|
My family has had an incredibly positive experience with toddler adoption. I have three bio daughters (11. 8. 7) and had a somewhat unenthusiastic husband when we first considered adoption. I was incredibly worried that I would potentially mess up our good family life but we decided to proceed as a family and not a day goes by that someone does not thank me for clearing the way to bring Elijah to our family, including my husband. He came home a week before he turned 2. He has been home 7 months and he is an unspeakable joy. The girls adore him. There friends beg their parents for a little brother. Elijah ADORES his daddy and the feeling is mutual.
Strangers tell us how happy he seems and what a joy he is to watch. He potty trained faster than any of my girls and he is smart as a whip. He picked up english so fast, I never felt there was a language barrier.
I will say that I give all the credit to his foster family whom had cared for him since birth and Elijah's wonderful personailty. Amazingly, his foster family was an exact replica of our family and I think that helped but he was obviously well loved and cared for. I will echo the above poster that stability in care can be critical in attachment.
We just had our second post-placement visit and our social worker mentioned that she had never seen attachment issues with the toddlers she had followed up. She also mentioned that in her experience, children from Guatemala seem to have less attachment issues than some other countries. I realize that we are very lucky and that attachment can be a challenge (of course I think that is true with children of any age and adopted or bio). I had researched toddler adoption ad nauseum and was armed with techniques etc. I just really ended up not needing to do anything different than I had with my other children.
Hope that helps. Feel free to contact me if you have additional questions.
Tiersa
|