[Susan Ward]

As everyone has said, older child adoption success varies from child to child and family to family.

I consider the adoption of my daughter a great success. That does not mean it's been easy. In fact, it was often horrendous. She was six when I adopted her. She was cute, curious, fun, and smart. She was also rage-filled and controlling. Eventually, I found her the right therapy and after 17 challenging months of attachment therapy, she was attached.

She's now been home almost five years. She's an all A student, gets along with peers, does her chores willingly (most of the time!), is fun to travel with, etc. Parenting her has been the most challenging thing I've ever done. It's changed my life forever. I do know I've been blessed with parenting a wonderful child.

If people adopting older children are looking for perfect, well-behaved, emotionally mature, developmentally on target kids, they'll probably be disappointed. If they're looking to help a child be the best they can be, they'll probably have a successful adoption.