Adoption
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New - question re adopting older child
My husband and I are very prematurely considering adopting a child between the ages of 7 and 10. Has anyone here done this and willing to give me insight?
TTC #1 and Only Since August 2008
DH: Severe Male Factor Infertility (Diagnosed July 2009)
Me: Clean bill of health
2 IVF w/ICSI cycles + 2 FET = 3 BFP = 3 Chemical Pregnancies
FET #2 = BFN
Tired of IVF - Trying for a miracle with IUI
IUI #1 - 1.1 Million Motile = BFN
Surprise Natural BFP on 1/10/12...Praying this is our take home baby
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Re: New - question re adopting older child
What kind of information are you looking for? My husband and I just adopted our son, who's 7. It's wonderful, but also trying in these beginning stages.
Mostly, it's important to remember that children who are available for adoption at older ages have generally suffered more trauma and/or loss than those adopted as infants, so your family will need to be aware of that and how to make the transition as easy as possible for everyone.
My husband and I chose to adopt because we wanted to have a family and share our blessings with a child that might not otherwise have the opportunity to have a loving family and home. That's also what led us to choose to adopt an older child, since they tend to have more difficulty finding their forever families.
We adopted internationally, but it doesn't really matter where you adopt from, an older child will likely have experienced more trauma and/or loss in his/her life. What's important to learn about is how attachment works, and as many details as possible about the child's life history. That will give you an insight as to whether the child has formed any healthy attachments in the past, how they worked out, and if (s)he's likely to be able to do the same again in the future. We found our conversations with his previous caregivers (at two different orphanages) to be absolutely invaluable. The information they provided us gave us a tangible picture into who M is and what his life was like before we met him.
I highly recommend reading Parenting the Hurt Child and some other materials on attachment and children who have suffered loss, abuse, and/or neglect. It will give you an idea of some of the issues that may present, and provide you with tools and methods for forming a healthy bond with the child.
Also with an older child, it is important to review all available medical information, and to have the entire file reviewed by a doctor who specializes in adoption. These doctors can help identify possible health and development concerns, and even sometimes point out other details that you might not have realized the significance of (our doctor found several details in M's past that indicated his mid-level risk to attachment difficulties that we didn't catch at first). If you are adopting from a foreign country, this is even more essential, because there is no foster period first, and the information is usually provided in the language of the foreign country (so you'll need a translator or a doctor who is fluent in that language).
As for what you'll need emotionally to adopt an older child, you'll need to be sure that you have it in you to be extremely patient and forgiving. You'll have to regard every slight in a new light, and look at it from where it's coming--from a child who's terrified of losing control, terrified of trusting someone, terrified of being hurt, and who might have little to no understanding of what constitutes acceptable, expected, or welcome behavior in a family.
My son often indicated that he longed for a family...but he really doesn't understand what a family is. To him, it's a mother and father who are always there, take care of him, and are kind to him. It's not a partnership in which he has responsibilities, we all have to do things we don't necessarily like, there is discipline, and we don't constantly buy whatever we want. It's our job to help him understand what a family really is, and then to help him get to the point where he can develop healthy attachments throughout life. It's very new to us (we just adopted him in July), and at this point it's still quiet difficult, but it is also the most rewarding thing we've ever done.
If you've read my post above you now know one of the things I would make sure you take into consideration.
As for your actual question, I always knew that I would adopt because my family had adopted and done fostercare when I was growing up and it has beome very important to me. I also knew that it would be an older child because they were the ones in the most need of homes, I just didn't know how old.
I ended up adopting my daughter because she is the child that found me, not through any guidelines I had. I had just joined a church who was participating in one of the summer homestay programs, from Russia, that some agencies host. I had not originally planned on adopting at that point in my life. I was 28, single, and lived in a one bedroom apartment. I also knew nothing about IA at that time, especially the cost, all my experience had been through foster/adopt. However my DD did not have a host family, I could get the month off work, and I figured I could give her a great vacation (they told me she didn't know she was here to possibly be adopted - they lied). About a week into it she told a Russian speaking adult that she was going to ask to be adopted. In the next three weeks I decided that there wasn't anything I couldn't change about my life and that I would adopt her. She came back home about 10 months later.
Her biggest problems adjusting were behavioral. She had no idea how to interact with Americans. Russians hardly ever smile at strangers, have a way of speaking that is very intense and curt. They don't change their tone of voice or facial expressions to help get their point across. Teaching her the basic social norms was difficult. She also came with a great distrust, almost hate, of all men. Only time and positive roll models changed that. She did test me to make sure that I wasn't going to send her back and getting her to eat most foods was quite the adventure. Once she learned that I wasn't sending her back, she wasn't here to be my slave (kids have some very skewed views of why a family would want to adopt them), and that there were expectations of her now, she did very well.
I would say just be prepared for problems. These are all children with a traumatic background.