[Svartinge]

Hi all

This is "our" first post to the forum. My wife (40) and I (36) are looking to adopt from China a pair of siblings. We felt this would be best for the child to have a biological brother or sister. We would like to hear stories (both bad and good!) from other couples or singles that have performed this sort of adoption and what we could expect in the near future.

Thanks in advance

Svartinge!

[drmalcolm]

Greetings, Svartinge--
Welcome to the forum! It's nice to have a prospective dad post on here, too!

Just to clarify for anyone who may want to answer your post, what age siblings are you interested in? I am thinking you may have more luck with older children than younger, but I'll leave that to someone else to answer who has experience (I'm only beginning the adoption process myself).

Good luck,
Christina

[Svartinge]

Hi

We are looking ideally for twins. If that is not possible, then we would like to see that the age of the siblings is between 1-3 years.

Best

Mark (Svartinge is the suburb we live in :-) )

[thundrrds]

Mark;
Other than twins, which is uncommon, the chance of siblings that young (1-3) is even rarer. There are few cases known of actual siblings being adopted. Does it happen; yes but it's truly truly rare. I personally know of no instances.
If adopting siblings is very important to you you may want to look at some other countries for adoption.
There are also additional (perceived) income qualifications for persons adopting twins; at least that seems to hold true in the States as well as (perceived) preferences for a higher level of education for the parent who is or will be the primary source of income. I don't believe any of this is truly policy with CCAA but at least in the States social workers follow certain guidelines for approving families for twins.
We've adopted twice from China. We requested that daughter #2 be from the same region as daughter #1. We wanted them to share that 'heritage'. Our request was fullfilled and both our girls are from Guangdong Province.

Good luck with your decision.

Joanne

[Marshie]

The only non-twin siblings I know of to be adopted from China were around 13 and 8 years of age. That's not to say no others were, but those are the only ones I've heard anyone talk about (and trust me, I'm on every chinese adoption discussion group under the sun rofl).
I think if the parents die and truly orphan the children, the relatives in China are much more likely to raise the child themselves than for the child to be internationally adopted out. Sharon will probably have better information regarding that though.

I am sponsoring a little girl in Haiti and noticed there are several sibling groups available there. You might look into Haiti if you have your heart set on siblings. Other countries have siblings available too, Haiti is just the only one I know of offhand.