[lizzieisfullofhope]

Hi, I am new here. My husband and I have been trying for 2 years now to adopt through the state of WA (dshs). We have two bio daughters ages 8 and 9.
We have just been chosen to adopt 3 sisters from Oregon. They are 5, 9, and 11. Every time we talk about adopting the 3 girls (except my family) people always say, "WHAT? Are you crazy, you really need to think about this, 5 is way too many." Everyone my husband talks to (mostly other men that he works with) say that it will be bad for our relationship, that it will take away from our two daughters, we will always be struggling with money, that we never will be able to go places. I think it is a bunch of crock, yes we will have to budget diffferent, we will have to balance the attention of the girls, we will have to be more resourceful for vacations but nothing that will be too major.
To me, I see it as gaining 3 more beautiful daughters. Yes, I know with older children, you have a lot of "thorns" that go along with the "flowers" but that is part of adopting older children. I know that yes, my two daughters now will not be able to have as much as before, but do they really need to get everything they want, if it is not really that important? I realize that, it is going to be a lot more chaotic when we go places. We had our first visit with them this weekend, and some places it was a bit difficult but when you have children that have never had "you need to stay with us, don't run in the parking lot, you cannot just go off without an adult" that is to be expected, it will get better later right, once you teach them boundries?
My question is, how big is too big for a family? Can any of you BIG adopted families help with advice, pro's and con's? How do you handle transtitioning of bio and adopted children wanting your undivided attention? My husband was a little overwhelm because the 3 girls were fighting over my husbands attention (their real dad was always leaving for long periods of time, then reappearing, just to disappear again) at times he felt that he was not giving enough attention to our girls.
My husband is just now rethinking, he is afraid now that maybe "5" girls is too many, since he is never hearing anything positive about this. The girls are coming up next week for their 2nd visit with us, we will have them for 5 days. We are waiting for WA approval to mentor for Oregon until they can actually come live with us. (which is frustratingly long)
I told my husband that he needs to give it more then the first visit, and to go with what he feels, not what others feel. His biggest problem is, he (we both) feel completely in love with the youngest and we know that we will with the oldest too. The middle girl (9) is a struggle, she shows little emotion, and when she doesn't want to do something, she shuts down completely, like a statue. My husband is afraid that he might not be able to "love" her like the other two or our daughters. I told him that, in time that might change. That this weekend was a huge thing to them, not only that, the DSHS office decided to have the "goodbye" meeting with their mom two days before we officially met the girls. They were told that this was the last time they would see or talk to their mom. So I am sure that had a lot to do with the middle girl but I know from reading the case file that she does just "shut down" when she doesn't want to do something. So it is something that we will have to work with. Which I can handle, my husband is not so sure. He is struggling cause he doesn't know what to do. He just doesn't know if this is the right thing now.
ANY ADVICE please!!!! Sorry so long and kind of scattered.

[crick]

I don't know if 5 in general is too many...only you can really answer that. I don't think it's the number of children that present any concerns really but rather the background and possible issues that the new additions will add to your family.

If you have read up on attachment, grief, loss, their background etc. and feel you can address these issues and are prepared for a long transition/bonding period, then it's not really the number of children you have but the time you have to address all the possibilities.

We adopted 4 at once and got the "Are you nuts???" and all that too. We ignored those because we knew it was right for us and were prepared for the challenges ahead. We did not have children already though, so we did not have that issue to deal with. I hope that some here who have adopted after having bio children will chim in with suggestions and share their experiences.

While I wouldn't say it's as easy as "everything goes well after you teach them boundaries" etc., there can be great ways to prepare for all this. I would really suggest you ask the cw if they were attached to their mom/foster mom and really find out as much as their background as you can. Helping kids heal from the backgrounds they've had can present a lot of challenges, and yet it really depends too on what kind of background they had and what kind of help they've had up til now etc.

I do question the timing of the goodbye visit with meeting you, that isn't the way to do it, imo. So I do worry if the girls will "blame" you in some way...that they said goodbye to mom because of you. I would talk to the cw and therapists about this aspect too.

I am going to link your thread on the Spec. Needs forum so you will get more replies.

[snuffie]

You sound like you are a wonderful family. And I believe that only you can decide what is best for your family.

We have very dear friends who have 2 grown sons and adopted 4 children all at once from another country! They heard the comments that you are hearing but decided to pray on it and in the end went with their own gut feelings. The adoption took place about 5 years ago and they've never looked back! The kids are all very well adjusted wonderful kids. Our friend has homeschooled all of them. The older two are successful adults who have even babysat for the youngest. It has all worked out. Yes, there have been challenges but they've been met.
I just thought you may like to hear a positive experience.

