The bond between siblings lasts a lifetime. When brothers and sisters shared a strong relationship during childhood, they often enter adulthood as friends. But if they endure a horrific situation as a unit during their childhood, then it can bring them even closer together. Because they could only trust each other during the incident, they share a relationship that should not be broken.
And Emma, Cody, Bradley, and Alisia were four brothers and sisters who could not have shared a closer connection. Because their parents were abusive lowlifes, the four siblings bonded together to survive the horrific situation. And eventually, the parents lost custody of them. But that created another problem for the siblings. Now they faced the threat of being separated forever.
Because they were being put up for adoption, the four siblings knew that they would likely be split up. Who would want to adopt four teenagers and welcome them into their home? And because they had no one to trust but each other, they would have had their hearts broken if they were adopted into different families.
The children were 11, 15, 16, and 17. And throughout the adoption process, Alisia, the eldest, did her best to hold the siblings together. But it was hard. And she was not yet a legal adult.
Throughout the adoption process, Alisia talked to her siblings and helped them prepare for the inevitable. She thought the most likely situation would be that the two girls would be adopted together and the boys would go elsewhere.
Then the impossible happened. Two loving people stepped into the siblings’ lives. They were Eric and Phyllis Watson. And against the odds, they wanted to adopt all four of the abused children. The couple was Gardner and had just gotten their license to foster children. But with these four siblings, they knew they had the option to adopt. And when the adoption agency called them with a first adoption case, they were intrigued and decided to listen to the possibility.
The siblings liked the Watsons. But they really wanted to be adopted as a family.
“We were thinking one foster child at a time. Maybe two?” Eric said. “We weren’t thinking four at once. The turning point for me was they were going to be split up, and I didn’t want to see that.”
The Watsons opened their hearts and the door of their home to the abused siblings. And for the first time in a long time, the brothers and sisters experienced love.
Phyllis remembers when Eric made the decision.
“When he woke up, he said, ‘We’re gonna take the kids,’” Phyllis said. “Eric had thought things over, and couldn’t imagine separating the siblings.”
Eric and Phyllis had no idea how they were going to make it work. But they knew it was the right choice. Despite both having full-time jobs, they decided to go for it and adopt all four siblings. In a matter of minutes, the Watson family tripled in size. And they all couldn’t be happier with the way things are going.
