Age of child when you're just not sure - matching

[Choccyjules]

DH and I can't seem to narrow down our thoughts on children, which we need to do to help the SW share profiles with us.
In general, the following statement is true: we are looking for a child aged 0-3, gender unknown.
In detail, DH points out he sees a male toddler and I see a female baby.
We have a female BC aged around 5/6.
I also go onto the Adoption UK forum and there is a thread running there about some recent stats saying that parents who adopted babies are the ones most seeking post-adoption support. That the babies' needs are, obviously, mostly unknown at the time of matching.
I really do get this and yet I would love to parent a young baby again. My SW says if this is a need then there's nothing wrong with it (short story is I had cancer when DD was a baby so feel I missed a lot of it).
DH fully understands my feelings but thinks we'd know more about a toddler, may get a bit more sleep etc (he thinks we're too old for a baby!). There's also the age-gap to DD, which everyone says should be as big as possible (except our LA, funnily enough, who are fairly ambivalent). But practically, IF it turns out that AC is able to interact with DD (by which I mean that I know I'm not creating a handy playmate), won't a 2/3 yr gap be more compatible than a 4/5 yr gap?
I know this is very long, sorry. As I said, LA (on prep course) and SW really don't have a strong opinion so we feel a bit adrift. Our only advice on age is from boards like this. I worry that we should 'just know' who we are looking for - but to me, being so specific feels like I'm writing a shopping list...maybe that's why we've only got as far as 0-3 yrs.
Anyway. Baby or toddler? Any useful experiences and thoughts very greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Here's the link to the thread I referred to:

www.adoptionuk.org/forum-topic/most-requests-post-adoption-support-are-coming-those-who-adopted-babies

Oops haha!

Chocy can I chip in? We were approved for 0-5 but also told once approved to adopt you can adopt any age. Our DD is 9 so we would not have adopted a child of over 5 since for us that was too close (the suggestion is 2-3 years at least) but as DD is pretty young for 9 I felt 5 was too close.

I was very set on a girl. I wanted as young as possible. We ended up feeling it was right to go for a boy who is almost school age. It just seemed right. Or rather I should say he just seemed right.

Your social worker should be able to give you profiles for a number of children 0-3, boys and girls and you should be able to ask for a Full CPR profile and might even be to ask for 2 or 3 from those. It is not until you read the full story of your little one that they will begin to become more real. We were not shown a photo until after we had read the CPR. We have never seen a dvd, although we hope to.

Good luck, keep an open mind, if anything is important to you then say so. But keep open on it, it may change.

Our county do activity days (sometimes called adoption parties). You need to be invited to them. They generally feature harder to place children but knowing some of the children who may be at this type of party I think totally lovely children. I think activity days are a great idea.

Oh you guys are just showing off with your fancy links - what's wrong with my inaccurate cryptic description method?

I don't think that having a baby vs toddler does necessarily mean you will know more about development. My dd is 9 and has been with me less than a year and I still have no idea how much of her learning, coordination, medical conditions and behaviours are attributable to early life history and how they will resolve or develop over time. Will she make a massive leap in development that means she catches up with her peers? Will she always be a few years behind? Etc etc.

If having a baby to care for fills a need then push for a baby...and in a couple of years dh will have the toddler he imagines.

Also don't forget that even an older child can regress and need babying... Bottle feeding / pretending to change nappies on toddlers up to much older children isn't unheard of.

OK, we were approved for 2 children age 0-7, one to be pre-school.
I'd always imagined a 4 and a 6, one of each gender or 2 boys.
We ended up with 2 girls aged 2.5 and 8.

Our little one was a big baby. Still in nappies, still on 3 bottles of milk a day, only just starting to link words, unsteady on her feet, still in babygrows at night, small for her age. So you can get an 'old baby' as it were.

We have a 5 and a bit age gap between our two. They get along fine. Outdoors activities have always been fine - who doesn't like a zoo or a beach?? When elder one was in Juniors doing lots of out of school activities, we just brought little one too. Now little one is that age her big sister is independent and can be at home on her own if needed.
The biggest problems we have with a big age gap are:

• TV viewing, some things are not appropriate for younger one (solved by elder having her choice after little one is up to bed, or by viewing in separate room)
• Museums not interesting for little one (solved by 1-1 from each parent).

