When to start the adoption process and how long a gap between bio children?

[Alysa8819]

I have a 16 month old daughter and another baby due at the start of December. Me and my husband wanted to experience having birth children but from the very early stages of our relationship we had talked about adoption. We both had difficult childhoods with neglect on my side and abuse on his so the idea of helping one of the many children that aren’t lucky enough to be born into a loving environment has always appealed strongly. We’re also very fortunate to have good jobs, self employed with lots of flexibility and the financial security for a larger family.

I would ideally like to wait until my youngest is in school so that I have more one on one time to focus on the adopted child and take a ‘maternity’ leave to bond with them. We’d like to adopt a child probably around aged 2-4 years. I’d be interested to hear from peoples experiences on if this age gap is enough / too much and how far in advance we would typically need to begin the process.

I do worry about the impact on our birth children and also about us being inexperienced with children with attachment issues because our own children will have been brought up in a totally different environment, it’ll be like being a new parent again with totally different challenges.

Also do adoption agencies have any kind of gender preference based on your birth children? We know we’re having another girl as we got the harmony test but my husband has a preference for adopting a boy. I don’t mind either way and do you even get a choice of gender?

I think often they ask for at least a 2 year age gap between birth and adopted child. Also you wouldn't want a child placed just as your child was starting school as there would be too much disruption. So maybe starting the process in the spring before they start reception would work well for you?

You can specify what sex you want, provided you have good reason. Though you would be ruling out 50% of potential matches. These reasons would be explored in the homestudy.
e.g. 'we're used to girls' or 'We think a boy would be better as then other people would be less likely to make comparisons and any differences would be less obvious' or 'we think we'd like the experience of parenting a boy' or whatever.

No experience on age gaps, however one couple on our training course had an existing birth daughter and were recommended to consider adopting a boy, as there would be less direct comparison.

There is a year between our birth son and adopted son. BS was a few months shy of his third birthday when we adopted. We started the process just before his second birthday.

I have no personal experience of this, but this topics comes up regularly in the Adoption UK forum: www.adoptionukforum.org/topic/21bbea68-b209-4c69-9670-7666b2500b71

Social workers usually look for a gap of at least 2 years, but most experienced adopters will recommend more. One of you will be expected to stay home with the child for 1 year, so that is something you might want to plan for. Good luck!

We have four children; first two are birth children, second two are adopted ( a sibling pair). The age gap between birth and adopted children is 20 months. As a sensible social worker once said to us, a good match should always come before ‘the right age gap’. From oldest to youngest there’s just less than six years, and that seems big enough personally.
Regarding gender, social workers wanted us to talk about our preferences, and spoke to our birth children, but again, it went down to the right match in the end. People say they want to avoid ‘comparing’ but actually having a direct comparison to birth children is really useful I find. My eldest ( birth) and adopted (youngest) had the same teacher in the same year at school, and that has been so helpful comparing the difference. My youngest is far far better behaved and concentrates at school, so much more than my first! :-)