My husband and I adopted my daughter, Sofia (5f) three years ago. Sofia is biologically my half sister. My father and his wife died very suddenly, leaving behind Sofia, and his wife’s other daughter “Hanna” (9).

Hanna is currently in the care system, she lives in a group home that is equipped for her needs. We try to get the girls together every couple of weeks for supervised visits (Sofia has always been aware that she is adopted), which normally happen with their maternal grandmother, who I’ll call “Lori”. Lori has been combative with us since we met her, because she thought it was wrong for us not to adopt Hanna as well as Sofia, even though she is well aware of why it wasn’t the right choice for our family. All this to say, when I say I think I know where Hanna has been getting certain ideas, I am pretty certain.

Hanna has always made little comments about living with us one day. She’s used to say “one day when me and Sofia live together” or reference the girls sharing a room, or talk about pets she wants when she can move “home”. We’ve always tried to play this off so as not to upset her, and I really figured she would grow out of it. Her social worker said she definitely would grow out of it, but it never happened. Nowadays, she makes comments about “being good so she can come with (us)”, and makes an over the top effort to show off her achievements when we are there on visits. Shes even started being disparaging about anything Sofia does and constantly one-upping her. It’s really sad to see, and no one listens when I say that someone needs to stop feeding into all this. I know they all want her to behave but Lori is constantly validating her saying this stuff and I hate that. The social worker just says it’s good that Hanna is making strides with her behaviour. This just seems cruel and manipulative, like they’re letting this carrot dangle in front of this kid so that they can benefit without thinking what this will do to her.

So a month ago we were out and Hanna once again said brought up that she wants a horse if she’s come to live with us. Lori smiled and said that would be really nice but she will have to be a good girl to get a horse, and I just looked at her like wtf. I told Hanna that she wouldn’t be able to live with us, because she was very loved at the home where she is and they take really good care of her and that we couldn’t do enough of a good job at that. Hanna didn’t really seem to understand what I was saying, but she didn’t hug us goodbye like normal when we dropped her back.

When we picked her up the last two times to go out, she was really quiet and sullen and didn’t want to do anything. She wouldn’t play or take part in anything we did. According to Lori, Hanna has been acting up at home and school as well. She’s blaming me. I take the blame for this change, I get it. But I still feel like ultimately someone needed to have that conversation with Hanna because how long was she meant to believe she could “earn” being adopted? And how bad was it going to be to come to the realisation in however many years that everyone lied to her.

But I’m also worried that I’ve damaged things because if Hanna stops wanting to see Sofia, I’ll have ruined their relationship. And I’m not a trained professional, I maybe didn’t say it in the right way. Her social worker didn’t think it was a problem so many I should have left it. I feel crappy about it, even though I don’t think I was wrong in my intentions.

So AITA?