Main advantages for us of same gender:

• can hand down clothes
• can share double bed / bedroom on holiday even now elder one is a teen

I think maybe you're looking at this the wrong way up.

Gender and age gap are maybe the least important thing. Consider instead the care and medical background, the contact expectations etc etc. The right match in other ways is more important than gender or whether they are 9 mnths or 24mnths (imo).

Inthebeginning - an adopted child will need you forever and a day, regardless of their age, and sometimes they have such a bottomless pit of need it can never be filled. Sorry not splitting hairs but felt I had to make that point.

nana I'm not sure if you meant that as a reassuring or condescending post. I'm fully aware that they will always need me. I'm not niave enough to think that I can let them go after a few years. I meant it in a physical "to feed,change nappies etc" way.
I don't really come on threads to be belittled, I come on them to talk to people for support and sometimes to offer my (limited) knowledge. It doesn't make me want to continue to post when I have my comments over analysed and hairs split about them. Maybe I'm just being too sensitive.

When we investigated our second adoption I rang about 4 or 5 LAs about adopting a baby under 1. They all said that they never stop taking on adopters for any age range and one told me that they were, at that very moment, family finding for a 6 month old. The only other adopter I know locally has a little boy placed at around this age.

We ended up deciding to go for overseas again, but it's not true any more that no babies are being placed for adoption.

From reading that AUK link it seems that some of the issues they are talking about are things that would happen in a child whether they were adopted or not (e.g. ASD diagnosis), and it also seems to include children whose needs would have been identified in FC if they had been older. So it's not that they have more needs, it's that you don't know them yet.

I don't have much to add other than we're in a similar situation.

We have seen a few profiles of toddler age children that on paper match, but neither of us feel the pull to them in the way we do to the profiles of babies. I know it's not a popular thing to say, but we do want a baby. I can't think of any other way to put it. It's not a case of not having dealt with fertility issues or anything like that, but we both just want to be parents to a baby. At the moment, we are holding out for that, we're going to panel in two weeks where we will hopefully be approved, and for the immediate future we want to push for our 'ideal' situation. Beyond that, we may have to adjust our search criteria etc. but I don't feel able to give up on the baby stage yet.

I think if you have a desire for a particular age (not just babies - ANY age), then you should listen to it until your gut tells you something different. I don't have any experience/evidence to back that up, but it's just what I think.

( Inthebeginning - I don't think you're being sensitive at all. )

I also think feelings will come and go and change over time. I was totally Ok about not adopting a baby, until I saw babies were around needing adoption then I wanted as young as possible. We looked into adopting a toddler and it did not work out.

Now we are matched to someone almost school age and I feel totally right about it.

Things wane and change and it is good to be in touch with your feelings.

The only thing I would say about the baby stage is it is quite short. When I looked at our child who was bit older than I had been 'hoping' for I felt how do I feel about missing the first X years of their life compared to the possibility of missing all of their life? And I felt I wanted them more than any other baby or toddler. It was weird, quite intense, not based on what they look like or anything. I have had the privilege of raising a birth child and doing the joys and horrors of that first first year or two, and I felt totally right about not having that stage again. For those who really wnat that stage, I really feel you must be true to your own desires, seek the kind of child you would like to adopt, be open along the way to your feelings changing (as I am sure you all are) and just keep talking and exploring the issues.

Good luck to all of you.

So, so grateful for the continued advice shared on here, it's all food for thought.

Sorry that word horrors was a bit flippant. I did not just mean sleepless nights and pooey nappies! I meant things like when they are ill etc, it always seems worse when they are really little. Tempartures in the middle night etc.

We don't have a birth child, and so I think part of it is wanting to experience all the stages, and if we don't do it now, we may never be able to. It's maybe selfish and greedy of us to feel that, but we can't change how we feel. We have age and time on our side (we're late twenties), and so we can in theory afford to wait a little longer if need be... Although I am not known for my patience.

