[sallypz]

Hi. Don't give up hope. I started the adoption process in my late 40's. And as a single (widowed) mom. I choose a foreign adoption because I knew someone who had adopted recently and had good luck with it. It took me about a year to gather all the required paperwork. I had to make two trips to the adoptive country. Met some more Americans while over there. We were each getting children from different orphanages so I got to see a couple different orphanages. There are hundreds, thousands of older children in orphanages in countries around the world. They picked out the child for me & tried to pick someone that resembled my own features from a photo I'd sent. My daughter was 6 years old when I adopted her (she's now 10). I felt that at my age and because I was doing this as a single mom an older child (not a baby) was a good choice for me. It was sad to see all the children in the orphanages. My heart breaks for them. At one point I was sitting alone in the hallway at the orphanage, two little girls came up to me and said in broken English, "You American? Take me home with you." It hurt, made me cry not to be able to take them too. I have a grown up daughter also, natural born, she is now married and I recently (last week) became a Grandma too. So now my adoptive daughter has a little nephew to play with too. The adoption process was a huge success. Of course there have been problems, All children that live in orphanages have developmental problems simply because of the instutional environment. She also did not speak any English, and I not a word of her native language. As a small child her understanding of the whole thing was limited also, as were (are) her emotional reactions. Some regression after adoption is normal. Because she had never been in school before and did not speak English she had to do kindergarden twice. She is now 10 in second grade. She is now fluent in English, but there is some resistance to learning school subjects. She struggles. I attribute that to the lack of a rich, encouraging baby and toddler environment because of her early life in an institution. I try to work with her and help as much as I can with her school work. She, like all orphanage children, had some nutritional issues. At age 6 she was only wearing a size 3. Although she has grown rapidly on an American diet I think she may always be small in stature because of the early nutritional deprivation. Her health history is mostly unknown. But she seems to be in general good health. She did (does) have some abandonment issues that I've noticed. I noticed this one day comming out of the shower, she was sitting on the floor outside the door. I asked her, "Why are you sitting there? Were you afraid Mommy was going away?" She said that yes she was afraid I was gone. She almost always sits outside the bathroom door when I shower, however, this is becoming a less often thing. i didn't make a bid deal of it, just reassured her, and it seems the behavior is diminishing on it's own.
We are doing pretty good. Of course I wish the economy was better and that I could afford more things for her.
It would take a long post to tell my whole story. Perhaps at a future date I will tell more. I hope I've told enough to help you feel better and more hopeful about adopting as an older adult. (I'm now 55, still a single mom, and handling things OK). I think the cut off age for starting an adoption process in many countries is 50. But even if the WEB site says that, and you are a bit older, or on the edge of the age limit, call them anyway. The age limit may not be as fixed as you might think.