[Elle83]

Hi! DH and I are looking to adopt through SWAN and are currently considering a 10 yo boy. We want to continue fostering (we do plan to take a break while settling an adoptive child in though!) and since I am at home during the day (student at night) we get a lot of referrals for young kids. We do hope to adopt more then once and if we are able to adopt one of our foster children and were also able to adopt this 10 yo then there would be a 5-8 year age gap b/w our kids.

DH is worried they would never have a sibling bond as a result. There is 6 years b/w him and his sister and they have a very distant relationship. I know some ppl who have anything up to 12 years b/w sibs and are close.

Any words of widsom?

[reapingjoy]

It may depend more on the gender of the sibs, but I can give you my personal experience. My brothers are 5 and 12 years older than me. I am not close at all with the oldest one, even though I worshipped him when I was little. I am not very close to my next brother either, but he's just not a really talkative type person, so maybe that's why. I don't have a "bad" relationship with either of them...just not particularly close.

With my sons, my oldest 2 (21 months apart) have always been the best of friends. The ones who are 4-9 years younger are not. Part of that may be that my 14 y.o. has special needs & behavior issues that affect his relationships. Maybe my boys will be closer as they are adults and age doesn't make such a difference. There is a huge difference between a 10 year old and a 17 year old.

Then again, we tried adopting a 3 year old foster girl who we were hoping would be very close to our 2 year old (they are 15 mths. apart) and the 3 y.o. has such severe cognitive & behavioral SN (all undisclosed at the time of matching), not to mention the basic overbearing personality that she has, & the 2 girls never would have had the kind of relationship I had hoped they would.

I guess you just never know. One benefit of fostering before adopting (we were straight adoption & are now disrupting) is that you will get the chance to see if your kids get along and you can get a feel for how their relationship is before making a permanent commitment.

Good luck!

[Kat-L]

Originally Posted by Elle83

DH is worried they would never have a sibling bond as a result. There is 6 years b/w him and his sister and they have a very distant relationship. I know some ppl who have anything up to 12 years b/w sibs and are close.

Any words of widsom?

I have six brothers and sisters. There are 17 years between the oldest and the youngest. I'm close to all but one sibling. I'm closest to a sister who is 8 years younger than me. And I've very close to my youngest brother who is 12 years younger than me.Two sisters of mine were a year apart and fought constantly growing up. My brothers were 18 months apart and were (are) inseperable.

My daughter Maire-Kate was 7 when we adopted Hanna (who was an infant). They are super close and very bonded.

You can encourage older children & younger children to develop a closer relationship. There are no guarantees on how close the kids will be regardless of the age difference.