[Mom-2-2]

We received a referral for a beautiful 3 year old boy. I am OK with not adopting a baby, but we were planning on a 1-2 year old to keep our family's birth order, as our youngest just turned 3 years old. Anyone have stories/ information about adopting in or out of birth order and why it is important or not? We are leaning toward accepting this referral and not worrying about getting "exactly" what we wanted but don't want to go in uninformed. It doesn't seem so important to me that it's worth waiting longer and saying no to such a beautiful child, but maybe I'm being naive. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!

[karla-k]

Congrats on the referral! There are a couple of things to consider.

#1, most likely this little boy has some delays due to being in an orphanage. Most of the time, you can count on 1 month delay for every 3 months of age. Extrapolate that out, and a 3 year old could very well be at the developmental level as a 2 year old. So, while your youngest child and this little boy are close in age chronologically, they are probably not close developmentally. This would make his adoption less disruptive of your birth order.

I have a friend with 8 & 10 year old boys. They adopted a 9 year old from Central Asia. Due to life in an orphanage, the 9 year old was more like a 6 year old maturity wise, developmentally, and socially. Even though he was in between their boys age wise, he really is in essence the youngest boy in their home.

#2, how is your 3 year old going to handle sharing attention with someone close to his age? Most 3 year olds can handle (to some extent) mom giving love and affection to a "baby" but it is harder to see them love and give attention to someone their own age. I think it is doable, but a 3 year old coming from an orphanage could have some attachment issues and you will need to be able to spend very quality time with him. Your 3 year old child now might have a hard time with that.

I hope your family can come to the best decision for your family and for this little boy!

Karla

[momraine]

Normally it's a bad idea, becuase older kids can be a danger to younger ones. However, being this close in age, the new child will probably not be bigger or more mature than your bio child, so it will probably work. There may be issues later, if the new child is less mature and doesn't catch up you will have issues with explaining who gets what privelege, but you should be able to handle it. I have two kids who are nine months apart, so in the summer they are the same age, however, they are two years apart in school and very far apart in maturity. I am able to use the grade thing for some arguments as to why one has priveleges the other doesn't, but it sometimes causes friction because of the maturity difference. Nothing we can't handle, but something to be aware of.

[Mom-2-2]

Thanks everyone for the replies. You've given me some things to think about as well as the support and encouragement I was needing. When we got our referral, it was just a picture and "age 3". Now we have the actual date of birth and the child is only 6 days older than our son! So, rather than adopting out of birth order, this is more an issue of "artificial twinning". I certainly wasn't expecting this, and would prefer that they not be competitive and in the same grade, but it looks like that would likely be the case in this situation. I do think the safety issue would be less of a concern though since this child is really not older than the children already in our home. We would just have to be careful to treat them as individuals. Due to the fact that they will be different races, and the "new" child will have some catching up to do with language and learning the house rules, I think that at first it will not really be like twins at all. As in most situations, being aware of potential problems and doing your best to avoid or deal with them is key. I don't want to pretend this won't be without challenges, but I am excited about it and think we can do it!