[jeffg]

Would adopting a niece be a bad idea? My wife and I have three biological childeren and are considering adopting our niece who is 9 years old. She is the daughter of my wifes brother. He has a lot of personal problems and every one of his kids is really messed up. He has a son that is about to go into state custody. The 9 year old niece is the youngest in her family and my wife and I think she could be turned around and have a productive life if she gets out of the environment she is in. We have not approached her father but am sure he would give her up to us if we wanted. I'm a little concerned about adopting someone within our extended family because we would have frequent contact with her family. Are we asking for problems? Another concern I have is the impact on our childeren. We hope she is not too far gone already that she would become a negative influence on our childeren. Also I am of the opinion that if we did take her I would want full legal custody and adopt her as my own child. I wouldn't want the biological parents to have any custody rights. Anyone out there have experience with this type of situation? Any advice would be appreciated.

[CalandraLark]

How old are your kids? The biggest issues with children with problems influencing their siblings is often if they are older and particularly if they are placed in possitions of responsibility over the younger children.

I haven't had a lot of personal experiences with adopting relatives, but we had family friends that eventual adopted two of their neices from a pretty disfunctional family. It worked out well for them mostly because, the kids were young, and the family spent a lot of concentrated efforts to spend enough time making up for past issues, and the other children were very supportive. It usually comes down to how much effort and time you're willing to take to love and suffer through untill she becomes a child with a stable image of the world.

Personally my greatest fear if I were doing this would be time, I would really be aware of how much we would be able spend with her. While I might still keep working if I was orginally, I'd really want to have at least one parent working less than full time if at all possible. Half this girl's life hasn't been spent without supportive available parents and just like other children, she needs that to grow up well, so there's a lot of make up time.

[jeffg]

Thanks for the reply. My childeren are 9,6 and 2. If they where older I would not be as worried about the impact of adopting. As far as spending time. We are fortunate that my wife is able to stay home with our kids so they always have someone there for them.

[CalandraLark]

I think if you both feel that this is something you should do it could work pretty well. If you take care to watch over your neices interactions with the other kids and do your best to explain to your kids why she might not always behave well, you should be able to protect them. And kids grow up well when they have self-sacrifice and service to others modeled by their parents. It's a good thing that you're concerned ahead of time. Being aware of potential problems is a great way to proatively parent, if you expect problems and think of ways to deal with them ahead of time, they end up being a lot smaller than they might have been, or even than you expect.

One thing that should make it easier on your kids is that your oldest is the same age, thus he/she won't be displaced in birth order. The biggest problems between blended families is fiting someone into a different birth order than they were born to. Your neice might have some issues not being the baby anymore but your kids shouldn't have any extra issues because of birth order. And it may be that the extra attention of having attentive parents around will make up for suddenly being a middle child (as your oldest will always act like an oldest even if your neice is a little older).

I would definately agree with you about legally adopting her and setting whatever limits you feel best for the rest of the family, it's an important step to making her feel that you are her family. I'd also take care to explain as much of what's going on to her as possible. Uprooting a kid, even from an unstable home is slightly tramatic, simply explaining to her that you want her to have a safe, loving, and stable home and how the different rules and changes you're making are all to help her have that, can really help her feel that it's for her not something that's being done to her.

Good luck! As a parent who's really thought this out you have a better chance of making it work than some one who jumps in without any qualms.

[2manyks]

ive done this. its been tough. we took in my brothers kids 2 yrs ago, adopted them 1 yr ago. the older child is doing fantastic. he was 7 when he came. the younger child has been a nightmare. we are finding out she was probably a drug baby and struggles in school and life. one hard thing is the displacement of all my kids. the new kid was the oldest, now he is the middle child. the youngest child is also now a middle child. they both struggle w/ this. my best advice is get her into therapy right away. we contacted our local united way agency and got a referral for a really great play therapist. that helped both the kids and me the most. as far as visites go - make the stricktest agreement and then when your new daughter is fully integrated into your family and attached to you, then you can start visits, as a family, to her dad. another thing on attachment. study up. there are some great books out there. i have tons to say and if you do get into this and need a support person, feel free to pm me.