Best wishes to you!

Snuffie

[Kat-L]

Originally Posted by lizzieisfullofhope

My question is, how big is too big for a family?.

I'm a single mom with two daughters (9 years and 2.5 years). I also have a foster son who is 15 months old and a foster daughter who is 8 months old. Foster baby girl has two older sisters that I would love to have but I'm only licensed for 5 children (total) so the siblings would put me over the license.

I love big families. Is it a lot of work? YES! As a single mom working full-time, there often are not enough hours in the day for all I want to do. But for me, the benefits of raising these kids far outweighs the negatives (And the negatives aren't really even that bad: endless laundry, three trips to and from the car each morning and evening taking babies in and out of car seats, etc).

[Kansas Girl]

Well, we're not a BIG family....tho I still wish there were more kids in our family! It's not a question of how big is too big - I think with the right situation big is just fine. I will reply because I think you do need to listen to your husband - I think he has a very valid concern about how much attention these three will require, on top of the two you already have. All joking about making decisions about kids without the husband's input aside, maybe this would be too much for him or this just isn't the right situation for him. Maybe it's not the question of three, but whether or not this is the right three. If he isn't comfortable with the situation now, how are you going to resolve those issues? The other red flag for me would be the children's ages - how will your bio nine year old feel with one older than her and one more her same age? Will she still have the "rights and privileges" of being the oldest and the firstborn? Please think about that. It will be difficult enough for her and her sister to now have to divide mom & dad's attention with three other siblings.

JMO...

good luck!

Fran

[lizzieisfullofhope]

I will fill you in on what we know of the girls. They were taken out of there home starting 2000, due to medical neglect and overall neglect. They lived in filth. Dad has bipolar, so there was a lot of yelling, fighting, and a lot of times were dad would just leave for long periods of time. Mom just does not have the mentality to raise her children, chose the dad over children. The girls were finally taken out of the home and placed with the m. grandma in 2006 until current. Because mom and dad just couldn't get it together. The girls were never physical abused and have been in seeing a councilor since being placed in Grandma's home. The mom and dad since 2006 had supervised visits only for the past 3 years and currently (other then this past Thursday) had all contact cut off to prepare the girls for adoption. The two oldest girls had been sexually molested by their day care provider but told right away, and was placed with a sexual abuse councilor to deal with it asap.
The two oldest girls are in special ed for reading and math, it seems that education was not much of a priority. Which is okay, I have worked as a special ed para pro, so them being in Sped is not an issue.
The two oldest girls do have an attachment to their bio mother and dad but more so with Grandma. This weekend the two oldest did ask if they could call us mom and dad right away, and every where we went the oldest annouced to everyone that we were going to adopt them and be their new family, so she was very opened and excited about it. Is that a good sign? The littlest one, I think just doesn't really understand what is going on, that little thing never stopped smiling the whole weekend.
Our girls and the three girls got a long really good, I was so amazed by how good they got a long.
We have talked to our daughters about how this would be a "forever" thing not just a weekend here and there. Both girls said that they would like for the girls to be their sisters. We explained that their "birth order" will be different. Chey wouldn't be the oldest and Chyna wouldn't be the youngest anymore. And at this time, they say it doesn't matter, I don't think we have ever treated them like "the oldest or youngest" any way. If anything Chey is excited about having a "sister who will be like a twin" and the two actually were together most of the weekend.
We are very aware that there will be a lot of downs but I am always the hopeful looking at the times were there will be a lot of ups too.
I guess what worries us the most is the middle girl, when she didn't want to listen, it was as if you could actually see this "veil" going down, and she would just stare off and not speak, just completely shut down. It was as if there was nothing there. I know I can handle it, I would rather deal with that then the fits my oldest does at times. We do get a chance to talk to the councilor, the social worker is a getting a waiver to allow us the chance to talk to her, to give us a better understanding of all of the issues that we have not been told about and the stragies they are doing to help the behaviors.
I feel we can do this but I came from a large blended family, my husband, the worrier, on the other hand came from a small family who stayed in a box so to speak. I look at it like, when I was pregnant with our first child, I never thought I'd be able to love another child but then came my youngest and I was able to love them the same, it was just about balancing. So I think even though we will have "3" at one time, I think we will learn to balance the attention and love for all 5 right?
Thank you to everyone again for the advice and comments.

