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Adopting older children
Has anyone here ever adopted an older child? My husband and I have started "visits" with two boys who are 10 and 12.
We are what the call "Visiting Resources" for these boys. They currently live in Residential housing locally because there mother left, father is in prison and the family members couldn't take them.
They never get to leave this home. So we start with visits in the residential home, then after DSS comes in and does the home evaluation they will be able to spend weekends with us.
Once the time frame is up and all the family angles have been exhausted the boys will fall into "Foster care" The goal is to already have an established relationship with them, the SW etc so we can foster to adopt the boys.
They actually have 3 younger sisters also in DSS custody. I'd love to hear everyones thoughts and learn from any experience you may have had.
Thanks!
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Re: Adopting older children
I don't think there is a child that isn't workable. Just every child isn't a fit for every family. Think long and hard about what you are able to handle. Keep in mind things may get worse before they get better. You may have to "start over" developmentally.
Also, read Parenting the Hurt Child.
GL in your decision.
Thanks for the great reads ladies. I put them both on the Kindle to read over.
I understand exactly what your saying. I actually also work at a Childrens Home. I have a working relationship with the SW over these children and know the Coordinators over the home. I've already asked a million questions and have a note book full for the next meeting.
I think having a little knowledge in this case is making me "over think" it I'm afraid. Sort of like having a person having just enough medical knowledge to be dangerous
Thanks again for the great book references. I will do start them when I have a few minutes.
Hi, and welcome. As Dr. L. mentioned, my husband and I adopted two sons from Peru. M was 7 (legally, although most likely 9.5 biologically) when we adopted him in 2010 and J was 5 in March 2012, when he joined our family.
It sounds like you've got an understanding of how adopting an older child can be different than other adoptions or raising biological children. In addition to the books above (Parenting the Hurt Child is one of my favorite books on this topic. It really helped us understand what we were dealing with and how to best approach it. It can be scary, because they talk about really bad cases, but it was so relatable and helped us avoid many pitfalls--especially triangulation!), I recommend the following books on attachment and older child adoption:
Wounded Children, Healing Homes: How Traumatized Children Impact Adoptive and Foster Families; -- This book was the first that really captured how I felt. It's more about the impact that raising a hurt child can have on the rest of the family, and was very honest. I couldn't believe that the emotions I felt were actually being written about so openly; and
Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents.
When Love Is Not Enough: A Guide to Parenting Children with RAD, Healing Trust (3 CD set), and Taming the Tiger While It's Still a Kitten (lecture on CD with booklet, https://www.attachment-store.org/taming-the-tiger-while-its-still-a-kitten.html) are good resources to understand children with attachment difficulties. They really helped me get the full understanding of the child's mentality as they go through the process. I personally felt that the techniques were too heavy-handed, but that's likely because I wasn't dealing with a child who had RAD. Still, the insight into their fear and how they act and manipulate relationships because of it was invaluable in understanding my sons. These books/CDs really made me feel like I had a better understanding of what they had to go through, how they were going to do it, and why they were acting the way they were. It made me feel more in control, because I knew what we were going through was normal, I wasn't completely messing up, and that this was all just part of the process they had to go through.
It's also important to know that many books on this topic promote holding therapy, which is highly controversial and believed by some therapists to border on abuse when used with children with traumatic pasts. Personally, I just don't think it's effective a lot of times. I tried holding M early on during his tantrums, and it always made matters worse; I've heard this from other adoptive parents in similar situations as well.
I'm also currently reading Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Attachment-Challenged Children With Severe Behaviors and it presents a different/new way to interpret (and therefore respond to) the behaviors of children with traumatic pasts. It was recommended to me by many parents of children with RAD and FASD, and they swear it?s the only thing that worked with their kids. J lies all the time, and I?m hoping the approach suggested in this book works. Basically, it urges parents to first foster a non-punitive, non-judging, nurturing relationship with the child to quell their fears, calm them, and build a relationship of trust and respect before focusing on correcting their behaviors. I can tell that when J lies he?s stunned and quite possibly terrified, and I?m hoping this new way of interacting with him will finally let him believe that he is safe and can trust us and let his guard down. This book is pretty much the exact opposite in many ways to Nancy Thomas? approach and many of the others above, but I think they all have their place, depending on the child and situation.
If you have any specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them. A quick search on my posts for the last two years will give you an idea of what our transition was like. I've tried to be really open here and share both the good and the bad. It might make me seem a bit manic, but I think we often only hear about he good, and it leaves a lot of perspective parents either going into situations without enough of a feel for what it could be like, or running away because of the really difficult, "worse case" situations described in the books.
There's also a yahoo group called "adopt older kids" (https://groups.yahoo.com/group/A_O_K/) that can give you an idea of what some of these families experience.
Finally, I strongly advise that you should have the medical files of any child you are considering adopting reviewed by a doctor who specializes in adoption. Such a doctor should be able to help you not only evaluate the child's health, but also identify other risk factors, such as the child's likelihood of attachment issues/RAD, fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), and other risks depending on the child's background. These evaluations are not fool-proof, but will give you the best idea of the child's prognosis based on the available information. The doctor would also be able to help you determine if the child has any developmental or other delays, how severe they are, and what level of treatment the child might need.