Reddy gets Jealous

Blurb

This book is from the reminiscences of Reddy Red Squirrel who hoped and dreamed of having a sibling. Reddy describes her own story:

“This is a story about when I really wanted a sibling, wanted somebody to play with so much!  And one day I got my wish!  My own adoptive parents brought home a newer, younger sibling.

“Soon after Little Grey Squirrel came to live with us, I felt disappointed. It seemed that having a little brother was not exactly what I had hoped.

“My parents noticed I was feeling disappointed, frustrated, and angry.  They recognized that I really felt very jealous.  They kindly asked me about my feelings.  They helped name my jealousy.  Jealous of the attention and the seeming importance of the new little brother.”

In this primary caregiver (parent)-child therapeutic story the parent uses DDP PACE to stay connected with the child’s feelings. Reddy’s parents noticed and named her feelings of disappointment as her hopes and dreams for a sibling were not as she expected. Through the story they offer Reddy acceptance, curiosity and empathy.

Together they explored her feelings of jealousy when her new sibling joined their family. The book walks parents and children back and forth through, the feelings of jealousy. Reddy, the already-adopted child initially had no words for her feelings. The parents saw that the behaviours at home were their child’s best effort to ask for help with new confused feelings. Acting younger, she returned to earlier developmental stages trying to re-establish inner stability and security. Reddy showed her feelings in anger, sadness and worry. Through connection and co-regulation her parents helped her make sense of her jealousy and understood how she needed them by her side.

The book features full colour illustrations by Lauren Sinclair throughout.

 © Nikki Linfield and Lauren Sinclair, 2024

Purchase on the publisher’s website and all good bookshops.

Introduction: By Robert Spottswood

Jealousy.

Within families this is one of the hardest feelings to experience. And within families growing via adoption, the potential for jealousy in a previously adopted child can be multiplied by their lived experience of having been previously ‘given up.’

• Does bringing in this new sibling mean I might be given up again??
• Was I not good enough and did not know it??
• Is there something wrong with me? Do they want to replace me but can’t tell me??
• (Any chance they can take new-guy back for a refund?)

Any parents’ first impulse may be to reassure and then feel impatient with an older adopted child’s lingering jealousy. The squirrel parents in this story — Nikki Linfield’s second, beautifully illustrated ‘big feelings’ story for adopted children — wisely take time and space to be curious about the jealousy. The parents’ curiosity leads to modeling acceptance and empathy for the hard feeling they are told about. They continue to co-regulate their older child’s jealous emotion until her new ‘lived experience’ is to trust a parent to talk to, about big feelings. And as Dan Hughes reminds us, big feelings shared tend to get smaller, while big feelings kept inside tend to get bigger.

Congratulations to Nikki for a second consecutive, stunningly illustrated book which models for adults and adopted children the counter-intuitive work of helping resolve some of the hardest big feelings.