[Tudu]

The shut down thing is a common occurance here. All of my sib group do it every day, this has been happening for almost 2 years with no end in sight. Soon after they moved in those little shut down episodes turned into full blown violent attacks against me, for not being their "real" mother, for stealing them, for providing them with food, or for no reason that I could figure out. I had experience with traumatised children and knew to expect this, I worry you may have on some beautiful rose colored glasses. We all have them in the begining to some degree and enjoy this time b/c all too soon the real fun will begin.

I added 6 at once, everyone called me crazy to my face and behind my back. DH was on board the entire time and I couldn't have done it w/o him completely supportign it. I think you need to really consider your DH's feelings in this, he needs to be on board in every way or you will set yourself up for some fantastic games of triangulation.

The pressure on your other children will be immense. They will more than likely lose their clothes, toys, their sanity for brief periods, and your attention. You already mentioned the new girls needing your DH's attention more than usual. It gets worse. One of mine calculates and manipulates ways to get my DH's attention from the other children and me. She shows no emotion and this translates into no empathy or sympathy. She is a VERY scary child, she seems sweet and helpful but she is just playing a game. SHe had been praised by all her previous foster parents for being so easy. She was molesting her siblings for years and one day I heard her talking to them when she thought I didn't hear her. She was cruel, we were shocked.

We were told a lovely little story similar to yours. Their parents couldn't care for them properly due to MR, they had been living with extended family that loved them dearly, and had been sexually abused by a friend of the family but had received therapy. They had been with the foster families almost from the begining, every detail or question we had was minimized and never let on the serious issues we were going to see, they had always been in therapy, and they were capable of attaching. None of it completley true. I believe that physical abuse would have been easier for the kids to deal with, the neglect is far more damaging to our children long term.

I think it is entirely possible to adopt a large sib group and would love to attempt this again. Make sure you are very prepared, not what the agency requires but really prepared. Seek Attachment Therapy ASAP, even if you think it is stupid or they are fine. Make a schedule to spend time with the chidlren individually, this is one of the most important things you can do. Spend time alone with your DH, put the kids to bed early every night. It can work if you are prepared to give it your everything. I wish you a great deal of luck and welcome you here.

[lucyjoy]

Calling you mom and dad right away is not a good sign.

In my opinion, neglect does far more long term damage to kids then outright abuse.

I'd want to know on what basis it was decided that the children were attached to bio family. Did they truely grieve their losses? And if they are attached to bio grandma, why aren't they staying there?

Those would be some of the BIG questions I'd be concerned with rather then family size. I have 9 boys and the amount wasn't an issue, but the kids did bring a lot of trauma with them. If I'd have had healthy birth kids, they would have been very damaged by the addition of some of my kids. Something to think seriously about.

My suggestion to anyone adopting older children is to learn as much as you can about attachment parenting and attachment disorder.

Do NOT put your bio girls in the same room with your adopted girls until everyone has been healthy for a year.

Can you do this? Yes. But it is hard, your kids will miss out. There were times I couldn't take my kids places they needed to be due to dealing with another child's drama. Lots to consider.

[Adoption_Ally]

As some of the others have written about, I would do a lot more research about the issues these girls are facing. And, if your DH is not 100%+ behind this, the stress of these girls is going to have a major negative impact on your marriage. And no, it will NOT be okay once they learn boundaries. You cannot love them enough to make it all better - unfortunately that's not the way it works.

You may not feel that you've done much in terms of the 'older'-'younger' child. I'm willing to bet that you aren't an oldest - those of us who are highly value our position in the family. Adding an older daughter who is going to need a LOT of attention is apt to be very very challenging.

With all due respect, your daughters have no idea what they are getting into - they're not old enough to know.

Also, be very careful with the "we know we'll fall in love with the older one as well." Maybe you will, maybe you won't.

Please understand that not going through with this does not make you or your husband bad people. One of the most hardest things for those who adopt is being honest with ourselves about what we can or cannot cope with. Some of us are able to take in incredibly demanding and difficult children. Some of us aren't. Some of us a fine with a whole housefull of kids. Some of us, including me, would go crazy!

I don't think there is anything wrong at all with big families per se. It's not something I could do, but certainly there are lots of kids who need parents who can. Maybe I'm reading between the lines, but it sounds like you have fallen in love with the youngest, but feel as though you ought to want all three, and take all three.

