Adoption of a sibling for our DD ages 2.8 - musings

[GingerDoodle]

Hi all

I hope you don't mind me posting; we're still at the musing stage.

DD is 2.8 tomorrow and although we could have another (well probably!) naturally we've been considering our options. Partly as it would be lovely to provide a home to and dc via adoption and partly as two children close in age (either older or younger) would (hopefully!) be close / playmates for each other.

I guess what I'm looking for is people who have done something similar? i know its not that common as the norm / preference is for adopted child to be younger by 2 years?

Also out of interest would the assessment require interviews with family members? We're on good terms with all our respective family but they don't like nearby and only my side really play a role in DD's life.

TIA!

We applied to adopt when our BC was a very similar age to your daughter. We too chose adoption over having a second BC for similar reasons, although I warn you that approaching it from the point of view of getting your DD a sibling is unlikely to go down well with SWs. You have to accept with adoption that the needs of the AC come first- they will take the needs of your existing child into account but only because of how it could impact on the AC. Although the 2 year age gap is not set in stone it is considered good practice for a reason. AC often have additional needs and having another child of a similar age can create a lot of competition as well as simply limiting the amount of 1:1 time you have for either of your children. I don't think you would find an agency in the UK that would place a child with you that was a similar age to your DD. I did once hear of a family who adopted a child the same age as their BS but they had to go abroad to do so.
In terms of your family being interviewed, I think if you choose to nominate close friends as referees then family may not need to be involved at all. My family live some distance away but we nominated my mum to be a referee. My OHs family were not involved at all.
Hope that this helps. If you do decide to apply please be aware that in the current climate you may struggle to find an agency as your DD is still quite young, and even if you do you may find that the process takes a long time. We were approved last August and are still waiting for a match. If you followed a similar timescale your DD would be over 4 by the time you were matched and this might change your view about the age of child that you would consider.
Oh yes, just to add that it is extremely unusual in this country (I'm assuming you're in the UK) to adopt a child older than your existing children. We did consider it but our SW was very concerned and said that if we went down that route we would need to demonstrate how our skills could support an older child and really build the entire adoption application around this. In the end we decided it was too risky as research suggests that adopting out of birth order has a higher failure rate, and that adopting older children generally has a higher failure rate. A bit of a depressing reason to back out that idea but we felt we couldn't risk it because of our BC.

You've reminded me of a book I read years ago:

www.amazon.co.uk/Adoption-Undone-Karen-Carr/dp/1905664249/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

This family had very similar motivations for adopting, and as the title suggests it very sadly did not end well. Obviously this is the experience of one family, and there's nothing to say your experience would be anything like theirs, but you may find it a useful read.

Thank you both for your honest views. I know our approach is a tad unusual and would sadly probably prohibit us!

Hi and welcome

I do understand where you are coming from and why you are thinking about it - however what you are saying so far (though I appreciate that you may only have posted a small amount of your feelings and motivations) doesn't fit with the reality of adoption today.

Adopting a second child, absolutely is something many families do. What social workers are looking for (and what waiting children need), are parents who are primarily coming to adoption because they really want a second child themselves. Hoping that your BC and a new child would become very close is something everyone hopes - but 'giving a BC a sibling' can't be the primary motivation for adopting. So it depends on how much your desire for a second child is about you and DP, and how much it's about your DD? If it's mostly about your DD, adoption is unlikely to be for you, IMHO. If it's firstly about you and your desires for two children, it might be an option for you to explore further by doing more research on adoption today and the children who are waiting for adoption.

This is because most waiting children have some form of additional needs (especially emotional needs), and it's important that everyone goes in expecting to be dealing with family life being probably different from how they initially imagined. And obviously there's no guaruntee that two children will be close - they might well become very close, but obviously SW's need to be sure the family won't be regretting the adoption if a year down the line, BC and AC have a personality clash and don't get on well at all, or AC has additional needs which are impacting quite negatively on BC (or vice versa).

