ago we sat them down to create a safety plan for our family.  We talked about a lot of scary things that could potentially happen but more than anything there is one thing I wanted them to hear from me.  I held up one hand and I said "This is Oksana."  Then I held up the other hand and said "This is her illness."  I then told them that Oksana is funny, sweet, and joyful.  Her illness makes her violent, mean, and hurtful but that is NOT Oksana, it is Oksana under the influence of her illness.  I wanted them to know that she is still the awesome person we know even when she is unstable because it is really hard to see sometimes when we are in the midst of the worst of it.

I'll address Anya briefly too.  She has absolutely no idea what is going on and is often confused by Oksana's behaviors.  Unfortunately, she then wants to get close to her to see what in the world is going on.  She also mimics things she sees Oksana do.  One day she got too close to Oksana during an incident and got her hair yanked.  After that she spent a week or two yanking her own hair and even her grandmas.  Now we have the code word so we can easily have Anya removed from the situation and safe.

For the record, Oksana has been great since her last med increase.  We have definitely been dealing with irritability and sassiness, but the aggression has not been a problem at all.  Now I'll enjoy it until the next period of instability!