If you talk to some of us who adopted difficult kids, or have had our kids for quite a while, you'll find that the biggest regret is severely underestimating the effort, challenges, and impact it would have. Lots and lots of us adopted again, even knowing what we were likely to be handling. But boy, the second one 14 years later was a LOT easier because of what I learned the first time.

The biggest failing we may have as adoptive parents is also our biggest strength - we believe that love can conquer all.

[marythemom]

We made mistakes left and right and I have to say I would not do it again. We had 2 bio kids, boy age 7 and girl age 10. We have been talking about adopting since they were babies so they were "ready." We decided to adopt a sibling pair - a boy age 13 and a girl age 11. Our families were pretty supportive. My background is social work, special needs kids, mental health... I thought I knew it all. The caseworker was pretty open with us - she just didn't know everything.

When we met the kids for a long weekend it seemed like love at first sight. The girls got along like great and acted like twins (they're in the same grade). Because our bio kids called us Mom and Dad and they were with us, the girl started calling us that too (we had never heard of attachment disorders). The boy was more reserved, but seemed interested in the adoption. They were in Nebraska and we live in TX so that was the only face to face meeting we had before they moved in.

Then the problems started. The boy had undiagnosed bipolar disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Reactive Attachment disorder among other diagnoses. At 5'9" and 200lbs he was huge and aggressive and intimidated and manipulated everyone - he preferred chaos and made everyone miserable. I had to quit my job because he kept getting kicked out of school (in-school suspension on his 3rd day!) We finally got him into residential treatment and started focusing on his sister and the bio children who had been almost completely ignored as we dealt with his explosive rages.

The girl "only" had attachment issues compared to the her brother's RAD (and untreated severe ADHD, learning disabilities, oppositional defiant disorder and depression). She was desperately, vindictively jealous of bio daughter and we had foolishly allowed them to sleep in the same room because the girl had never slept in a room alone.

Both girls hit puberty/ hormone swings. I had to explain to bio daughter why this girl who was older than she was acted younger in every way (emotionally she's about 4 years old). Biodd has scars from the physical attacks she suffered at the hands of our new daughter. We put them in separate rooms and things got better - Some. We also moved them to a small private school where our new dd wasn't so overwhelmed and that helped too. Now after a year of attachment therapy, our new daughter is getting slowly better, we no longer have to restrain her to protect others or herself. She occasionally allows me to touch her although she still insults me whenever she thinks she can get away with it. We finalized her adoption last Thursday.

Our son has been home from RTC for 3 months now. He is much better with his new diagnoses and meds, but the abuse and neglect have permanently damaged his brain - like his sister, he does not have empathy, his memory is effected, he has difficulty learning. He probably cannot attach to us. He is not ready to be adopted and may never be.

I'm not trying to scare you. I just want you to seriously think about what this could do to you, your relationship with your husband and your bio children. With 4 children and a full time job, I almost never get one on one time with my children (except our oldest son who manipulates and demands it - and weekly attachment therapy with my adopted daughter). My mother does after school care and respite for us almost every weekend and it is our sanity - but we have found NO ONE else who can handle them. If it weren't for her...

The bio kids are pretty resilient and are slowly recovering now that the majority of the chaos is better, but hubby and I are stil reeling. Every day is a struggle. I think we're suffering from post traumatic stress disorder too. If it were my husband being this abusive people would be supportive and helpful. Because it's my children... very few people get it. Even therapists are focused more on the needs of the child in their care - not the whole family.

We've only been a family for 1.5 years. I can only hope it gets easier - but I doubt it. Still they are my family and I love them (even if they don't love me).

5 kids can be done - I grew up in a blended family of 5. But I would never recommend going out of birth order, and if I were to adopt a teen again I would want him/her to be the youngest or only child. That's my advice. Feel free to pm me if you wish. Definitely hang out on the special needs boards - there's a lot of good info there and support.

Mary
mom to T(9), K(11), C(12 almost 13) and D(14)
If "that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger..." just call me Superwoman!
We may not have it all together, but together we have it all!

[LotzaLuv2Give]

We adopted seven boys this past year; prior to the placement, we spent hours reading these boards, as well as the special needs adoption boards. It was truly an eye opener for us, and really challenged us to do a lot of research. You asked is it possible to handle a large family and balance time? Yes, it is. We deal with that every day. You have to be very intentional about it, though. You also have to be able to deal with a lot of noise

When we adopted, there were no other children in our home. Would we have adopted if there had been? Honestly, I'm not sure. We would have looked long and hard at the situation. Children in the foster system have been through a lot of things children should never have had to deal with. They can react in pretty horrendous ways. I wouldn't be willing to adopt anyone older than my oldest child. I doubt I'd be too open to adopting anyone much older than my youngest. I've already made a committment to my children, and I fully intend to make our home a safe place for them.