We are fully prepared to see a profile and it just be 'the one' regardless of age or anything else. When we look through the profiles we read every single one, just in case. It's easy to be prescriptive when it's all theoretical, but when confronted with the right child for you, I suspect all that goes out of the window, and rightly so. I actually really hope we do get the gut feeling because otherwise I have no idea how we'll make a decision!

Having said all that, when and if we are matched with a baby, what do you want to bet I'll be back here moaning about how I really don't like the baby stage?!

If we do both end up adopting a baby, Cheery, we can moan on here together!

Slight tangent but the other day we were shown a toddler and though there was no 'connection' there was nothing which didn't fit with our family. So we thought that we would ask for more info and to see the video clip mentioned by the child's SW in their email to our SW.
Anyway, today we heard that the placing SW thinks we live too close to the birth family. Fair enough. So I tuned into my emotions. I certainly didn't think I'd missed out on 'my' child. I did feel relief that the decision to say no was out of our hands. Getting fed up of saying no to children who need a family. I do wonder if we were only checking this one out so as not to be totally focused on babies?

Choccy, I have found us doing that too. Asking for more information on children that we already suspect aren't for us because of a lack of connection, but who fit us on paper, just so we're not constantly saying no. So far all the ones we have asked for more information on, have been unsuitable once we have the additional details, and like you say it's a relief to have the decision taken out of our hands. By far and away this matching business is the hardest bit of the whole process so far.

We can start our own 'moaning about babies' thread.

Yes, Cheery this matching bit is the worst bit by far.

Choccy I am glad it worked out or did not.

To tell you a funny thing when we heard about our little boy I was still a bit 'overly' focussed on a girl so when we got more details I just thought, I will read them and see but in my heart was saying it won't be right because I would like a girl (Being totally honest here, please no one shout out me - I did not want to feel this, I just did!. Anyway, as you know we read details and DH just said he could not see why not, and neither could I, and in the space of a couple of days we went from can't see why not to can see why to why can't he come and live with us now!!!!

Cheery it is not at all selfish to want a baby. Millions of people all over the world want and have babies. I think one of the problems is that there are lots of people who seem to come to adoption and would have liked to have a birth child or anther birth child so they are keen to adopt a child of an age that suits them. Once the child arrives it will not be selfish parenting as we all know children take masses of time and energy.

I think one 'issue' that I see and feel a bit sad about is that often people do want babies (quite rightly) or young kids and others may not be so worried about age because they have already experienced that stage but they have young kids, so can't be matched with a child who is too old (as in too close to their existing child's age).

I think maybe adoption agencies and county councils need to also encourage new adopters into adoption, people who are actively looking for older children, whose own adopted or birth kids are much older or those who never wanted younger kids. It is hard because if people put off having their children until later then of course they will be older by the time they get to that later stage.

I think things like adoption activity days can be really helpful for showing prospective adopters how great kids of all ages can be.

I guess the bottom line is that we are always encouraged, rightly, to adopt because we want a/another child. We are not rescuing a child who needs us so to speak. So we as adopters are doing this because we want to and of course that will mean people do have expectations. Sometimes those expectations can be turned on their head. And that is great.

I guess it feels quite hard if non-adopters ever make adopters feel like they are being especially picky for wanting to adopt a certain age group etc, when they themselves have not adopted at all. Does that make sense?

I guess I cannot for sure think of one single individual or couple I have met in recent times who has adopted and was also willing and able to have a/another birth child without additional assistance (e.g. fertility treatment). I think I have heard from a few here on mumsnet but not sure I have met any in real life. That says something to me about expectations of at least some of us in adoption.

So I think for the future of adoption to really work well those who are not 'challenged' in the fertility department should be brought into the joys and sorrows of adoption. The need is very great so I think it takes a change in mindset in those who are not challenged in the fertility deparment. I hope that is not off track from what we are discussing and I am really only expressing my own views and not meaning to offend anyone.

I don't think it's off track at all, Italian, it's all part of the issue of merging the realities of adoption, with the dreams and wishes everyone has.

I think you're right about adoption having to free the rules a little - we know of one couple who are adopting who have a bc, and have no desire for a young child, but because of the age of their bc, they are being forced down that route. They appreciate the theory behind the 'rules', but it does seem that it makes older children even harder to place.

