Adopting with birth child

[ThenAndNow]

Hello. I'm new here but I've been reading previous threads and would appreciate your advice and input.

My DH and I are starting the home assessment part of the adoption process and have one birth child already aged 7.

Does anyone have any experience of adopting when they already have a birth child? I'm wondering how much more complicated the process might be as I am aware social services will need to take DD's needs into account too.

Is it very difficult to fit an adopted child into a family where there is already a birth child?

I know my DD will find the reality of having a sibling very hard as she is used to being the only one.

Does anyone have any ideas of what we can do at this stage to prepare her. For example, are there any books out there which might be useful?

Thanks in advance!

Bumping this for you. Its nice to hear you and your husband decided to adopt.

i think its a bit early to start discussing this with her, as it will be several years before a child is placed with you. When you are further on in the assessment process you can find out when your SW will want to talk to her about it

by then you will have better answers to the questions your DD will ask , like what age of child/children, what will they be like, when etc etc

Hi, we are in a similar situation, but have a bs of 5. It has taken us about 11 months from initial enquiry to panel approval. We told our son about it pretty early on and have been introducing him to the idea slowly through films like Stuart Little and books like Nutmeg. Our SW talked to him a fair bit so he had to know what we were doing. We didn't find the home study too bad really, but we did think it was ridiculous to be told to get childcare experience when we already have a child. It would have been perfectly ok to ask us to do this with children with special needs because we'll likley adopt a child with at least some of these, but it seemed to me that they just wanted us to say that we'd done some work with children, any work. Apart from that, it really was fine and now we wait. We were very honest about what we could and couln't deal with in a new child and they seemed to be fine about that.

Good luck. You could look at Adoption UK, but be prepared for some very sad stories about adoption. You can also find good ideas for books and other resources there. It's probably good to get an idea of how tough it can be.
J

I think to say it will be several years before a child will be placed with you is misleading.

Hi, we have a bd aged 4 and have been approved to adopt a child aged 1. It took over a year to get approved, but we were slow-tracked because they wanted our daughter to be at least 2 years older than the adopted child.

I was surprised at how early they wanted us to start preparing our daughter. I would have preferred to have waited till it was more imminent, since I think it is all way too abstract for a 3 year old to start discussing many months in advance - I would feel the same if I was planning a pregnancy. But assessing our daughter was a very important part of assessing us as a family.

Our sw has told us that having a birth child is both an advantage and a disadvantage in terms of getting a child placed. An advantage in that we have some parenting skills and experience already. A disadvantage in that those skills/experience may not be appropriate for an adopted child, and there are many children waiting to be adopted who really need to be the only child or the youngest by a long way.

Sorry I can't give any advice on how to settle in an adopted child with a birth child - we're not there yet! But very best of luck to you.

Hello again. Thanks for all your replies.

Maybe I just need to take it step by step and discuss it more with our SW.

Useful to hear your stories jenny60 and hester because I did get the impression that social services want to involve DD now rather than later and it is a bit strange in some ways - there are so many uncertainties and I wouldn't discuss trying to get pregnant with my DD! However, I realise she's an important part of the assessment process.

We know social services are aiming for panel for us in 6 months time but how long it will take to be matched after that I suppose is anyone's guess!

Thanks for your suggestions. I'll have a look on adoption uk.

Good luck to you all.

if you are pg you can tell your 7yo

"we are having a new baby, we don't know if its a boy or girl and it will arrive in july.

"it will be this size and will be able to do nothing except eat sleep poo and cry"

if you are at the early stages of the assesement process you can tell your 7yo

" we are applying to be approved to adopt one or more siblings. we don't know if we will be sucessful and we don't know if or when we will ever be matched

"we don't know how many child we will get, what age or sex or when they will arrive. they will have special needs but we don't know what they will be. they will have an unhappy past but we don't know what or how it will affect them. they will take up most of everyone's attention for years. "

Most 7yo are very practical and detailed in their thinking. they know what siblings are and the relevant issues. its not like telling a 2yo

Thanks KristinaM - I can see what you mean. It's certainly not going to be easy is it?

when you are a little further on in the process you should have a clearer idea of basics, like the number of children, age group and types of special needs you can consider. Also how you are going to try to meet the needs of your DD as well as the other child/ren placed with you.