You mentioned that the girls all got along well - and thats great, but honestly, it's one visit. Our boys acted like they were 'visiting' until they had lived with us for several months. Then they started acting like they were home, and the fights and bickering started. And they were all bio-siblings! I would imagine there would be a lot more sibling rivalry between birth and adopted children. I really think you have to make the choice that YOU think is best for your girls - not what they say they want. They probably don't have any idea what it will be like.

All this doesn't mean you shouldn't adopt these girls. Only you know what your family can and can't handle. I would encourage you to think about what the worst case scenario could be, though. Make sure both you and your husband are ready for this. Get any information you can, prepare as much as you can, and expect the worst. Then - if you choose to pursue this, and everything works out great, and the worst never happens - celebrate like crazy!

The flipside of all of that is this - sometimes it works out. When we pursued our boys, people thought we were crazy - but we knew it was the right thing to do. I still know it was. We've had our share of surprises, but for us it's been a very worthwhile and meaningful experience. We feel very blessed to have our boys in our family. So don't necessarily rule it out immediately - but DO think it through and do your research. And DO make sure your husband is 100% on board. If mine hadn't been, I couldn't have handled this.

As someone else said, there is a lot to think about! If you do continue down this road, definitely stick around this board. I have received so much advice and guidance that has been absolutely invaluable in our journey.

[lizzieisfullofhope]

I would never push my husband into anything it he was not 100%, we are into this together or we don't do it at all. We know that our girls really do not know what they are getting into, and we do realize that it was the first visit, that of course they will get a long. And we would never go by what our bio girls think, we know they are too young to fully grasp what is going on. This is a decision only for my husband and I. We would never expect our daughters to understand fully about this unless they were adults.
That is were the struggle is. How do you really know if it is right, we won't really know until they are with us for awhile, so how do you know 100% if you should go for it or not if you don't take them in your home?
Our first concern is our bio daughters, they come first. We have our second visit next week, the girls will be in our home for the first time from Thurs to Monday. I told my husband that we will know then if it is the right thing.
The hardest thing for us is if it isn't the right thing, is to walk away from the littlest one, yes we did fall in love with the littlest one. BUT we know that if it doesn't feel right with all 3, then it will have to be that we walk away. It has to be that way, we cannot take on what we cannot handle for the sake of one. It will be hard but we know that is how it will be.
Does it work sometimes when the birth order is out of place or should it never be done?
We have done research, I know it may seem like I am seeing through rose colored glasses but in reality I have seen a lot of damage children not being able to be undamaged, and I know that "love" doesn't fix it. We have been through the PRIDE classes in WA. Working in the school, you see a lot of kids that live in foster homes, and the behaviors they have. My two nieces and nephew were taken from CPS, went through visitations with my sister and her boyfriend for a long time. My parents thankfully took them from birth (each one was taken from birth) until now, the oldest is now 20 the youngest is 15. To this day, you still see the effects. My nephew has FAS, and uncontrollable rage at times. When they went for visits, my nephew was left in a highchair all day, they lived in filth, so my nieces would crawl around in dog feces and urine, would come back just dirty. My oldest neice ended up being sexually assaulted when she went to a visit. IT was horrible, especially how long it took for my parents to finally get all visits into supervised only. So I have seen and lived with children that have their lives impacted by being taken away from their parents, dealing with visitations that should have never taken place, and they over all impact of their lives from it. It is something that does not just go away once you are placed in our home, and love does not just happen over night or may never happen at all.
We are just struggling because we just don't know, it feels right sometimes but other times we think, is this going to damage our bio girls, if it is, then we shouldn't do it? So we just keep going back and fourth. Should we keep the birth order or is it okay to go out of the birth order? Will these girls end up being too much once they "feel at home", will new problems emerge? Will our bio girls end up resenting us if things do go from good to bad? These are just the things that we are struggling with, just how do you really know if it is the right thing to do, if they are the right match? How do you really know?

