[homeschoolingrocks]

I am wondering what experiences others have had adding babies or younger children to their large families through domestic adoption. We have been fostering and adopting for 9 years but I guess because we are homeschooling and are experienced parents (9 total; 5 bio, 4 adopted) we are very rarely, almost never, offered the young children we would like to add to our family. This is exremely frustrating - seeing other families being offered excessive numbers of young kids and we get none!! It is also puzzling as we seem to have a good rapport with DSS, but we are "good with teens" ...For many reasons we are not interested in taking older kids at this time. We also have extremely limited financial resources (we farm) and so cannot afford international or private adoption. At least I think this is true. I have no experience with the private agencies. Any ideas? We are ready and able to take at least another two young kids

[gkasche]

Might want to check out [pm me for website] Good luck and God Bless. Karen

[Guitarmom]

Hi there! I don't have any advice for you, but I was just curious .... does your state have a limit on how many kids you can have in your home? I read stories about these wonderful large adoptive families,and wonder if they were granted exceptions, or if some states are more accepting of large famiilies.
we have 4 bio kids,and are only approved to adopt 2 kids. I dont' know if that 's specifically through the state,or if it would be the same for international.

oh,and something else I thought of - I've heard of familiies adopting younger children from Liberia -and the fees are not that bad -they are one of the least expensive countries. Also there are special needs inter. adoptions that sometimes have grants to help w/ costs.

[homeschoolingrocks]

I'm not sure of the NY law, but we were offered a sibling group of 5 when we still had 4 of our 5 birth kids at home. Usually they just apporve us for the number of beds we have available, up to 4 per bedroom, but in that case they turned a blind eye to the fact that we didn't even have quite enough beds at the time. So there doesn't seem to be a limit. I also know of a foster familiy here that has 9 teenage boys and another that has 6 adopted kids in a single-wide trailer and were given another 2 little ones - which seemed very crowded to me when I visited. Thanks for the leads. For those who've done international adoptions, how do you travel for any length of time with large families at home? We can't leave ours for 2 weeks! especially since we have a dairy farm! Are some countries more flexible about this than others? And age limits? We are both 52.

[mrsred]

Guitarmom, I am wondering if you are only approved to adopt two at a time. I mean, I wonder if you adopted two this year, if you could go back and adopt two more next year, etc., etc. By building your family gradually (more natural for sure, since even biological families rarely grow by more than two at a time), you will know when you have reached your limit. It would be awful to have 4 kids at home, then adopt a sib group of 4 and realize that was two too many.

[Guitarmom]

that could be the case - I want to ask our worker abou that, but I hate to bother her, I know she's so busy. I figure next time she contacts me I'll ask - hopefully next time I talk to her it's about a referral!!!!

[Guitarmom]

Many African countries offer escorts to bring the kids to the US - due to political violence,etc. in the countries. I believe Haiti and Guatemala offer that also, but I could be wrong. We would definitely go w/ a country that escorts, since dh and I couldn't both be gone out of the country.also, dh does not like to travel.

[Shelley]

I traveled to China alone a yr ago to bring home our 6th child. My dh stayed home with the other 5 and his mother came to stay and help out. China only requires that one parent travel. I believe that Ethiopia allows escorting along with the others mentioned. Good luck in your journey, Shelley