No , its not easy, but nothing about adoption is I'm afraid. It starts from a position of loss for everyone involved . But its the best possible solution for many children who cannot be raised in their family of origin

hi thenandnow, i understand why you would want to prepare your dd, we are dying to tell and show dd her new sibling but cant until introductions as things could still not go to plan.our social worker also said dd wouldn't be able to be with us at first meeting in case we had a negative reaction to new child.
we have mentioned if we get a baby where shall she sleep,dd is the big sister and what her responsibilities will be, as in helping look after new baby.
you are still in assessment so its far too early to start talking to your dd about it as you have to be passed and matched yet.
you could start by going thru different family set ups,lone parents, two mummys/daddys etc to show her that not everyone is conventional.
your dd will probably be nearer 9/10 years old by the time a child has been found and placed unless you are looking for an older child.
good luck!

Hi again. I realise now I may be getting a bit ahead of myself and am definitely going to wait a while before talking about things in detail with DD.

Good luck with your introductions hifi! I hope everything works out for you.

Hello this is a very old thread so I may not get any response. We are in the very first stages of adoption - we have an 8 year old birth child whose default mood is happy - she is a delight - and has no desire for sibling, on the contrary she thinks she is lucky compared to her friends with very young siblings. Naturally we have soul searched about the impact adoption will have on her but both have good relationships with our siblings and feel we at least want to explore the option fully. We have had a home visit and been advised to speak to a family who has had experience of adopting with a birth child. The SW felt it was best to do this face to face rather than online but I thought I would make a start here.
If anyone is in this position and responds that would be great and if by some chance we are in the same area (W London) and would like to meet that would be even better.Many Thanks in advance!

We adopted a gorgeous daughter who was one at the time of adoption, with a birth child (with SEN) who was almost 5 at the time of adoption.
Am happy to discuss here.

HI girlie, no time to post now but will be back later. I adopted a baby girl when our first daughter was coming up to 5. Am in West London. more later.

Hi girlie - I think it's a bit worrying that your daughter doesn't actually want a younger sibling. Do you think she is convinced about this, or is worrying about something, like "what if I don't like him/her" "what if mum and dad like her/him better than me" - I'm sure that's not the case but I have heard birth children make all these comments when the parents have really talked to the child. If she is convinced and she sounds a very mature child, I think to go ahead would be too risky.

If you do go ahead, it will all depend on the child - but 8 years is a long time to be an only child and not have to share her parent's attention with anyone else. Needless to say the child you adopt (if you go ahead) will have been abused/neglected etc and the manifestations of this will be brought with her into your family. I think some prospective adoptors have no idea of how difficult some of these children can be, because they have learned (from their birth parents) that adults are not to be trusted and I'm afraid "love is not enough" - you have to try to enable them to learn to trust after being very let down. This will mean giving a gret deal of attention to the adopted child and what effect will this have on your own daughter.

Sorry to be so pessimistic but I am a retired sw/tm mgr and we are always pessimistic about adoption and fostering, so that if things turn out better it is a bonus!

Anyway there are people here who have adopted when having a birth child too.

My only other piece of advice is to learn all you can about attachment disorder because all children waiting for adoption will by definition have had an insecure attachment pattern with their birth parents (meaning that their physical social and emotional needs were not attended to) and they learn that adults are not to be trusted. Also the child will have been with foster carers and so this involves another move and it depends how well the foster carers have been able to attend to the child's attachment problems to help him/her feel more secure. There are loads of books about it and for what it's worth it is the most important aspect of placement that needs to be understood. Some LAs put on training about this matter and some have a clinical psychologist who will explain and prepare people for dealing with these children.