[Adoption_Ally]

Personally, I think the birth order issue is HUGE. I had a conversation about this earlier with my daughter. She was an only child until she was almost nine, when we brought home her 3 YO adopted brother. Her father and I split up shortly thereafter, and he married a woman with two small kids. So suddenly she was the oldest of 4. A couple of years later her father and his new wife had another baby, and C was now the oldest of five. As tough as it was to adjust to that, at least she still had her 'oldest' status, something that was very important to her. She's 30 now, and freely admits that she would have been REALLY angry if she had had to give up her 1st born status.

You're also setting up a 3 vs 2 scenario. And the three will require a lot more attention because of their needs. Yes, your bio daughters will resent it if things go bad. How can they not? They're just kids.

Yes, new problems WILL emerge. That's part of the deal - when you adopt new problems will always emerge. These kids are extremely savvy. They know that the upcoming visit is a trial run - they're going to be on their best behavior because they don't want to mess it up.

One way I would look at it is this: If the youngest wasn't part of the package, and it were just the older two, would I still be interested?

A few years ago my brother and his wife decided they wanted to adopt via the foster-to-adopt system. They're both intelligent, well educated, caring, loving, and all-round good people. They already had two children, a daughter 13, and a son 16. The son has type 1 Diabetes, and several other food allergies. So they were familiar with special needs kids, to a certain extent. They went through all the classes, were familiar with what we had gone through with our to IA kids, etc. etc. and thought they had a very good idea what they were getting into. In due course they were placed with a five year old girl.

The placement didn't work out. And all the reasons why were ones that I could have easily predicted. The bio kids really resented the chaos in their lives because of the foster kid. The little girl had many behaviors common to kids with her background that were tough for the family to cope with. When talking to my husband and I, they would say "A did X." And we would say...... "yes, and.......?" because we had seen it all before. Ultimately they decided that they could not make A a permanent part of their family.

This is a placement that should have worked. Eventually A was placed with a single mom, and has been adopted. My sister-in-law still sees her on a regular basis.

My point is this: My brother and his wife are good parents. They tried really hard with this little girl. Their bio kids were involved in every step of the process and wanted it to work. But the disruption to their family was just too much. And this placement didn't change birth order or number of bio vs adopted, etc.

In going back to your OP, your husband does have a point about the changes in your life. You will be pretty much throwing out the life you now know and starting over again. Things that you take for granted may go completely out the window - like being able to sleep all night uninterrupted or relaxing on Sunday morning while reading the paper.

If it were me (and I know it's not!), I'm not even sure I would have the girls come again until I'd worked through more of this stuff. I would also probably go to a trusted counselor, therapist, or my clergyman to have a safe place for my husband and I to talk about how we really feel about this. Friends and family are all well and good, but they can't be impartial - they have their own agenda.

I may be in the minority here, but I'm not a big proponent of the try-before-you-buy mentality. First of all, it puts everyone on their best behavior in a way that cannot be maintained. You aren't going to parent the kids as you would (or will) simply because they aren't yours yet. The kids are put in an incredibly stressful position - they'll either want to be perfect to prove they're worthy or they'll be nasty little beasts to prove they're unlovable. I also think that our perspective can be clouded by what we see on those brief visits. When the organization that sponsored my daughter was looking for a forever home for her, they were very very careful not to let her picture become public, and with justification. She's so beautiful it would have been very easy to overlook the very real and very serious issues involved in adopting and raising her.

We don't get to try it out when we have bio kids - you get what you get! I'm more the commit-with-your-eyes-open type. Actually I'm very grateful that when we adopted our son in 1986 it was a take-it-or-leave-it affair.

I hope that I'm not sounding like I'm against foster-to-adopt, because I'm not. If I were younger I'd be lining up for a bunch more myself. (well, maybe not a BUNCH, but at least one or two).

Only you can know what's best for you and your family. It's not going to hurt to not hurry and take your time to make the decision.

[crick]

Like I said, I don't have bio kids so that part I can't really advise on but I will say too that many many families do adopt with bios and it works. Challenges, yes, but it can and does work. So on that front, talk to parents who have had successful placements and not so successful placements and learn from both.

As for the "how do you know if you are really ready?" That's just imo, a real leap of faith and you jump. None of us, no matter how many classes we take can be truly prepared for our families. I think it's better to ask yourself "If this and this happens, will I still be committed to parenting?"

[Again!]

I adopted 2 siblings, then a second set of 3 (all younger than the first set). The middle child of the second set had severe RAD and protecting the other two was more than a full time job. I would never, never, ever adopt a child older than or even near to my youngest, and I am normally a very brave person, willing to go out on a limb.

There are lots of waiting children younger than your bios.