I know that DH and I have talked about adopting older children, when we ourselves are older and have already 'completed' our family. I think that is something that should be made more common place (older couples adopting older children once they have raised their 'first' family) - adoption seems to be something that wider society regards as for people with fertility issues, not something which is the responsibility of society as a whole.

I am always wary of being truthful about our preference for a baby, mainly because of the perception that if you want a baby you're not really adopting for the 'right' reasons (again this is an assumption that wider society makes, not those 'in the know'). DH and I want to be parents, that is our motivation first and foremost. It is impossible for us to have birth children, and so our options are either fertility treatment, or adoption. We have decided that fertility treatment isn't right for us, and so have taken the adoption route. The fact that by us adopting a child is given a home and a family is a bonus. We are not doing it out of any sense of moral obligation, or desire to do a good thing, which is what a lot of people (wrongly) think adoption is about. Please don't think that I am in anyway negating the fact that adoption is a good thing, but we are not solely adopting in order to do a good deed if that makes sense?

There are far too many myths and misconceptions about adoption. The number of times I have heard people make throwaway comments about how they'd take any child, and every child deserves a home and a family etc. but then they don't think to make the call. Until that kind of attitude is eradicated, I think the stigma of having a desire for an age, or sex etc will continue.

I have really rambled here, and probably made very little sense. I have also probably used incorrect terms etc. so apologies, I don't mean to offend anyone. It's just nice to be able to get it all out, and know that (the majority of) people on this board understand and empathise, and mostly importantly don't judge.

Can I just say if you have a daughter your most likely looking at a boy

I was a foster carer for 7 years and now am an adopter and as a general rule it's better to adopt the opposite sex

To avoid competitiveness

Boys and girls in general tend to have different interests different friends

This may still occur of course but it's much reduced

just a question (no hidden agenda, just because different people have different "lines" what are you thinking of as a "baby"? Up to 10 months? 12? or younger/older? been thinking about this today at work ( obviously teaching too ) and I think that you need to trust your gut. It's so difficult isn't it because your mind wanders onto your "child" but you don't know what they will "be" and then when yoi do it jusyr clicks. I feel so protective/emotional of a child we have only seen two sets of photos of. If we had created our "dream child" we would never have got him. we wouldn't have had our son. bizarre eh? (I'm rambling apologies )

Inthebeginning, I think for us we're classing a baby as anything from about about 12months and younger. Ideally we're at the younger end of that, but obviously there's a couple of months of a gap between first seeing them and then having them placed.

Having said that though, I do keep seeing toddlers (mostly boys for some reason) and thinking how lovely they are.

The not knowing the age, gender, circumstances of our child is the hardest bit. Every time we read through profiles, I am so aware that one of them could be our child, but there isn't a sign on one saying 'Mr + Mrs Giraffe's child'.... It'd be a hell of a lot easier if there was!

I am currently feeding my gut some chocolate orange... I am sure I have read somewhere that Terry's Chocolate Orange aids decision making and gut instinct.

It's so lovely to hear how you already feel about your son, I am so pleased for you. It must be so exciting!

This is a really inteesting thread for me as we're in the position of having a bc but yes I also would like to be in my AC's life from as early as possible. Our SW has never batted an eyelid at us needing (because of dd's age) a child of 0-2. I know they used to be like hen's teeth (as a friend told me) but I think that's changed.

Our LA say they also have relinquished children which, again, I thought was supposed to be impossible.

I spent today reading this thread while looking after my friend's DC, who is 11 months, with DD (nearly 4) at a soft play. It was bloody hard work! I had forgotten that age where they are fast like lightening but you can't take your eyes off them for a second because they'll fall off/get stuck under/pick up and eat something.

But I left thinking that was just about the right gap - just about doable - just about different enough for him to be happy waving a chip about while DD tells me about the nice little girl she's made friends with.

I also, by the way, thought that the transition from working all day to looking after two of that sort of age with no experience of soft play places or of parenting would be so hard! I know that's something lots of adopters do. Wow! for those people.

Again disclaimer - I'm waffling here. I might not be making much sense and I hope I haven't offended anyone...