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Wow, supersport! I'm 27, my husband is 32, and we're in the initial stages of trying to adopt a sibling group of 3 from foster care. We're going to have to keep in touch!
We never really considered a single child adoption longer than it took us to learn about sibling groups. We've always wanted a medium-to-large family. A simplistic list of why we chose sibling groups over single kids would have to include things like:
*a truly bonded sibling group has proven their bonding ability--attachment issues are not as likely.
*children who go into foster care in the company of a sibling are usually less "freaked" by the whole thing, since they have at least one partner to cling to through the process.
*children who enter foster care as part of a sibling group are split from at least one sibling 85% of the time (that touched my heart on a personal level, and its one tiny piece of "the system" that I can do something about).
*and if we don't adopt a large group to start with, we'll be going through this again--and I'd rather not.
*being part of a sibling group that should be placed together is counted as a placement difficulty--meaning they "may" be special needs together but not if they were adopted individually.
While we're currently daydreaming about a group of 3, our house would allow a group of 5--and our agency offers special incentives to those who take in groups of 4 or more, so we are getting details of those incentives. We'd both be willing to stretch that far if the children were already legally free and we knew the overload of work wouldn't be undone by the children's return to bio family.
Some of the best advice I've heard came from a mother of twins--she says if you have a heart for multiples at all, you'd better hope to get them *first*, before you learn how little work a single child requires in comparison. Twins before a singleton make the singleton seem so easy---twins after a singleton make the twins seem impossible. I think that applies to an adoption, too. It will seem normal to us to adopt a group first, because we don't have a singleton to compare it to.
If I'm going to jump into this, I'm jumping in with both feet. Go telephone all your friends and start taking THEIR kids to events. I've borrowed so many kids--to the movies, the zoo, etc. We borrow in groups of 3 and I've loved it! Even one kid who's a holy terror--screaming at ushers in the movies, for example--is fast becoming my favorite. If you're supposed to adopt a group or if you're supposed to adopt difficult children, I think you know it in your heart.
Keep reading everything you can find--on any type of adoption--and see if you could handle the worst. Most kids aren't "the worst", but its better to be prepared and not need it than the other way around.
One more thing... on your applications you may want to be sure you're specificing a single or a sib group of TWO... between the ages of 4 and 8 you can fit a group of five, and I've seen it done!
Take care!
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