[jalapeno]

Originally Posted by oceanica

This makes me feel better that some of you have adopted kids close in age. Athena's new brother will be about 4 months younger if this adoption goes through. We read that it's bad to do "artificial twinning" on the internet but we aren't about to back out now.

I have found articles on artificial twinning mostly unhelpful and inapplicable to my situation. I don't know that there is truly ANY comprehensive study on the effects of artificial twinning. Every article I've seen ultimately references the OPINIONS of adoption professionals. I'm not knocking them. But it's not the same as a scientifically based study. And ultimately, the advice is much the same that you would give any parent. Treat your children as individuals. Respect their different personalities and skills. Be attuned to their needs developmentally and emotionally. It certainly is challenging adding multiple new family members within a few weeks or months (which is not actually the case for many "artificial twins" of course). But it definitely can be done.

I'm also interested in any responses for biblemom's question. It will certainly be interesting to see how things play out when my boys are older. Older DS is actually very small for his age and younger DS is quite big for his age (they weighed about the same when DS1 was 8 months and DS2 was 4 months!). So I don't think they'll be mistaken for twins much longer. But I'm sure people will assume DS2 is older. The way their birthdays work out, DS1 should actually start school a year ahead of DS2. So . . . interesting. We'll have to see what happens!