Just to let you know that 15 months on we are still waiting and haven't seen a single profile. All the other people from our original course have been matched and all are doing well so there's been good news for some. Be prepared for a long wait, though of course it may be much quicker for you. Good luck.

Hi Girlie - I've PM'd you but thought I'd write a quick update here too.

We were lucky to be approved and matched quite quickly and our latest addition moved in towards the end of last year. All is going well. They are an "older child" so that could account for the speed of the process.

As NanaNina said we have found that parenting an adopted child is very different to parenting a birth child. However, we feel we were well prepared by our LA for this.

It's very early days for all of us of course but our BD has done extremely well at adapting to the change and I'm very proud of her. She's a fantastic big sister!

It's hard work dealing day to day with issues in relation to attachment, neglect, trauma and loss and I have no doubt that these issues and the work will be longterm but we're finding it so rewarding.

Jenny - I'm sorry to hear you're still waiting. I really hope things move forward for you soon. Are you looking outside of your LA?

Really wonderful to hear your news, ThenAndNow. Many congratulations.

Girlie, I'm happy to talk if you'd still like to. Would you like to contact me direct?

Great news ThenAndNow. I hope it continues to go well for your family.
Yes, we are looking outside our LA, but not very activley. We are white, have a young BC so need a child younger etc... so it is tough. Also our LA is really good and we have a lot of faith in our SW so not hugely keen to move outside the area. They understand us us and have put us in touch with a lot of people in similar situations.

Sorry: should have added that our actual home sudy and approval process was pretty quick and we didn't find it too difficult.

I don't know if my experiences can be of any use. I'm an adoptee, placed with my adoptive parents at 6weeks old. In a family with a BS 4 years older.

I had what I thought was an average/normal time growing up, that is until I recently read a book about seperation problems in adoptees.

I think the author has been very accurate in her descriptions of adoptees behaviour and what the possible causes are.

The book is called The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. It was written in 1991 and I would recommend it to anyone in an adoption situation.

It's helped me understand alot of things that I never could quite work out.
I wish my Mum and Dad had read it when I was little, it could have made a difference to us.

ChildofIsis: thanks for your message. I have read the book but as I wasn't adopted myself I don't think I can ever 'feel' what Verrier describes IYSWIM. It would be fantastically useful for those of us who are wanting to adopt, or at least for me, if you could let give us a little detail about what your parents could have done to address some of the issues Vernier talks about. Don't want to scratch at an open sore so feel free to ignore. But if you could share, that would be great. Thanks J

Having talked to my Mum about it all, we know that my Dad would never have accepted any help or advice.
However, I think that had my parents understood what was going on in my sub-concious we would have had an easier time of it all.
My place in the family became one of being 'the naughty child'. Adoptees can often be stubbornly rebellious. My parents were quite strict and meted out harsh punishments to any perceived infringements.
Any issues were dealt with by starting from a position of me being the 'baddie', irrespective of whether things were my fault or not.
The 'cruel to be kind' and 'do I as say, not as I do' principles of parenting were used.

My parents did what they thought was right at the time. I may not have agreed at the time, but it all led me to being where I am now so worked out ok in the end.

I'm sure that all kids have some issues with the way they were brought up, it's just a bit more complex with adoptees.

When my Dad died 20 years ago I was devastated and ended up having a breakdown, I adored my Dad and couldn't believed he'd gone.
Adoptees tend to react very badly to bereavement, it's another loss/rejection.

I hope this is of some use to you.

Thanks ChildofIsis for sharing your story, or bits of it.

Do you mind if I join you, please?

I am not an adopter or adoptee but for a while now we have been thinking about adopting. It's all quite complicated and I won't bore you as we are still going through IVF but have looked into adoption over a number of years. Never been eligable until the last year due to DD's age.

Anyway, if anyone else who has been adopted with siblings who were birth kids could comment, I would love to hear anything you feel happy to share - and likewise any parents who adopted and have a birth child already.

Thanks and all the best to all of you.