[Prettyboicris]

My wife and I were set on adopting a child 5 years old or younger. However this past weekend we met 4 different teenage girls at an adoption meet and greet. Out social worker is a huge advocate for people doing older child adoption but we have reservations about it. We are afraid that we would be doing it just because we want a child "now" and there are so many teens in our state waiting to be adopted. How did others decide? Did you know from the beginning or did you decide based on the child/teen?

[jaenelle]

We are also considering adopting an older child; however we have a daughter in our home and obviously she would have to be our first concern. Her physical safety and emotional well-being are very important to us, obviously, and any child we foster/adopt will have to fit in with that.

[Binny]

We knew before we got the homestudy done that we wanted school age siblings. We have two boys in the home, and were very clear that the children we adopted could not even be considered if they were a risk to them or to the animals. There are lots of great older children in need of a good home. We have been blessed to be matched with two girls ages 12 and 10. I think if you keep your options open and dont rush into anything, you will be surprised at how the match may not be what you expected, but will be perfect. When we started out, we had a specific group of 5 AA kids in mind ages 5 - 9. They were already placed by the time we got the HS done. Now several months later, having met the girls, I know that they were truely an amazing fit and the very best match. Just because you expand your search to older children, doesnt mean you are locked into a match as soon as you get picked. you will have time to review the files and decide on a case by case basis.

[MilehighDad]

We decided from very early in our marriage that we wanted to have birth kids and adopt older kids from foster care. This plan has been playing out for 14 years now and I wouldn't go back and change any of it, although it certainly didn't end up looking exactly like we originally intended. I thought we could have our kids all clustered together in age so we could do activities together, but instead we ended up with an 11-year spread. Oh well! I have a LONG write-up of our whole story and reason why we followed this path, but I'm not quite ready to post it yet.

I think it's awesome that you are getting involved, please ask all the questions you want!

[kenzie_dark]

We've got younger kids in the home, so like the previous posters, there are certain children that won't be a good fit for our family. However when we started down the adoption route, we made the decision to adopt older children (8 to 12). Both to keep an age gap, and hopefully different needs, between the younger children and any older children, and also to have an idea of what behaviour or diagnosis to expect. We weren't looking at teenagers, since we didn't want to jump right in the hormones off the bat (although 10 isn't too young for puberty).

That being said, we're now looking at a sibling group that includes one child younger then our desired age and one several years older. So far it seems like it may be a good fit, and as we get more information we can see.