[tobeafamily]

Shana,

Understand that 'artificial twinning' is a controversial subject in adoption. It is different from sibling adoption. Artifiical twinning is generally defined within the community as adopting two unrelated children who biologically could not be siblings - i.e. ages are less than 10 months apart.

There are reasons people are against this, primarily because children whose ages are so close have very demanding and different developmental needs. Babies are not 'blank slates', they come with very definite ideas about who they are.

They also may have vastly different personalities, instincts, etc - even more so than biological twins who do share geneaological heritage. Twins share a bond formed in utero that singletons do not - even fraternal twins. Their first sounds in utero are that of each other's heartbeats and their first movements are of each other.

People have had successes parenting artificial twins, there have also been failures, including several interruptions that I've personally been aware of. How devistating for a child to lose their family twice because their afamily took on more 'than they can handle' figuring their children would be 'twins' when they weren't.

If it were me, and I wanted to parent two or more, I'd adopt siblings, or children who are biologically not artificial twins, i.e. at least ten months apart in age.

JMHO

Regina