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I agree also. These older children come into the family with many experiences (experiences our biological children don't have). In fact, my 7 yo recently placed daughter has taught my 16 and 12 yo biological sons some interesting things....
An older child will be quite challenging. I can almost guarantee that your biological children will ask at some point if the new child can be returned. There will be resentment. It won't be a great big happy family for a long time.
I am SO glad there are 5 years between my youngest and our new daughter, for a lot of reasons. First, children from foster care are usually developmentally delayed. Therefore, they can't be treated like another child of the same age. If there is an age difference, this discrepancy isn't as noticable. Also, my new daughter requires a disproportional amount of my time and attention. I think children kind of expect this if the child is younger.
I don't mean this harshly, but I truly think you are dreaming if you think your daughter and your new child will get along as siblings any time soon. They have such different backgrounds, experiences, and expectations.
I really believe is adopting in birth order. I know others have done it out of order with success, but I'm not one of them.
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