Guardianship III: What's Fair?

One of the parts of parenting that I like least is worrying about whether the kids will think I am being fair. It is just an impossible situation. I decided a long time ago that there was no way to be genuinely fair to all your kids. Either you attend to each kids needs, in which case they are not all getting the same thing, which isn't fair especially if what they need takes a disproportionate amount of time or money, OR you can give them all the same thing in which case you are almost certainly only meeting the needs of one kid.

I almost always go with individual needs, although I do try to even things out when I can. That doesn't always work though.

I went through a stretch of time with Evan where I was spending several evenings a week driving him to appointments in the city. We often ended up getting something to eat while we were there. After a while I realized that it had been weeks since I spent any one-on-one time with Andrew so I invited him out to a coffee shop. We hung for maybe an hour, probably less. When I came home Evan was hurt. I NEVER did things with him "just because." I only spent time with him because I had to. Evan was pretty obsessive about fairness, but I will attempt not to get distracted.

I do think about being "even" on holidays and birthdays, although I am realizing that I need to lower expectations from the older children. I haven't figured out exactly how to do that in a way that feels fair to me.

Brian and Andrew have always been pretty good about it, actually they have been great about it. When Gary moved in we bought him an iPod from a pawn shop just because he didn't have hardly anything. Brian doesn't have an iPod. He makes do with my cast off Sansa. He would love to have an iPod. He knows though that he has at various birthdays and Christmases had enough money for one. He spent the money on something else. Brian also knows that the iPod was a one-time-splurge.

The point of all this? Well, Process emailed me (I don't think she will mind me sharing the content since she said she was emailing me because the comment function wasn't working for her). She asked me a couple of good questions about the legal guardianship thing. They were good for me to think about, and the one that I missed completely was, "How do you think the older boys will feel about this?"

My initial response was on the lines of: the older boys didn't need me to consider this. Evan was almost 18 when he moved in, and David needed a light touch. Any attempt to "claim" him legally might result in him backing off. It might have been a good idea for Carl, but the agency did not support those sorts of moves then. Gary though is in a different place.

And that of course totally misses the point of Process' question. How the older boys would feel about it is completely separate from whether they would have wanted the same thing. It's the pony-effect. You know, one kid might not want a pony but that won't keep them from feeling jealous if you buy one for the other.

So now I get the point of the question and I am trying to puzzle it out. As I stop and think about it, I think Carl and Evan would definitely be jealous. They might understand, but they would be jealous. David would be harder to read. I expect he would be somewhat jealous, but in a quieter way. He won't say anything about it. If asked he will convincingly deny that it bothers him, but he won't look like he is bothered.

I don't know what to think about this, and I am not going to try too hard to figure it out until after we get some more information about what it would look like. I've toyed with the idea of bringing up the topic of adult adoption with the older boys... We really are not certain that it is in Gary's best interests. Roland also is concerned about not having social services in between us and Gary's dad. Neither of us want for Gary to be ineligible for any services, and we are both at least a little worried that it could cause more difficulty in Gary's relationship with his father. So we really don't know if we would do it.

Still, it seemed a good moment to write another post about the difficulties of fairness. I think they probably exist in all families, but it is exasperated when you have kids whose needs are so very different.

How do you handle it in your families?