older child adoption
I am responding to an archive post about adopting older children and how the family bonds after several years.
So far we are in our 3rd year. we adopted 3 sisters. Two of whom grew up together in one orphange and 1 developmenally delayed child who grew up in another orphanage. I had this fantasy that if we adopted all 3 of them and put them together in a family they would grow to love each other and really appreciate what I did. Oh by the way they are 16, 14 and 12 now.
The two girls barely tolerate their other sister and have never " grown close ". After 3 years and the teen hormones are kicking in we are beginning the teen battles.
All kids are a lot of work. I think many adoptive parents go in with the fantasy of a beautiful family and come away with a lot of difficulties that are just going to be present when you adopt kids.
We are hoping that by the 5th year we should have a better stabiliy with our girls. It takes a lot of time to habituate kids into families when they have never had a family before.
Carol
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