Biological children who grow up in a family that fosters or adopts can experience some intense and complicated emotions. While many children are supportive—and even protective—of their non-biological siblings, it’s important to recognize that some may struggle with feeling overlooked or invisible in the process.

While their needs are just as important as their foster or adoptive siblings, biological children can sometimes feel as though they need to take up less of their parents’ attention, minimize the stress on the family, or behave perfectly to avoid rocking the boat.

Here to help us understand the kinds of thoughts and feelings that biological children are navigating and how we can best support them as we welcome foster and adoptive children into our homes is Daniela Coats. She is the founder of With Siblings, an organization that exists to support birth children in foster and adoptive families by equipping parents and professionals with training and resources. Daniela is also a therapist, adoptive parent, and biological child to parents who fostered and adopted.

In this episode, Daniela shares some tools and resources to help us support bio children, key commonalities found in many biological children’s experiences, the most important thing you can do today to support your biological children, and much more.

Find the show notes and links to anything we discussed here: riversideproject.org/daniela-coats-38