In terms of age gap, you usually can't adopt any child older than your BC because it will be considered too high risk, to my knowledge it very rarely happens except in adoptions by relatives or foster carers. Any AC would, for nearly all agencies, need to be at least 2 years, but many will advise that 3 years+ is better. It's individual and personality based to some degree, and some people find a 2-3 year age gap has been fine for them, others have found that a larger gap is very beneficial because of reduced competition and jealousy, not sharing friends so much, basically having their own space in a way. Again it's largely because new child has emotional needs which are intense in early days but may continue to be intense for a long time (or forever). SW's for instance, generally like the idea of your BC having started primary school, or being in nursery because it gives you some hours in the day to really focus on meeting your new childs needs. They like the idea of you being able to explain things to your BC and have them understand a little. That doesn't mean that people with 3 year olds don't adopt 0-1 year old babies, it can certainly happen (when I say baby, I mean about 8/9 months and upwards, babies under ~7 months are not frequently waiting to be adopted).

I have to say, in terms of age gap, there's a 19 year one between my first DC and my last - and they are very close, they adore the bones of each other. DC2 and DC3 are birth siblings with a significantly smaller age gap, yet they aren't as close and their relationship is very complicated. From my experience, closeness is a lot about individual personalities. I hope people find that reassuring! In the end, two extra years age gap is unlikely to mean the kids aren't as close.

I'm out of date enough with the adoption process that I'm not sure about referees (my mum was visited but she lives close to me) - only way is to ask the agencies individually, they will have different policies.

We went through process last year, so just on the minor side note of referees...You don't have to have family members and in fact our LA only allowed you to include one anyway, it is best they come from the support network you are going to have, which could be friends not family.

We initially had a referee who lived further away and while they completed the written reference, we ended up changing them when it came to being interviewed because the SW's couldn't travel there and the referees couldn't get to them for the specific date; definitely pick ones close by. We also had much clearer support from one side of the family and not the other due to lack of family, distance of family and ill-health...nobody blinked an eye They just want to know if you don't have family close by, you still have a support network

Obviously that is how our LA does it mind you, different LAs may do it differently....

I heard of someone only this week who adopted a child 18 months younger than their birth child which we are all a bit surprised by as no-one I know involved in adoption has heard of this before.

I gather it isn't going well and the older child is having a hard time.

DS has relatively moderate additional needs but for example he finds it very hard to control his emotions - if he had a sibling I would have found it very very hard to bond with a child who was hurting my existing child. It can be important therefore to either have a child who can understand what the issues are and look after themselves to some extent or to be adopting a young enough child to be more easily managed. Either way inevitably involves either an age gap or a pretty young child being adopted (or both).

I've never heard of an adoption out of birth order in this country for pretty good reason.

It's not that the scenario you mentioned could never work, obviously it can and does in some other countries but in the UK SW's would consider the risks to the adopted child too high.

Just to say we thought that we wanted a small age gap between our birth child and a putative adoptive child. But there is in fact nearly 5 years between them, and with hindsight we were mad to have thought a smaller gap would be better: there is very little competition between them, as they have largely different interests and toys; but they absolutely adore each other and do play well together too

Ours are just 10 months apart. We adopted both our girls from China. Our first dossier was delayed for about 3 years (due to SARs etc..) so we decided to start the whole procedure as soon as possible for our second. That went by much more quickly. We prepared our first daughter for the arrival of a baby sis. But infact baby sis was physically much much bigger than her older sister! Older sister was a bit of princess, not eager to please and consequently a bit slow giving up nappies etc..and this coincided with the arrival of lil sis who was already out of nappies and already had her quite competitive nature..!

DH works away a lot so I was on my own with the double buggy and the scratching, biting new sisters, aged 2 and 3! Luckily I had a really nice doctor to help when needed but those first months were quite difficult. The key was getting them to share and appreciate each other...I was completely frazzled for what seemed like quite a long time!!!

Now aged 11 and 12 they get on like a house on fire, still irritate each other sometimes but it feels like normal. They have very different characters and they are a joy to have around. I think they really needed me around a lot and still do.

It probably would have been a lot easier for our first daughter if there had been a bigger gap in age between them and I think adopting an older child with a younger child already in the family would be pretty heavy going, judging from my own experience. I really don't think I could have coped if I had been working full time and on my own...! You need to look after yourselves as parents :-) Good luck with it all!