[ThatDayinSeptember]

My husband and I have been discussing adopting an older child. While we both agree that we do not want a teen we have thought a lot about children ages 5-12.

I am 28 and my DH is 30 years old. We do not have any children of our own. OUr only experience with children comes from time spent with our nieces and nephews and the babysitting jobs we had as teens.

Would we even be considered? Or are we being naive?

[joskids]

We're are very experienced parents. I parented 4 children in my previous marriage and my husband helped to parent my youngest, who was 10 when we met. Adopting older children (hurt children) is not an easy task. I would never say you are too young, but I will say that it was harder than I thought it could be when we tried to add a 8 and 11 year old to our current family with a 5, 6 and 7 year old. The older children were manipulative and, no matter how closely I supervised, they negatively affected the younger children. EVERYONE told us not to add older children to the mix but, we thought being experienced and being very knowledgable about adoption issues (I have a friend that adopted 11 children and we had also fostered children of all ages), we could do it. We ended up having to let the girls go before the adoption finalized because I didn't feel that I could be a security guard in my own home and our first priority was our other adopted children. We were placed with an infant a year ago and it was an immediate bond and she has been a joy in our family. There is so much to learn about adoption, particularly older child adoption. You'll need to go into it with open eyes and tons of knowledge and as much information about a child you are considering as is possible. Agencies NEVER KNOW all there is to know about a child. The kinds of internal pain these children suffer from abuse and neglect, EVEN IN THE FOSTER CARE SYSTEM, is beyond what you would consider and it will strongly affect their abilities to bond to a family. It takes years of a committed family to begin to normalize their thought processes. You're doing the right thing to come to this board and start asking questions. Many families on this board have successfully adopted older children but they have very strong resources and commitment to do so. I would hate to see you in a situation like us, with very big holes in our hearts for having to let a child go that we loved and for disrupting any child from an already precarious balance that they have in their lives before you even come into the picture. Best wishes. My thoughts and prayers are with anyone who has done older child adoption. These are definitely angels here on earth. And they are blessed to have these children in their lives.

[crick]

I don't think you are too young for that age group, but to me it has less to do with the age and more to do with a specific child's background. For example, a 5 year old who has been severely abused with multiple placements would be harder to parent than an 8 year old who had more stability and less abuse.

As for experience... honestly, I don't think a lot of the experience really counts for all that much when adopting from foster care. Meaning....a parent who has been raising healthy children can be just as unprepared as a non parent if not educated or informed on older child adoption. It helps...but it's not a deal breaker decision in my opinion.

I would just learn all you can about older child adoption and really be honest with yourself as to what issues or backgrounds you feel you couldn't handle. (sexual abuse, drug exposure, fire setting, etc)

While every child in foster care will have a background to overcome and need "re-parenting", not everything is black and white. Not every child will be an extreme situation and not every child will seem to "breeze through", so that's why it's just really important to be informed and expect pretty much anything! lol.

Just my personal opinion, based on my own experience and other's, I think going through an agency is more often than not a more helpful experience than going directly through the state program. Just seems to be a lot more support and back up available.

My dh and I became first time parents when we adopted our 4 kids ages 2-5. We had the strong support of a great agency working with us. They helped us by providing the classes and educational tools about kids in foster care and all kinds of issues or situations we might expect. Also helped us by reviewing the kids' files, meeting with the social worker and meeting the kids, which allowed them to share their experienced thoughts with us.

I would read a lot and some books to check into are "Adopting the Hurt Child", "Love & Logic" and "Adopting the Older Child". Also check into basic foster care classes to start with, to get an overview.

[radkat]

I was 26 when I adopted my first child. (I was 25 when I started fostering)
My age range was 3 to 9 years old.
The only experience I had was babysitting, also.
I went into foster/adopt with some pretty big dreams and ideas. I thought that just loving a child was all that was needed to make a difference. I didn't research the issues that come along with some older adopted children. I had no idea what RAD was (Reactive Attachment Disorder).
My advice to you is to read, research and try to find other families in your area to netwrok with. Having a strong support system is one of the most important things you'll need.

There are some great blogs that are written by the adoptive parents of older children. I highly recommend that you spend some time reading them. Two of my favorites are:
The Bodie Bunch
The Beaver Family

You won't have any problems being considered as an adoptive parent, as long as you meet your agencies criteria, but to be successful you really need knowledge and support.

Kathy

[ThatDayinSeptember]

Kathy, Crick and Josie thank you so much for your responses. Before coming to these forums I had no clue about some of the disorders (like RAD and ODD) that older foster children may have. It scares me A LOT!

Thank you again.

[akcskye]

My husband is 44 and I am 33, and our children moved in last year.

We have no bios, and our experience was baby-sitting or niece/nephew watching.

We got the urge to adopt in September of 2004 after falling in LOVE with a picture of a child on Adoptuskids.org.

We began educating ourselves about adopting an older child, and through that year, we learned SO much.

Our adoption was finalized on April 9th of this year. Our kids are now 11 and 10 (were 10 and 9 when they moved in), and it has been an absolute blessing...and most people probably wouldn't believe how smooth the transition has been, considering what the kids came from.

Looking back, re-reading that boy's bio (I had saved it on my pc), we'd have never looked at his bio knowing NOW what we didn't know then.

Just take this waiting time to educate yourself about ANYTHING adoption, and keep asking questions.

BEST OF LUCK to you!

[kimmom]

From everything I have read it sounds like not having any children is a plus when adopting an older child. It keeps you from having to "protect" bio children from achildren and allows you to spend more time working through some of the issues the adopted kids may have to overcome. It is so sad that there are so many children that have parents that cant even be trusted to raise them. It is even worse IMO when children are returned to terrible parents "in their best interest" and end up being too old or too broken to join most of the many families that would like to adopt. Sorry for ranting. I just get really mad when I think about how these children are being failed!

[joskids]

"Kimom" you're not alone in feeling mad about how these children are being failed. In this country, we continue not to make our children our top priority. I won't go any further because if I get started, I won't stop. We all need to pray about this.